Clear Lake bass fishing conditions continue to mystify anglers. Many are saying this is the worst year in recent history in regard to angler success. An American Bass team tournament held Sunday is a perfect illustration how frustrating the situation is for fishermen. The tournament drew 32 teams and only 60 bass were weighed in.
Worse yet, only seven teams weighed in a five-fish limit and 10 teams didn’t boat a single bass. The winning team was Paul Bailey of Nice and Aaron Britt of Yuba City with a five-fish limit weighing 29.72 pounds.
Looking at the dismal tournament numbers, teams averaged only 1.88 fish. When you consider each team consists of two fishermen, that means each angler caught less than a single bass for eight hours of fishing.
It wasn’t any better on Saturday when the Clear Lake Bassmasters held a club tournament. Six boats (12 fishermen) combined for a grand total of four bass. That is unheard of at Clear Lake even during the winter months.
It’s not just tournament anglers who are working hard to find fish. Even the local fishing guides are struggling to find bass for their clients. The results from the guides provide very accurate data because not only are they out on the lake several days a week but they are often using live jumbo minnows for bait. Just about every fisherman will tell you a bass will take a live minnow when it won’t touch any type of artificial lure. The guides also say they are covering a lot of water before they find fish. In other words, much of the lake is producing little or no action.
There are a number of theories among fishermen as to why the fishing has been so poor. Some are saying the bass population is down and I tend to agree. A look at records I have kept for more than 15 years indicates the bass fishery is closely mimicking that of the early 1990s when it crashed in a matter of three years. Other fishermen say the fishing is poor because of the abundance of baitfish. They claim the bass are stuffing themselves and won’t bite a lure.
While both theories have merit, I think the main problem is a reduction in the bass population. Take Lake Berryessa for example. It holds as high or even a higher population of baitfish than Clear Lake, including threadfin shad, carp minnows as well as small trout and salmon. Even with all those baitfish available, the bass are biting there and fishermen have little trouble catching a limit.
Down through the years the bass population on Clear Lake has varied widely. There have been years when catching 10-12 bass or more a day is common and yet others when you’re lucky to land one or two. In fact, I remember one Record-Bee/Bruno’s tournament — which had 225 boats — where more than half the field failed to catch a single fish in two days. The fishing was so poor a number of tournament organizations moved their tournaments to other lakes because fishermen refused to fish at Clear Lake.
The life span of a largemouth bass is about 20 years but few of them live past five years. A female bass lays about 10,000 eggs during the spawning season but less than 50 actually hatch and become fry. Only about 2 percent of the eggs that hatch live a year. Once a bass reaches adulthood it has few predators with the exception of humans. Disease and other factors limit how long a fish lives. The recent three-year drought also could be a factor in the spawning success of the bass.
All is not gloom and doom for the bass fishery at the lake. Despite the recent poor fishing it is still rated as one of the top bass lakes in the nation if not the world. The big test as far as the condition of the bass fishery goes will come this spring and summer. By then, both theories about why the fishing is so bad right now could be proven wrong.
