Everyone agrees that Clear Lake is literally awash with bass and is now rated as one of the top bass lakes in the country, if not the world. The big question is how long will it last?
The threadfin shad, the primary food for the bass in the lake, are just about gone. After attaining a population in the billions, the shad literally disappeared overnight. No, they didn”t leave the lake; they died.
There are several reasons given for the demise of the shad, including a short cold spell last winter that killed off thousands. Another factor could be the decline in plankton, a primary shad food source. And there were thousands of birds such as grebes, cormorants, pelicans and seagulls feeding on the shad. When you add in the thousands of bass and crappie that feed on these small baitfish, it”s no wonder their population declined … they were basically being attacked from above and below.
By early March, the shad were pretty much history at Clear Lake. The grebes, gulls and pelicans left for more fertile grounds because they no longer had a reliable food source. Of course, the bass and crappie had nowhere to go. They had to find another forage fish and maybe they found it in the lake”s crappie, because the crappie population also has tumbled the last two years.
Fish populations rise and fall in direct reference to their food supply. When the food source is abundant, the fish population soars. However, once the food source declines, the population plummets.
The fear of many fishermen is that the decline of the shad will spell the end of the fantastic bass fishing. One local fisherman who is expressing those fears is local guide, Bob Myskey. He says he is locating few schools of bait fish and one reason the bass are biting so aggressively is because they”re hungry.
“Right now you can cast just about any type of lure or plastic worm and a bass will smash it,” Myskey said. “I attribute the excellent bite to the lack of forage fish for the bass. For all practical purposes the shad are gone from the lake.”
Myskey spends at least five days a week on the lake and has fished Clear Lake for many years. He also has seen the bass fishery peak and crash a number of times. He said he is seeing very few juvenile bass between 3-4 inches. These are bass that were spawned last year.
Experts believe the bass fishery won”t crash any time soon, but it could in a few years. That happened in 1992. In fact, the conditions are just about the same as 15 years ago. The shad population peaked in 1990 and the bass responded by growing at a phenomenal rate. In fact, the current lake record of 17.52 pounds was caught in 1990. But the fishery crashed in 1992 and at times the fishing was so bad that a number of tournament organizations considered leaving the lake.
In 1995, the fishery turned around and the shad came back. Since then the bass population has continued to grow, until this year.
Many fishermen say the shad are good for the bass population. That”s true to an extent. The huge numbers of shad are great for the adult bass, but not so good for the young fry. Fishery biologists say shad are plankton eaters and thrive when the plankton is thick in the lake. The bad news is that the young bass also require this same plankton to survive. If the plankton is depleted, the young bass will starve. In fact, most biologists say that threadfin shad are bad for a lake for that very reason.
Unlike other lakes in California, where changes in the fisheries occur over 10 to 15 years, radical change at Clear Lake occur within a year or two.
Clear Lake still has an abundance fish and an extraordinary number of large bass. This was shown in the recent WON BASS pro/am tournament when 15 bass weighing more than 8 pounds were weighed in. Most experts say the fish population will peak and crash and that it”s just part of the history of the lake.
For the time being fishermen can enjoy some of the best fishing in the country.
Taylor wins tourney
Sieg Taylor of Kelseyville won the WON BASS pro/am bass tournament held over the weekend at Clear Lake. Taylor had a two-day weight of 62.96 pounds and won $24,325. Wayne Breazeale of Kelseyville took second and won $12,005 with 59.09 pounds. The tournament drew 111 boats.
