Tournament bass fishing grabs the spotlight this week on Clear Lake where one of the largest bass tournaments of the year got underway starting at 3 p.m. on Wednesday. The 3-day Won Bass California Open runs through Friday. The tournament uses a pro/am format and will field 175 pros and a like number of amateurs. It is the largest bass tournament to be on Clear Lake this year. The leaders after the opening day are pro Nick Klien and amateur B. Zhanig. A pro is paired with a different amateur each day and the weight of the fish they catch is added together. The entire field competes all three days and the total weight for the three days determines the winner. Both the winning pro and amateur each take home a new bass boat. The rest of the top in the field win cash.
Fishermen are coming from throughout the West, including Arizona, Idaho, Nevada and Washington.
The tournament goes out Library Park in Lakeport and features some of the top bass fishermen on the West Coast. If they can’t catch big fish no one can. The entry fees are $1,000 for the pros and $400 for the amateurs.
Under the pro/am format, pros and their amateur partners share their weight each day on the lake. Each boat can weighin five bass. Pros draw a different amateur partner each day. The weigh in begins at 2 p.m. on all three days.
A full lake and growing aquatic weeds have greeted fishermen and lake users at Clear Lake. The weeds are sprouting up along the shoreline. The lake is home to an estimated 35 species of aquatic weeds and two-thirds of them are non-native or what are called “invasive weeds.” These weeds plug up the entrance to the boat ramps and make using the lake a nearly impossible task. The county has instituted a program of killing the weeds that has been very effective. A private company is used to apply the herbicide which will kill the weeds.
