Southern California’s Lake Barrett offers some of the best fly fishing for largemouth bass in the entire state. The most common superlative used to describe the angling is “phenomenal,” and for good reason. Barrett’s tightly regulated five-month season, with only three days a week open, catch-and-release fishing, along with a reservation system that limits the number of anglers for any given day, has created a superb and unique fishery for the rare northern strain of largemouth bass.
Barrett’s season opener is famous for “fish on every cast” action, and tales of 100-fish days have elevated Barrett to legendary status. Along with high catch rates, at Barrett, you have an incredibly good chance of catching a large bass (5 to 10 pounds) in a day’s fishing. Getting a reservation for Barrett can be difficult, and getting there isn’t easy, either, since it’s so far off the beaten path, near the Mexico border. But once you’re there, it all seems worth the effort. Its tranquil ambiance, combined with the superb and uncrowded fishing, led one angler to describe fishing Lake Barrett as a “once-in-a lifetime experience.”
Despite all the accolades, a reality check is in order: tempering one’s expectations is important before visiting Barrett, because catch rates vary, affected dramatically by fluctuating water levels. Barrett is a drinking-water reservoir with only one source: rainfall. Fortunately, 2023 promises to be a high-water year, which usually portends outstanding action.
Lake Barrett’s History
Lake Barrett was named after George Barrett, a homesteader who built a cabin in the 1870s in a remote valley near the California/Mexico border. In 1913, the City of San Diego purchased the water rights to the valley for $2.5 million, and in 1919, construction began on the Barrett Dam, designed to store rainwater for the City of San Diego. Construction was completed in 1922. The 171-foot-high concrete-arch gravity dam spans a 745-foot-wide gorge, impounding Cottonwood Creek, along with Pine Creek, its main tributary, and a vast labyrinth of feeder creeks, collecting all the runoff from a 252-square-mile watershed and forming a reservoir with a maximum capacity of 34,000 acre/feet, a surface area of over eight hundred acres, and 12 miles of shoreline. As the crow f lies, Lake Barrett is closer to Mexico than to San Diego, located a dozen miles north of Tecate, Mexico, barely inside the California border, nestled in the secluded chaparral hills of southern San Diego County in the Cleveland National Forest, 35 miles due east of downtown San Diego. In his book California Fishing, Tom Stienstra rates California’s lakes on a scale of 1 to 10, based on scenic beauty, numbers of fish, and the size of fish, a 1 rating meaning “hopeless” and a 10 rating being “can’t be improved.” Steinstra calls the Lake Barrett fishery a “genius level fishing program” and gives it a 10 rating. According to Steinstra, “You can go to the best reservoirs in Mexico, like El Salto, and not have a better experience.”
The Lake Barrett fishing season runs from May through September, with fishing allowed, only by reservation, on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Steinstra writes: “Under the reservation system, Barrett continues to have the highest bass catch rates, and because the number of anglers is controlled, it is a far more enjoyable experience than at the crowded areas, and the high quality of the fishery is maintained.”
San Diego Bass
In his book Sowbelly: The Obsessive Quest for the World Record Bass, Monte Burke recounts the story of how Florida-strain largemouth bass ended up in Southern California lakes. In 1958, Ray Boone, all-star third baseman for the Detroit Tigers, was fishing with Orville Ball, the San Diego lakes superintendent. Annual spring training took Ray to Florida, where he spent his days off bass fishing. Boone told Ball about the largemouth bass he caught in Florida — how much bigger and stronger they were than the northern-strain largemouths that inhabited his San Diego lakes.
Ball was intrigued, but not convinced until he consulted Professor Carl Hobbs of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, the world’s leading ichthyologist, who confirmed that the Florida strain was indeed far superior to the northern strain in its growth potential. Ball oversaw the purchase and importing of Florida-strain largemouths from a hatchery near Pensacola, Florida. They were first stocked at Upper Otay Lake, near San Diego, in 1960, after a rotenone poisoning of the lake exterminated all the fish. Soon thereafter, many other lakes in San Diego County followed suit.
In the southeastern United States, northern-strain bass typically reached a maximum size of 8 pounds, and the Florida strain routinely grew to a maximum size of 15 pounds over a maximum life span of about twelve years. Soon it was discovered that in Southern California, the Florida-strain largemouths reached the 15-pound mark at only six years of age, due to a combination of favorable factors: the deep, clean water and the habitat that the reservoirs provided, the moderate climate that allowed almost year-round feeding opportunities, and the rich food sources, such as crawfish, frogs, and threadfin shad. But the game changer was an additional bonus food source: stocked rainbow trout, courtesy of the California Department of Fish and Game, now the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
By gorging on half-pound, high-protein rainbow trout meals, the largemouths grew to even larger sizes. In 1973, the first 20-pound Florida-strain largemouth bass in Southern California was caught in San Diego County, at Miramar Reservoir. As it stands today, 11 of the top 25 largest bass of all time were Florida-strain largemouths caught from San Diego County lakes.

Lake Barrett was originally stocked with northern-strain largemouth bass and never received stocks of the Florida-strain bass that now predominate in most warmwater lakes and reservoirs in Southern California. To this day, Barrett contains the last significant population of northern-strain bass in the southern part of the state. While the northerns don’t grow to the gigantic proportions of their Florida brethren, they make up for their lack of size by two endearing traits: they are very easy to catch, and they fight very hard.
Northern-strain largemouth bass typically live as long as nine years. When the water is above 50 degrees Fahrenheit, which it is most of the year at Lake Barrett, they feed constantly. With Barrett’s temperate climate, by their second year, the northerns average 12 inches in length, typically reaching 20 inches in length by seven years of age.
In most parts of the country, northern-strain largemouth bass rarely exceed 8 pounds in a lifetime, but the favorable conditions at Barrett produce larger f ish, such as the 10-pound 3-ounce northern caught at Barrett in 1948, or the 11-pound lunker caught on the 1994 season opener by Boyd Gibbons, a former director of the CDFG. As far as I know, the largest northern-strain largemouth from Barrett was an 11-pound 8-ounce fish caught in 2007 by Jonathan Roel, a local bass aficionado who called Barrett “the most sought-after fishing experience in San Diego.” Surrounded by private ranches, Lake Barrett closed to the public in 1968 due to access issues. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that negotiations began to reopen the lake, with restrictions, since the access road to the lake traverses private ranch land. In 1989, in anticipation of the reopening of Lake Barrett to the public, Field & Stream magazine wrote this ebullient prognostication: “The fishing that Lake Barrett will offer will be the best that anybody will f ind anywhere. This lake will make a bad fisherman look great.” The lake wouldn’t open for another five years, but with such an enthusiastic promotion, rumor spread like wildfire, and poaching became an issue. The CDFG warden busted one overzealous, heavily laden poacher hiking out from the lake with a backpack containing 180 bass filets. Another poacher crash-landed on the lake with a jury-rigged, hillbilly version of a float plane — an ultralight aircraft fitted with pontoons.
When the lake finally reopened in 1994, the northern-strain largemouth population was estimated at around fifteen thousand fish — an average population for a lake of Barrett’s size — but these were aggressive, voracious, and easily duped fish, unlike the savvy Florida strain largemouths. With reports of 100-fish days, Barrett’s reputation quickly grew to mythical proportions, helped in part by an unusual parasite that turned the fish into insatiable gluttons. In his book The Definitive Guide to Fishing in Southern California, Chris Shaffer writes about the insidious malady:
Prior to the close of the 1996 season Barrett’s bass population was infected with a parasite of the liver. Although the infected bass were still able to eat, the parasite that infected them, called the little white grub, restricted the fish from metabolizing any food. The bass constantly had a feeling of being famished and they attacked anything that came their way that looked like food. Catch rates at Barrett were staggering, with anglers catching a fish on nearly every cast.
After a few years, the infected fish died out, and their offspring grew up healthy. The lake was stocked with silverside minnows and threadfin shad to fatten up the bass. The forage fish flourished. With a zero-kill, barbless hook, catch-and-release policy and plenty of baitfish to feast on, the bass proliferated. Barrett’s reputation as a quality bass fishery and as a fly-rod-friendly bass fishery was affirmed.
Since it’s a reservoir, Lake Barrett’s water level fluctuates wildly due to two factors: the amount of runoff from rainwater flowing into the reservoir and the amount of water taken out for drinking water for the city of San Diego, which flows through a conduit to Lower Otay Reservoir. The bass fishing is best with higher lake levels that flood vegetation and submerge rocky shoreline structure. During drought years, the lake level plummets, adversely affecting the bass, although the panfish populations of bluegills and crappies seem to thrive even at lower water levels. In 2011 the lake filled to the brim, and water cascaded over the dam’s spillway. But after 2011, during consecutive drought years, the lake level dropped at an alarming rate.
With a high population of fish concentrated in a much lower volume of water, competing for dwindling food sources, the bass became more susceptible to parasites and disease. Alarm bells began to go off. Fearing a calamity, in 2014, the CDFW captured 230 Barrett bass and relocated them to Lake Gregory in the San Bernardino Mountains to preserve the last remaining vestige of pure northern-strain bass in Southern California, just in case the Barrett population crashed and needed restocking. Lake Gregory had a problem with an overpopulation of crappies, and the brown trout stocked in the lake to solve the problem didn’t seem to be making a dent in the crappie population, so the northerns were a solution to Gregory’s crappie problem, and in turn, the crappies were a good food source for the bass.
During the capturing of these bass at Barrett, the CDFW also conducted a survey: 541 bass were caught using rod and reel, 230 of which were relocated to Lake Gregory, the rest released back into Lake Barrett. The average size of all the fish was calculated to be just under two pounds.
By the summer of 2016, Barrett was down to just 5 percent of capacity. The bass I caught that season were noticeably skinny. But as luck would have it, the winter of 2016–2017 brought an El Niño climate phase, with copious rainfall. The reservoir began to fill up again, and the crisis was averted.
But then another problem arose — not for the fish, but for anglers. The shad population exploded, and the bass had too much to eat. When the CDFW assessed the lake in 2018, the bass were hard to catch, and the ones they did catch were shaped like little footballs. Russell Black, a senior environmental supervisor for the CDFW, found that “everything we caught was gorged with bait. When you net a fish and it immediately spits up two or three shad, it’s not going to chase an artificial lure. They all had little baseballs of bait in their stomachs.”
In recent years, anglers have had to adjust their expectations, but reports of catching a couple dozen bass by noon are still commonplace.
Fishing Lake Barrett
At daybreak, expectation runs high as anglers in their rental boats slowly putput around with their eight-horsepower motors to various points and coves throughout the lake.
Early in the morning, before the sun climbs above the canyon’s eastern wall, the bass hold tight to the bank, the shoreline structure attracting them like a magnet. Make your first cast count — tight to the bank, rocks, or weed lines — because you’ll often hook the biggest fish of the day right then and there. A deer-hair slider such as the Swimming Baitfish, fished on a floating line, is a good choice for the early morning, as is a shad imitation such as Enrico Puglisi’s Grey Shad in size 1/0, cast on a slow-sinking intermediate line. Puglisi recommends using a short tippet and a Loop Knot, such as the Nonslip Mono Loop, for the best action, with a jerky, erratic retrieve.
When the sun hits the water, the fish go deeper. A full sinking line or an intermediate line with a weighted fly works best at midday to sink the fly. A weighted fly, such as a Clouser Minnow in sizes 6 to 1/0 with dumbbell eyes, sinks fast and undulates like a wounded or frightened baitfish when fished with a slow strip.
Keep your eyes peeled for shimmering clouds of threadfin shad busting the surface, signifying an attack from below. If you’re in a boat, motor to within casting distance as quickly as possible, then kill the engine so as not to spook the fish. Double haul a shad imitation right into the fray, then let it sink below the bait ball and jerk it erratically, like a wounded baitfish. Most likely you’ll get bit instantly, but if you don’t, strip the fly quickly and erratically, with distinct pauses, again imitating an injured baitfish. If you’re in a float tube and happen across the same scenario, you’re in luck — track the school at swim-fin paddling speed and stay in the action longer with a stealthier approach than with a boat. If you’re using a smaller baitfish pattern, don’t be surprised if you hook up to a big crappie or bluegill. In addition to northern largemouths, there are healthy populations of trophy-size panfish at Lake Barrett, and these fish also have a predilection for minnows. Because of the huge number of bluegills that inhabit the lake, a baby bluegill pattern can also prove quite effective for larger-size bass.
At the south end of the lake, the deeper water from the boat dock to the dam is excellent crappie water, and these panfish grow large at Barrett, averaging nearly two pounds. Crappies often suspend halfway between the surface and the bottom, in 20 to 30 feet of water.
In the summer, weed beds form in the coves and along shallower shorelines. If you find a vertical wall of weeds adjacent to deeper water, you’ve found a hot spot for both bass and bluegills. At midday, if damselflies are present, a size 10 black or olive beadhead Woolly Bugger will catch both bass and bluegills if worked parallel to the weed line on a slow-sinking intermediate line retrieved in short, quick, staccato strips, punctuated by a pause every third or fourth strip.

Another effective tactic for both bass and bluegills is to use a floating line and indicator to fish a size 10 Balanced Leech or Balanced Bugger a foot or two off the bottom in the lake’s coves. A releasable bobber comes in handy for hanging the fly in 10 to 20 feet of water.
During Barrett’s five-month season, the May and June reservations are the most coveted, because the post-spawn bass are incredibly aggressive toward flies and are found in numbers all along the shorelines and in the coves, averaging two pounds, with an occasional larger fish in the mix. In July and August, when the daytime temperatures often soar over 90 degrees and the water temperature climbs into the high 70s, the early morning is the most productive time to fish for bass, because the bass move deeper by midday. At that time of year, the bluegill bite will often be as hot as the weather. They usually can be found near the weed-beds, and often bite all day long. In September, the bass return to their shoreline haunts and can be found aggressively chasing threadfin shad all over the lake.
The Lake Barrett Experience
While catch rates at Lake Barrett oscillate with fluctuations in water level and baitfish populations, the high-quality Lake Barrett experience is consistent, thanks to its reservation system, which limits the number of anglers fishing the lake.
The backdrop at Lake Barrett is far removed from the urban scenarios you’ll f ind at most San Diego County lakes. Other than the small dock house, you won’t see a single building on the surrounding hills, and there are no roaring bass boats, no recreational boaters, no Jet Skiers, no water-skiers, and the underpowered rental boats don’t ruin the serenity.
Whether you catch a dozen f ish or a hundred fish, what you’ll probably remember more than the fishing is the wildlife: a coyote prowling the banks, the prehistoric squawk of a blue heron that takes startled flight as you motor into a cove, the osprey that dive-bombs into the water and snatches a bass right in front of you, the damselfly that lands on your fly rod.
“Fishing at Lake Barrett has a dreamlike quality,” wrote the late Richard Alden Bean in his book Fly Fishing Southern California’s Lakes and Streams. “There’s a pastoral feeling that puts you in a rocking chair mood as you cast flies over waters that offer perhaps the best bass fishing in the state. As good as the fishing is — and it can be phenomenal — the experience itself is what you remember weeks afterward.”
If You Go…
Lake Barrett is operated by the City of San Diego. On the web, go to www.sandiego.gov and search for Barrett Reservoir.
Barrett is open to fishing from May through September on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays only. Due to a city-wide 3 percent budget reduction, Lake Barrett is now closed the first Wednesday of each month. A zero-kill, catchand-release policy is in effect for all species of fish in the lake. Only barbless hooks are allowed.
Reservations are required, placed through Ticketmaster (www.ticketmaster. com; (800) 745-3000). They go on sale on the second Tuesday of the month prior at 7:00 p.m. Boat reservations are $100 per boat (they accommodate up to four anglers), shore and float-tubing permits are $30 per angler, plus Ticketmaster fees. A maximum of 25 boat permits and 25 float-tube permits are granted per day. Boats are a no-frills 14-footers with eight-horsepower engines. No private boats are allowed at the lake, although you can bring your own motor if you wish (up to 25 horsepower).
To get to Barrett: from Interstate 8, drive south on Japatul Valley Road for 5.6 miles to Lyons Valley Road. Turn left on Lyons Valley Road and drive 6 miles to the entrance gate. Parking is limited, and no RVs or motor homes are allowed. Only two vehicles per boat reservation are allowed. No dogs or pets are allowed. There is no concession, no food, and no water available at the lake or anywhere near the lake, so come prepared.
Access to and from the lake is tightly controlled. Once you secure a reservation, a lake employee meets you at the gate on your appointed day at 5:00 a.m., 6:00 a.m., or 7:00 a.m. only and escorts you to the lake. Escorted exits are at 12:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., and sunset.
— Bob Gaines