Me and my brother are planning to visit Clear Lake, CA for fishing trip on mid-May. This topic may have been brought up before but I have specific topics to get a bit more color on Clear Lake/guide services in general:

• Does anyone have recommendation on specific guides (targeting bass)? I have heard good things about Ross England.

• Connected to the above - is fishing style something that guide services can cater specifically? I am not familiar Ross England, for example, but seeing him featured in numerous YouTube channel, I doubt he shies away from power fishing especially that time of the mind, but given a rare opportunity, I'd love to see if big bass swimbaiting can be specifically catered.
  
  Essentially, if I already pay pretty penny for guides, I don't want to be stuck doing finesse just to get guaranteed bites. I want to get best memories possible.
  

• Which airport do you typically arrive in? I am guessing SFO is the baseline then take 3 hours drive going to Clear Lake?
  

• I am debating whether Clear Lake is shore-accessible, seemingly share similar features as Big Bear Lake here in SoCal. This helps determining if it's worth extending the stay in Clear Lake.
  

• Besides fishing, are there places of interests I should be visiting while in town? Foods, attractions, etc.?
  

Thanks for your time!

Southwest Airlines is about to start service at the Santa Rosa airport. I don’t know Ross either… I’ll keep my story to myself.

Clearlake is kinda it. I just roll in to fish and roll out. Maybe a casino?

Good luck.

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My future son in law just got stationed at Travis Air Force base, I used to live up in Humboldt, but never did any Bass fishing out there, going out there in March to show my Wife my old stomping grounds and wanted to book a guide for a day, been researching stuff, this thread helped, seems like Clear Lake would be the ticket. I have drove past Whiskeytown, etc... many times, never fished any of that stuff. I was once standing at the mouth of the Pit River on Shasta Lake, mid-day, full sun and something absolutely giant ate something off the surface near me. It was like someone tossed a bowling ball in the water. I had a 5wt fly rod and Trout flies with me, wished I had a Frog or something!

Depending on dates, some dates were way cheaper to fly into San Francisco and some were way cheaper to fly into Sacramento. So make sure you check both... The difference was hundreds of dollars in pricing...