Clear Lake fishing guide Jerry Basgal of Clearlake Oaks set the Clear Lake record, which still stands, when he caught this 17.52-pound bass back in 1990.
After a year on Clear Lake where several national bass tournament records were set, a number of fishermen are wondering if Clear Lake will produce a new lake record or even a world record for bass in 2008.
AFL-Outdoors recently rated Clear Lake as the No. 1 bass lake in United States, while ESPN BASSMASTERS has ranked the lake as No. 2 in the world. But does that translate into a new lake or world record?
It was 18 years ago on a cold Sunday afternoon in February when Clearlake Oaks fishing guide Jerry Basgal flipped a small tube bait into the tules near the state park and caught the current lake record for largemouth bass. The huge bass tipped the scales at 17.52 pounds and no fisherman has even come close to beating that record since then.
There have been no other 17-pound bass caught since that memorable day in 1990. In fact, no bass has been caught that weighed 16 pounds and only three 15-pounders have been caught. Of the tens of thousands of bass caught in the past 18 years, less than a dozen have weighed more than 14 pounds.
Basgal”s fish was awesome to behold. I took photos of the fish minutes after it had been caught and when I first saw the bass it literally astounded me. I had seen a number of 12-pound-plus bass, but this creature was massive in every sense of the word. Its eyes were the size of a half-dollar. It measured 27 inches long and had a girth of 25 1/2 inches. The fish was weighed several times on a certified scale at the Ferndale Resort in Soda Bay.
Basgal almost didn”t land his record fish. He was fishing with the late Bill Lysher when the monster bass hit. The giant fish made a run past the boat and Lysher scooped it up in the landing net. The entire fight lasted less than two minutes. After Lysher netted the fish, the hook fell out of its mouth. It hadn”t even penetrated past the barb. The fish was caught on a spinning rod with 14-pound test line. It just goes to show that luck plays a major role in fishing. Basgal”s bass topped the previous lake record bass of 15.32 pounds, caught seven weeks earlier by Jeff Gredvig of Roseville.
At the time a lot of fishermen said the lake was capable of holding a 20-pound bass and even possibly a new world record. But, as often is the case when it comes to record fish, it hasn”t happened.
What produces double-digit bass? First, you must have a good food supply and warm water. Clear Lake has the food supply but for five months out of the year the water temperature is too cold. Bass need warm water to grow and at Clear Lake the water temperature dips as low as 40 degrees during the winter months, and it will stay that cold for weeks and months. During these cold winters the fish grow very little.
Another factor is that despite a record number of bass tournaments every year, plus the thousands of recreational fishermen, there just haven”t been that many bass weighing more than 12 pounds caught. If these 15-pound-plus bass were out there in any numbers, a few would be caught. The major bass tournaments feature some of the most experienced bass fishermen in the nation and if anyone could catch a record fish it should be one of these veterans. In fact, the largest bass to be caught in a tournament at Clear Lake weighed 15.2 pounds and was taken during a Top-Six team tournament in 1993.
The other reason I don”t believe the lake record will be broken in the near future is the use of jumbo minnows for bait. Nothing will catch a trophy bass like live bait and the use of jumbo minnows has exploded in the past 10 years. Most of the fishing guides use jumbo minnows and they spend hundreds of hours on the lake, yet no mega-sized bass have been caught.
The other factor is the invention of the swimbait. It was the swimbait that set the Bassmasters and FLW records last year. In fact, many of the tournament fishermen use swimbaits exclusively because of their ability to catch large bass. It is well known that big bass prefer large minnows.
If a lake record is set it could easily go to a fisherman using a nightcrawler from a dock as by a tournament fisherman casting a 12-inch, $100 swimbait.
If by chance a fisherman catches a new world record, then he/she will be a millionaire. Many of the major tackle manufacturers are offering a reward of up to $1 million to the person who breaks the world record using their tackle.
