Ed Proulx of BaitSmith lures sent in this report from his trip down to Diamond Valley Lake in Southern California where he landed this beauty.

I just returned home from a long weekend trip to Southern California
and was able to get out on Diamond Valley Lake Monday 3-15-10 and had a
great day fishing with my nephew Mitch. It was my first weekend trip
ever to Hemet and Diamond Valley and I was very hopeful to catch some
nice fish in a warm place away from the snow and cold at home in
Northern Idaho.

We started the morning out with a 5.5 pounder that was
on the shoreline. She ate the soft plastic stick bait without
hesitation. I then told Mitch that by the way she bit we can find them
they are going to eat today. We continued to search the shore for
females for a short period of time but could only find scrubby males who were spooky, so we made the decision to set ourselves away
from what everyone else seemed to be doing and get further away from
shore.

Soon we found a school of 4.5 to 6 pounders suspended and hooked
and landed five of them in short order with soft plastics. I continued to
throw the BaitSmith 9.5” Magnum Light Color Trout and Mitch threw an
assortment of BaitSmith Original 6” colors and the 5” BaitSmith
Threadfin Shad. We ran from spot to spot looking to duplicate our
pattern and caught several more fish from 4 to 5.5 pounds – but on the
soft plastics not the swimbaits.

At about 2pm the water had warmed up
to about 63 degrees and I continued to throw our BaitSmith Magnum as a
search bait when we came across a classic swimbait spot. That is
when my Magnum got bit. I yelled for the net and continued to crank my
Calcutta. As the fish got close to the net she managed to shake her head
hard enough as I cranked her towards the net to shake the bait free.  She had eaten the 9.5” Magnum clear up to the eyeballs, but I allowed her
to get enough stretch in my line to shake her head and the bait . . . big
mistake as we watched her swim away! She looked to be a 10 or better but
I cannot say for sure BECAUSE I didn’t get her into the net to weigh
her, we just know she was a bigger fish.

As I tried to calm myself down,
I repositioned the boat and began to cast to the same area at the same
angle and depth, on the fourth cast the Magnum got bit again this time,
same drill, except there was no mistake like I made the last time. When
the fish made it into the net we high-fived each other, took some
pictures, and released the fish (shown above in the picture above) that weighed in just over
8.10 pounds.

I caught another fish on the Magnum a little later that
weighed just under 5 pounds. I capped a great day of fishing on a great
body of water with one of the people in my life I always enjoy spending
time with. 

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