There is no question live jumbo minnows are the answer to the slow bass fishing at Clear Lake. It”s about the only method whereby fishermen are just about guaranteed to catch fish.
Local fishing guide Richard Pounds is a good example. He guided Dough Gibbs of Fortuna earlier this week at Clear Lake. Gibbs caught 22 bass, the largest weighing 9.2 pounds. Four of his fish weighed more than 5 pounds. Pounds said he fished the north end of the lake using jumbo minnows.
The local tackle shops report selling hundreds of minnows. There are several methods to rig a live minnow. Most of the guides either use a float or allow the minnow to swim freely without a float. Both methods are effective. The trick during the cold winter months is to allow the bass to take the minnow firmly in its mouth before setting the hook.
Just about all the tackle shops sell minnows and they cost approximately $1 each. You can buy four or five or a dozen. Some of the fishermen will buy only a few and others buy several dozen.
The bass fishing has settled into the typical winter pattern. The successful fishermen are constantly on the move until they locate a school of bass. The good news is that the bass are already starting to move into the tules in some areas to search for crawdads.
Since there are little or no threadfin shad in the lake and few other baitfish, a number of fishermen have asked why the bass look so healthy and what are they feeding on. During the winter months the primary food for the bass are crawdads and prickly sculpin. Of course, bass are also opportunists and any small fish will serve as a meal.
One reader wanted to know why there isn”t a threadfin hatchery to replenish the baitfish. Actually, the Department of Fish and Game is against planting shad because they eat the same plankton the young bass require.
Sculpin are in abundance at Clear Lake and are a native fish. However, they are rarely seen. They are small and bury themselves in the mud. Bass often root out the sculpin and feed on them.
As the water warms up the crawdads also become more active. Normally during the cold winter months the crawdads bury themselves in the mud. Both the sculpin and the crawdads are a rich food source for the bass and other predator fish in the lake.
The months of January and February are typically the slowest times to fish for bass because the weather is normally unsettled and it”s cold. The question many local residents are asking is “where are the fishermen?” I can”t remember a year when there has been less fishing pressure on the lake. I believe there are several reasons for the lack of fishermen. The biggest is the poor economy. Fishermen just don”t have the disposable income to drive here from places such as Stockton and Southern California. The other reason is that the fishing has been nothing to brag about. Most of the local fishermen, and that includes the fishing guides, think the overall bass population is down considerably and the crappie have just about disappeared altogether.
Results from the bass tournaments are always a good indication on the health of a fishery. Fewer than one-half of the tournament fishermen are catching a five-fish limit at Clear Lake. In past years it wasn”t unusual to catch 15-20 fish a day and that was happening even during the winter months. Of course, the good news is that Clear Lake has a history of rebounding quickly. All it will take is a couple of good spawns and everything should return to normal.
American Bass will hold a team tournament Sunday and the weigh-in starts at 3 p.m. at Konocti Vista Casino.
The annual Holder Ford-Mercury tournament is scheduled for March 12-13. Thirty-four teams have signed up to date, according to Holder Ford spokesman Richard Hoover, which is about the same number of entries the tournament had last year at this time. Last year”s tournament drew 153 teams.
Konocti Vista Casino”s bass tournament is scheduled for April 16-17 and 20 teams have signed up to date.
Catfish action has been slow although anglers off the docks at Indian Beach Resort in Glenhaven are catching a few catfish. Cache Creek and Horseshoe Bend are also producing a few catfish.
Trout action is rated as good at Upper Blue Lake. The lake was scheduled to be stocked this week and there are still some holdover trout from the stocking done last month. There have been reports of some nice-sized bass being caught by fishermen drop-shotting a plastic worm along the Highway 20 shoreline.
