Glendale Reservoir - A new comprehensive fishing report

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Yesterday (Thursday Sept. 18) I fished Glendale from about 8:30 a.m. until around noon.  When I first arrived the reservoir was calm and there were a lot of fish working the surface.  Most appeared to be rainbow trout, some of which were quite large.  My target fish was crappie and as soon as I started tossing my jig it was non stop action.  It didn't matter which point or bay I was fishing on, the crappie were there and biting.  Unfortunately, the fish are small - borderline keepers.  I caught and landed over 90 hoping so sort out some larger ones, however, I am convinced that bigger ones are simply not there, at least in any numbers.  All of the crappie were between 8 and 9 inches.  I don't know if the crappie have overpopulated the reservoir and they are lacking for food or if they are just a younger size class (the only size class from what I observed).  They look a little thin and underfed when compared to the crappie that were caught there in previous years.

About 9:30 a.m. the bluegill started hitting my crappie jig.  I caught several nice ones in the 9 to 9 1/2 inch range and those were healthy, stocky fish.

I switched to night crawlers and fished those on both the bottom (slow retrieve) and under a bubble.  Hooked and landed several nice, 14 to 15 inch bass on the bottom presentations.  The rainbows would hit the suspended nightcrawlers usually within a few minutes but I also caught several on the bottom as well.

I kept two rainbow that were deep hooked and we had them for dinner last night.  The quality of the bright silver one, which was 15 inches, was excellent and tasted almost a good as a May or June rainbow.  The other, more colorful 16 incher, wasn't as good and had a more earthy, mossy taste.

To summarize, I think that you can do pretty well right now on whatever species you're targeting at Glendale.  I think that it would benefit the fishery if several thousand crappie were harvested, which technically could be done under the current fish salvage order that expires on Oct. 1.