THE OUTDOORS : Outdoor Notes / Pete Thomas : Warmer Water Brings Improved Fishing Conditions to Southern Baja

Fishing off the southern Baja Peninsula has improved dramatically in recent weeks since 75- to 80-degree water flushed into the Sea of Cortez from the Pacific.

Schools of marlin, dorado, tuna and wahoo have moved in to feed on abundant schools of bait fish attracted by the plankton-rich water.

According to John Doughty of Bisbee’s Tackle on Balboa Island, the water off the East Cape is 80-82 degrees and “full of life, dark blue with bait fish--flying fish, sardines, squid and red crabs.”

Subsequently, Doughty says, the bigger game fish have moved in to feed.

Although most of the marlin were concentrated near the Gorda Banks, the fish appear to be spreading south toward Cabo San Lucas. Fishermen casting live baits and artificial lures have been experiencing some of the best striped marlin fishing in months, with two to four billfish opportunities per boat per day.

Yellowfin tuna to 25 pounds, as well as scattered catches of dorado from 15 to 50 pounds and wahoo to 50 pounds have been giving fishermen a change of pace from the sometimes monotonous search for marlin.

“Everything looks good for the remaining spring and early summer season,” Doughty said, adding that indications are favorable for an improved blue marlin bite by the middle of May.

It was a relatively modest trout opener in the Eastern Sierra last weekend, highlighted by the taking of a huge brown trout at Bridgeport’s Upper Twin Lake and the restricted fly fishing in the streams between Mammoth Lakes and Crowley Lake.

The 22-pound 4-ounce German brown caught in Upper Twin early on opening day by Jim Becker, a planning manager for the Edison Company from Arcadia, was the biggest fish caught in the Eastern Sierra in two years.

“I’ve been coming up here for 15 years, and it’s the first big one I’ve ever caught,” Becker said.

Twin Lakes slowed Sunday, despite a large turnout of fishermen, but some did well on the upper East Walker River, above Bridgeport Reservoir on the outskirts of town.

Crowley’s largest catch was a six-pounder. The Department of Fish and Game cut back on its stocking because the lake level was down. So was the crowd.

Fly fishermen playing catch-and-release with artificial lures in the streams near Mammoth and Crowley--especially at Hot Creek--did well, catching fish to 23 inches.

In the June Lake loop, the crowd was down a little and big fish were few, but anglers reported better numbers of pan-sized fish.

A fertilization project on the Overton Arm of Nevada’s Lake Mead, which has suffered a declining fishery in the last 10 years, appears to be showing favorable results for the first time since it began almost three years ago.

“The striped bass they were catching up there looked like pickles, they were so skinny,” Duke Crowe, 72, a Las Vegas resident, said of the fish they had been catching before the program.

In 1987, Dr. Larry Paulson, Director of Lake Mead Limnological Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, began fertilizing the Overton Arm of the lake with ammonium polyphosphates, dumping more than 40,000 gallons the first two years, with another 25,000 scheduled for this year.

“What we’re trying to do here is get a moderate increase in the amount of algae,” Paulson said. That, he said, will spur the growth of zooplankton, which will provide a food source for juvenile shad, the primary food source for largemouth and striped bass.

Paulson said by telephone last week that the striped bass caught in the Overton Arm this year have been much healthier than in previous years.

“They were pretty skinny fish before,” he said. “Now, in the Overton Arm anyway, that’s not the case.”

The declining fishery began as phosphorous--in the form of phosphates leached from rocks in the Colorado drainage area--was settling upstream in Lake Powell, created by the Glen Canyon Dam in 1966, instead of making its way downstream to Lake Mead.

The problem worsened when of federal clean-water regulations were imposed in the late 1970s, and the Clark County waste water treatment plant began removing phosphates.

The Sportfishing Institute, using results of a 1985 survey and population forecasts by the Census Bureau, has estimated fishing participation to the year 2025.

In 1985, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife estimates, there were 13,709,000 saltwater fishermen 17 or older, who fished 155,172,000 days during the year.

SFI’s projections: Saltwater anglers will fish 186,534,800 days by the year 2000, and 211,042,600 days by 2025. The average American, according to SFI, ate a record 15.4 pounds of fish in 1987. These increases will reportedly put heavy pressure on the country’s fisheries and the only way they can remain healthy, SFI says, will be if imports are increased dramatically and if aquaculture becomes a regular tool of fisheries management.

Briefly

A day-use reservation system has gone into effect at Lake Perris Recreation Area, 11 miles southeast of Riverside, as part of a two-year pilot program by the Department of Parks and Recreation to alleviate “the frustrations of visitors being turned away because of overcrowding at the popular state park.” For reservations, call (800) 444-7275. . . . The California Wildlands Program, through which visitors at nine wildlife areas throughout the state can view wildlife on interpretive trails and natural history exhibits, will be officially dedicated today at 10:30 a.m. at the Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve. Today’s dedication will include rehabilitated hawks and owls and ground breaking for the self-guiding hiking trail.

Offerings: A seminar, covering basic techniques of saltwater fishing, will be held on the water aboard the new Shogun 90 on May 28 at L.A. Harbor Sportfishing. Afterward, the boat will travel a short distance to fish the popular Horseshoe Kelp area. For details: (213) 547-9916.