CORVINA FISHING GETS LIVELY AT SALTON SEA.

It was the kind of sight avid ocean anglers dream about. The sea was calm, and for as far as you could see in both directions, the water was alive, quivering. Every couple of hundred yards there were baitfish skittering across the surface as foamy boils opened up and game fish slashed into the schools of bait. In the distance, desert mountains shimmered.

Mazatlan? The Yucatan? The Sea of Cortez?

How about the Salton Sea!

A three-hour southwesterly drive from Los Angeles, the Salton Sea fishery is back.

``The fishing is as good now as it's ever been,'' said Leah Head, manager of the Bombay Beach Marina, who proudly showed off photos of a 20-pound corvina caught recently. A half-dozen anglers on the jetty there were catching 2- to 4-pound corvina, filling limits in an hour or two. Boat anglers were getting five-fish limits in a few minutes.

Steve Horvitz, head ranger at the Salton Sea State Recreation Area said that catch rates ``would either equal or surpass (the peak years), especially with all the tilapia being caught now.''

Horvitz said that news about the tremendous fishing is slowly leaking out, evidenced by the jump in visitor numbers.

Use at the park - on the boundary between Riverside and Imperial counties at an elevation of 228 feet below sea level - went from a high of more than 500,000 annual visitors in the 1960s, when the fishery was considered the most productive inland water in the state, to a low of 87,000 in the fiscal year 1993-94. Last year there were 126,000 visitors, and this year the numbers topped at a little more than 200,000, Horvitz said.

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PHOTO no caption (Fisherman with catch)