Clearlake Conditions:
Clear skies with a North wind
Air Temp: 38-58
Water Temp:48-50
Clarity 3-5 feet
Wind 10-15+
Clearlake Practice
Headed to Clearlake on Friday January 31st launched from redbud.
We started fishing the mouth of Cache creek, throwing swimbaits and A-rigs worked our way back into the first cove but had no success. Then we jumped down to Konocti Bay targeting the ledges in around 20′ of water. Now throwing A-rigs and jigs but still no fish.
Made a jump to Buckingham area and finally landed our first fish. Took a jig on a rocky flat in 18′ of water in front of a dock. Staying in middle lake and South most of the day we only landed two other fish. Tough bite.
Clearlake Practice day 2
Decided to launch at rattlesnake today. The fog was so thick it made it hard to run so we fished near Rattlesnake island for a bit.
Charles Cornelison Clearlake Bass
We never caught a fish there so we slowly made our way north to the lakeport area. Trying to fish the hard bottoms and channel areas with A-rigs, swimbaits and River2Sea Ruckus baits but after an hour of nothing we moved on.
Now making our way to Lucerne we targeted the docks with dropshots, A-rigs and jigs. Finally catching two keepers up shallow on the dropshot. Finding some fish gave us some confidence and allowed us to refine our tactics. What we found was the bass had moved shallow in the afternoon and were sitting in the shade pockets created by the docks. Using the A-rig we were able to land a decent limit (around 15pounds) by throwing it out and letting it hit bottom then just slowly crawling it.
Tournament day
Practice pointed us to Lucerne as our number one spot so we blasted off from Konocti Vista Casino headed directly there. Being second boat out meant we had the area to ourselves, for a short bit anyways. We took advantage of that and caught two fish quickly. One on the Dropshot the other on the A-rig.
The bite slowed down for us at that point, knowing the bite would pick up after noon we ran around the North end of the lake searching for extra bites.
James “Big Ed” Everhart Clearlake Bass
Finding none pushed us back to our Lucerne docks. Upon arrival we quickly landed two fish on the A-rig. The fished had changed from practice and were now sitting in eight feet of water in front of the docks.
The presentation was still the same slowly swimming the bait along the bottom. The size was all that was lacking for us. It took until 2:20pm for us to finally get all seven fish in the boat and we new the fish were about the same as in practice but with a couple smaller fish mixed in. Our end to the tournament came with the final weight of 14.56 pounds of Clearlake bass. The winners had 33+
Summary
The fishing for us was tough for size, numbers were OK at best. Talking to other anglers after the tournament they said it was tough all day to get seven bites. Right now, Clearlake is fishing tough but soon it will be on fire so get out there and have some fun.
Hope this helps you catch more fish.
See you on the water.
Big Ed
