The bass tournaments return to Clear Lake this weekend when Best Bass Tournaments (BBT) holds separate tourneys Saturday and Sunday. Each tournament should draw approximately 60 boats and both go out of Library Park in Lakeport.
It will be interesting to see how successful the fishermen are in both events. BBT has a number of excellent tournament fishermen and if they can’t catch fish it indicates just how tough the fishing is at Clear Lake.
Right now, most anglers are happy to catch two or three fish. The aquatic weeds have closed off many favorite fishing holes.
Soda Bay, Henderson Point and Shag Rock are giving up decent numbers of bass. In the south end of the lake, the hot weather and a dropping lake level greeted bass fishermen this week. The good news is that fish are still active and many are still on their spawning beds. Typically some bass will spawn until the end of August although most have completed spawning by the end of June. The fishermen report seeing young bass fry in the shallows.
Only about one bass in 15 lives to become an adult. Typically a bass can live 12-15 years but they rarely live longer than 20 years. The current lake record of 17.52 pounds, which was caught in 1990, was aged by biologists at 15 years.
The bass are widely scattered. Bass are being caught along the shoreline in water as shallow as 2 feet to as deep as 15 feet. The trick to success is to keep moving until you locate active fish. There are still few large bass being caught, most being between 1-3 pounds. In fact, a 5-pounder is considered a trophy. I don’t believe there have been more than a few bass weighing more than 10 pounds caught all year.
Most bass fishermen are off the lake by 5 p.m. In the old days it was common for fishermen to stay out on the lake all night. Some of them caught huge bass. Nowadays it’s rare for a fisherman to fish after dark. That could be the reason why so few double-digit bass are being caught. The bigger bass are more active at night.
Other lakes
It was hoped that with Indian Valley Reservoir now being open the fishing there would be good, but apparently that is not the case. Bob Bridges and Gary Hill of Kelseyville fished the lake last week and only got one bite for an entire day’s work. Bridges said the lake is the excellent condition, but the only problem is that the road going into the lake is in poor shape. According to Bridges, they were the only fishermen on the lake.
