Hi All - I am posting the below for some laughs maybe, after sending it to a guide service who does Clear Lake CA, but aside from the maybe redundant desperation it occurred to me to get some feedback on A) live baits vs. dead baits and b) the concept of a bass hitting a lure after awhile just to get the annoyance out of its life. And also, if they're jumping and otherwise hitting the surface, are they feeding or not?!. Cheers.
I'm glad I found this forum/site because I was looking for any anglers that had experience with Clear Lake CA, which I live on (well Lakeport). I want some pro input on this lake because I've been here off and on since 2008 and though I haven't fished it but a fraction of a lot of other people that fish here I have made some serious efforts and so far have never caught a d**n thing in the west end of the lake, i.e. west of the Buckingham pennisula. And I know that the deeper water is all east of Buckingham and where all the tournaments are. This is important because one one site with a fishing map of Clear Lake I just read that among the "hotspots" are Rodman Slough where I just was yesterday 9/8/23 from about 9-10:30AM, with air temps no more than about 85 degrees, if that. There are some other hotspots listed west of Buckingham also. So you know, I grew up in Michigan and practically lived with fishing rod in my hand from about 9 yrs old to about 14 yrs old, with a major river, two trout creeks, and a fish hatchery all within a mile of my house, catching bass, bluegills, some trout, and the usual bottom feeders (suckers, carp, catfish), as well as catching similar stuff in the Grand River at Grand Haven, and other smaller lakes. So I ain't no stranger to fishing, but I don't think I've ever fished a more persnickety and hard-to-get lake as Clear Lake I swear (my poor kid, I used to drag him out at 4:30am under the stars when we first got here, determined to catch something after living in the fishless wasteland of L.A. for 20 years).
Yesterday as mentioned we were out in a very quiet canoe fishing up Rodman Slough, then south of the brige around the two little islands just to the southeast of the bridge. There were two different bass boat crews up the Slough, then another two around the islands (or maybe one of them was the same crew migrated, whatever) with four guys between them and all looking much more experienced and geared-up than me and not a one of them pulled in a thing, and neither did I. And this was while big fish were jumping within 10-20 feet of us, at least two of them and if they were under 2-3 pounds I'd be very surprised. I was throwing right at them two different color rubber worms (frog colored and neon yellow), medium hula popper, and this great spotted frog-color diving wobbler lure (couldn't find the name of the thing but they go way back and on which I caught a massive bass in the Grand River one morning on the first cast), and ending with a surface rubber frog. About the only thing I didn't use was a Rapala crankbait (doh!), and of course the one thing that has 90% ALWAYS worked which is just a live nightcrawler on a hook with a bobber (doh again). And so to help nix the idea that I'm carrying some sort of Joe Btfsplk fishing jinx with me, aside from the above mentioned pro-bass boat crews, I was fishing south of there on the same western shore just north of Lakeport about a month earlier from a kayak around the same time of day & conditions with similar non-results and a guy on the shore asked me if I'd had any luck and I told him no and what I thought of the fishing in western Clear Lake and he concurred and said all his and his kids' efforts in that region had been for zilch also.
So tell me, what do these d**n fish here WANT? I ask this while laughing of course, because I know what fish want, they want to make us look like money-spending time-wasting fools, etc, etc, and the replies above with "Luck!" and "when they're feeding" above are of course dead on. But per my early-years experience above, and all this hoopla over Clear Lake being such a juju spot for bass, crappie, etc, it shouldn't be that hard. I mean not even a bluegill, which used to catch with little poppers nonstop for hours at a time back east. It got to where we'd put a little piece of chewing gum on a hook and stick a blade of grass in it and they would hit that I kid you not. At this point I would be willing to pay the few hundred bucks for a guide just to proove to myself that I can actually catch a decent fish in Clear Lake. I can afford it every day for a month if I want. But it better work! Any cosmic fish advice welcome. Thanks.
