Corona Lake cranks out biggest trout in Southern California -- a 20-pounder

A 20 1/2-pound rainbow trout was caught at Corona Lake this week. It was the largest rainbow caught in Southern California over the past seven days and it was landed by Riverside's Brent Monteleone.

Corona has been producing a lot of limits of rainbows up to three pounds with a nice sprinkling of bigger fish. The best bite has been a mid-lake or off the east shoreline for boat anglers, and the top baits have been nightcrawlers soaked in garlic Nitro Gravy or chartreuse and orange Nitro Bait.

Other quality trout this past week included a 9.8-pound rainbow caught by Glen Morris, Riverside fishing a wooly bugger fly, while Mike Stewart, Crestline, landed a 7.52-pounder on corn-flavored Nitro Bait.

There will be two big four-day weekends of Lightning Trout action at Corona Lake in February -- Feb. 5-8 and Feb. 19-22 -- when thousands of pounds of these popular golden-colored trout are planted. The Lightning Trout will join the regular plants of Mt. Lassen Trout Farms' rainbows and the Nebraska Tailwalkers to keep the bite hot.

Corona Lake is open seven days a week with fishing allowed from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. on day passes or from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. on an evening pass. Each of these passes is $22. Seniors only pay $20, with a special $17 pass sold on Wednesdays. All of these passes have a five-fish limit. For kids 4 to 13, a three-fish pass is just $9. The once-monthly 24-hour passes remain just $60 with the next 24-hour fishing coming up this President's Day weekend Feb. Feb. 14-16 -- three nights of all-night fishing thanks to the Monday holiday. These passes have a 15-fish limit. For more Corona Lake fishing information, call 951-277-4489 or log on at www.fishinglakes.com