SADLY, PERRIS IS SPOTLESS; ONCE PRECIOUS SPOTTED BASS HAVE VANISHED.

Byline: Brett Pauly Daily News Staff Writer

Lake Perris is famous for its massive and prolific largemouth bass. It also is home to sizeable rainbow trout from fall through spring, redear sunfish and a Florida strain of bluegill that can grow to the size of small halibuts.

But the reservoir's brightest gem, the spotted bass, has all but perished - a precious commodity stocked to create a world-class fishery, then overfished and finally done in by well-meaning anglers attempting to resurrect the bass populations by illegally planting largemouths.

``It really is over,'' said former Department of Fish and Game biologist Larry Bottroff. ``It was a great fishery while it was going; through the '70s and '80s, it was very popular.''

From 1985-87, the Riverside County reservoir yielded five line-class world records for spotted bass that still hold, including two lake-best 9-1/4-pounders taken on 6- and 8-pound line. (The all-tackle record is a 9-pound, 7-ounce specimen caught at Pine Flat Reservoir, east of Fresno, in 1994.)

The spotted bass, very similar to the largemouth but with a smaller maw and considered a much more spirited fighter, was imported to Perris in the mid-1970s. (San Vicente Lake, northeast of San Diego, is thought to hold the only other significant Southland spotted bass population.)

The experiment to establish a new fishery and draw anglers worked for about a decade, until the catch rate got too high, Bottroff said.

Some 85 percent to 90 percent of the planted adult spotted bass were hooked, the biologist noted. By comparison, the catch rate for largemouth is typically about 20 percent to 25 percent.

``Catch and release wasn't the `in' thing, so whenever you have that type of harvest the fishery is going to fall way off,'' Bottroff said. ``Even if you stocked them in there all the time, it would be a lot of work to keep it up for various other reasons.''

Fluctuations in water temperature and forage fish, behavioral conflicts with the bluegill and other factors may have contributed to their demise. But the nail in the spotted bass' coffin likely was the introduction of the largemouth bass, Bottroff said.

In ``Johnny Appleseed fashion,'' bass-angling clubs in the late 1980s transferred the bucketmouths in the live wells of their boats and dumped them into Perris in an attempt to replenish the dying bass fishery, said Ronnie Kovach, a former guide at the lake.

The plan backfired.

``It was really a case of good-intentioned people taking a fishery that was world-class and destroying it,'' said Kovach, whose largest spotted bass was 7-3/4 pounds. He last boated a spotted two years ago.

Bottroff explained that the spotted bass couldn't compete with the largemouth, which may feasted on the spotted's fry.

As a last-ditch effort to save the fishery, the Department of Fish and Game invoked a two-fish, 15-inch size limit on bass at the lake. (At most lakes, the limit is five fish of more than 12 inches.) But the damage was already done, according to Bottroff.

``I'm sure the spotted bass would have come back on their own had the largemouth not been put in,'' he said.

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Photo: (color) Fishing pressure and competition from the largemouth bass (pictured) have contributed to the demise of the spotted bass.

Brett Pauly/Daily News