A tremendously warm week left canyon visitors feeling like it was July as temps soared into the high 70's to low 80's in the high country. This summery weather created some nice afternoon cloud cover with a few t-storms coming through earlier in the week as a backdrop for South Lake Landing's opening week. With the incredible weather we've had over the last month, it's hard to believe that just 3 years go the lake didn't even thaw out until this week in 2010.

Only a handful of skunk stripes reported this week, mostly on Saturday when the lake was really loaded with people. Most of the boaters, tubers, and shore anglers reported a steady bite on pan sized rainbows throughout the week. The bait dunkers were doing good on just about anything but 1/2 a nightcrawler inflated off the bottom, salmon eggs, and garlic scented Chunky Cheese Powerbait were the top producers. Lure tossers had an uncharacteristically difficult time this week as the usual go-to lures like Thomas Bouyants and Rapalas just weren't producing consistently, even for the folks trolling.

The soft plastics guys & gals did very good this week with grasshopper mini-jigs, baby Golden Sierra Slammer swimbaits and the orange/white Berkley Micetails accounting for lots of fish, especially near Grizz Point and at the Rock Slide.

Boaters did best along the west shore or near the inlet while shore anglers did best near small inlet in Boiler Cove.

South Lake Landing is now open Friday, Saturday & Sundays from 7am to 5pm. Folks wishing to rent a boat Monday through Thursday should check in at the Parchers Resort office anytime after 8am. Due to the limited fleet and high demand, we are only renting boats by the 5 hour 1/2 day (7am to Noon, Noon to 5pm) on the weekends so more people get a chance to fish the lake from a boat.

The lake is still very low, maybe 15ft to 20ft lower than we like to see in early June, but once again South Lake is on the rise and we've gained back what water we lost last week. We're still hopeful that the lake will come up enough to stock fish sometime this month but we'll have to wait and see. South Lake usually sees its first stocking in mid to late June so if we can stay on par with that, life will be good. Thankfully DFW loads the lake up pretty good each fall so there are still a bunch of stocker rainbows in the lake.

According to SCE's lake level forecast, the lake will peak below the end of the launch ramp this year so private boaters are out of luck in 2013. We do plan on getting our entire fleet of motorboats out as soon as we can.