Salton Sea

Thunderstorms all but stopped fishing at the Salton Sea last week, but with the better weather, the orangemouth corvina bite has improved. John Shute of Palm Springs caught a 23-pound 4-ounce corvina. Area largemouth bass fishing has improved, too, with Lake Casitas and Castaic Lake both reporting good catches.

Poor weather spoiled the fishing at many Southern California lakes this week, but not in the Salton Sea, where the year's biggest orangemouth corvina was landed. Sanford Basham of Highland caught a 32-pounder Wednesday morning at Corvina Beach, which has been producing large corvina in the early hours all week. Basham was drifting a mudsucker and landed the fish on a 12-pound-test line.

Re "Agencies Near Deal on Water," Sept. 4: The water transfer agreement now being negotiated by the Gov. Gray Davis administration takes a huge step toward restoration of the Salton Sea, California's largest lake and a unique natural and cultural resource. Davis deserves praise for making the Salton Sea restoration a centerpiece of the water deal and for his persistence in keeping the parties at the table until they could reach such an agreement. The Salton Sea and surrounding valleys provide habitat for more than 400 bird species, as well as several other rare and endangered species, some of which are unique to California.

Blue cheese dressing and concrete sealant spilled into a canal leading to the Salton Sea when 19 cars in a 52-car freight train derailed in the Southern California desert. It will take a few days to clean up the mess, Union Pacific officials said Wednesday. The Los Angeles-bound train derailed for unknown reasons about 4 p.m. Tuesday along California 111 north of the Salton Sea, authorities said.

A swarm of mild earthquakes struck southeastern California near the Salton Sea early today, but police said the temblors were barely noticed and there were no injuries and no damage. "We are used to the nice hard ones. We didn't even feel it. We only got a couple of calls by people wondering if there was an earthquake," said Shawn David, a dispatcher at the Brawley Police Department. The swarm included six quakes of magnitude 3 or greater between 3:46 a.m. and 4:36 a.m.

Largemouth bass are becoming active in most Southland reservoirs and fishing for orangemouth corvina at the Salton Sea is "the best it's been in '89," according to a lake concessionaire. The fish are unusually big for this time of year, averaging about eight pounds, and several of 10 pounds and more have been landed. Steve Holtz, a Palm Springs fireman, caught the biggest corvina this year, an 18 1/4-pounder to top his nine-fish limit.

The Senate voted Tuesday to allocate $5 million to study restoration options for California's heavily polluted Salton Sea, but declined to set aside $300 million for funding any recommended cleanup projects in the future. The legislation--which will probably be added to the omnibus appropriations bill in the House and approved by the end of the week--authorizes the funding for research that by 2000 would recommend ways to reclaim the body of water.

A tractor-like machine that sprays salty water into the air to speed up evaporation was taken for a test drive Wednesday at the Salton Sea, where the search is on for ways to reduce the salinity in California's largest lake. The test of the Turbo Mist machine marked the first time in 40 years that any method of salinity control has been tested there. The sea is 25% saltier than the Pacific Ocean. "It's time for action," said Tom Kirk, director of the Salton Sea Authority.

High levels of selenium are suspected of being a cause in the deaths of 150,000 eared grebes earlier this year at the Salton Sea in one of the worst bird die-offs ever, U.S. Fish and Wildlife scientists say. Selenium, a trace mineral more toxic than arsenic, drew national attention a decade ago when it was blamed for thousands of bird deaths and deformities at Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in the San Joaquin Valley.

A virulent outbreak of botulism that has killed or sickened 2,500 to 2,800 pelicans at the Salton Sea--including about 1,000 endangered brown pelicans--has begun to spread to other species of birds. Although the die-off among pelicans is slowing, "it is getting worse in the shorebird population," Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge manager Clark Bloom said Monday. "It is affecting everything down here at the sea. . . . I'm sure more birds will die before this is over with."