By Terry Knight
Clear Lake will a busy place this holiday weekend. In addition to the dozens of bass boats there will be wake board boats plus general recreational vessels.
Overall the bass fishing is a mixed bag affair with some of the fishermen doing very well and others struggling to put a few fish in the boat. A good example was local fishing guide Ross England who reported that he guided three fishermen earlier this week and they caught and released 41 bass. He said most of the fish were caught on drop-shot rigs.
By far the best fishing has been in the north end of the lake where fishermen working the edges of the weed mats with jugs or drop-shotting a plastic worm have been having the most success.
Whereas the popular fishing technique using a plastic frog cast to the weed mats hasn”t really taken off yet, it could happen at any time. When it does one of the more popular lures will be the Horny Toad. It”s a soft plastic lure with a twin tail. A special size 5/0 hook is used and it”s rigged weedless. The lure is cast to the weeds and retrieved with a steady action. The lure rides on the surface and makes a wake, When a fish grabs the lure, count to three before setting the hook. Normally you will get three or four blowups to every fish hooked, but that”s what makes this type of fishing so exciting. I also keep a spare rod rigged with a Skitter Pop handy and when I see a small opening in the weeds I cast to it. This has also been a very productive technique. The Horny Toad and the special hooks can be purchased at all of the local tackle shops.
Crappie continue to be just about absent and the same applies to adult bluegill, although a number of fishermen report seeing large schools of juvenile bluegill. The good news is that the catfish action has been good throughout the lake with some of the catfish weighing as much as 15 pounds.
No local waters were scheduled to be stocked with trout this week. The East Branch of the Russian River will be stocked next week. There is still no word on when the Department of Fish and Game will resume stocking Upper Blue Lake. They are waiting for the go ahead from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
For those that don”t care to fish then a day spent observing the thousands of birds on the lake can be nothing short of awesome. Some of the better viewing areas are from Long Tule Point to Lakeport. There are white pelicans, western grebes as well as osprey, blue herons and other water birds. Another good viewing area is from Lakeside County Park to the state park. Despite the fact there are hundreds of grebes I have yet to see any young, but I have noticed a lot of courtship antics going on so it could be that they will be nesting late this year.
With the holiday weekend at hand there will be a lot of local and out-of-county boat traffic and there has been some confusion on who needs a quagga mussel sticker. For example several people have asked if they need a separate sticker for inflatable tubes and devises towed behind a boat.
According to the Lake County Water Resources Program Coordinator Carolyn Ruttan, all tubes and floats that are towed behind the same boat are considered to be ancillary equipment to a particular boat and do not need separate mussel stickers. “If the tubes and floats are never separated from their boat there is no need for them to have a sticker,” Ruttan said. “However, if the tubes and floats are not associated with a boat that has a sticker they do require a sticker. For example, if someone owns a tube or float and does not possess a boat but uses a friend”s boat or rents a boat, then that tube and float must have a mussel sticker.”
Ruttan also said that some boaters don”t want to attach a sticker to their boat or the sticker may not stick to the inflatable tubes and floats.
For those individuals the county recommends placing the sticker in a small plastic bag or something similar and hanging it around the occupants neck so that it can be readily shown to enforcement personnel.
The fine for boaters that are cited not having a sticker is $100 and the sheriff”s boat patrol will be out on the lake checking boats this weekend.
