"This is shaping up as the best catfish season we've had in a long time," said Craig Elliott about Santa Ana River Lakes' grand opener for the summer season that kicks off Thursday this week with the first major catfish plants of the year.

Elliott, who handles promotions and advertising for The Lakes, said Santa Ana River Lakes would be planted heavily each week with catfish from both northern and southern California this year, including trophy fish from six to 15 pounds in every load. The average catfish are in the two-pound range this season, and there will be more of the bigger catfish than SARL has had the past couple of seasons, according to Elliott.

"I think anglers are going to be really happy with the quality of the fish we'll be getting," said Elliott. "The average trophy fish will be in the eight to nine pound range, and we'll have a lot of those nice fish this year."

The catfish action is already starting to take off, with some good scores already reported by anglers fishing mackerel doused Nitro Gravy in shrimp or the popular marshmallow-meal worm combo, also doused with scent.

In the meantime, the trout bite has continued very good with the action probably helped by the cooler-then-normal weather over the past week. But the trout are still in deep water and anglers fishing from shore need to fish long leaders (four-foot range) with floating baits and make long casts into the deeper water. Boat anglers are having a much easier time reaching the deep water and their scores have been better than shore anglers. Nightcrawlers or Nitro Bait in chartreuse and orange dipped in Nitro Grease have been the hot trout baits, but quite a fish trout are also showing on deeply fished trout jigs.

The big rainbow this past week was 12-pounder landed by Kerry Gayagas, Ontario, on a small trout jig. Luis Chavarria, Santa Ana, had an 11 1/2-pound rainbow, while Arturo Villa, West Covina, had an 11-pounder. Daniel Gustavo, Santa Ana, landed a 10 3/4-pound rainbow, and Guillermo Guzman, Norwalk, caught a 10 1/2-pounder. Rainbows at 10 pounds even were caught by Pedro Villa, Anaheim, and George Tebelekian, Los Angeles.

The trout action should remain pretty good for the next two to three weeks even though no more plants are going in until this fall.

Another feature of catfish season is that night fishing returns to SARL every week. Anglers can fish on 24-hour passes Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.

Santa Ana River Lakes 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 $20 passes has a five-fish limit. Starting this week, the lake will be open to 24-hour fishing each Thursday through Saturday. These passes have a 15-fish limit and cost $60. A spouse and up to three kids 12 and under can help dad catch his 15-fish limit on these passes. For Santa Ana River Lakes fishing information, call (714) 632-7830 or log on at http://www.fishinglakes.com.