So I planned to take a few days off and get in some Spring fishing. Spring can be the best time to go fishing. The water warms up a little, the fish get more active and start to eat more. Plus after a long winter of cold weather just a little time in the sun feels good.
But of course it can also be a time of wind and rain and you can have some of the toughest conditions to catch fish.
I booked a day with a guide friend of mine Bob Myskey of www.FishClearLake.com. Bob spends about 200 days a year on the lake in all kinds of conditions and I always learn something and always catch fish when I go with him. When I first called in early April he said "I'm booked for the entire month." Yikes! The big bass tournament that is shown on ESPN had once again made Clear Lake look good on national tv, and add that to Bob's "regulars" and I was outta luck. But my phone rang and he called me back saying he got a cancellation and I was able to get a day.
I easily talked my buddy Jesse into coming up from Tracy where he lives and fishes the south Delta. Jesse has been fishing a long time and competes in tournaments, and has won a few boats in his time. He can really fish and is really competitive.
My plan was to head up on a Friday after work, fish a few days, then Jesse would come up Monday and we would fish with Bob Tuesday and go out on my boat Wednesday. Well Saturday and Sunday a big storm came blowing in. It brought wind and lots of rain. Ack! I wasn't going out on the water in that, and I was only thankful that it didn't last much into Monday.
The forecast Tuesday was for a chance of showers, but partly cloudy and not much wind. As we we met Bob at Lakeport's public ramp we knew the bite would be tough the day after the storm. Bob asked if we wanted to use live bait, minnows, the best bet for these conditions, but we passed and felt that we could test our skills using artificials for some catch and release bass fishing.
Because Bob and Jesse fish at pretty high tournament levels, I've never done it, they chatted about various lakes, strategies, and tournaments. It was cool to overhear all the fish talk. It really made me want to give a competition a try. Bob slowly motored around and showed us where the winner of the ESPN tournament spent all his time. He showed us a few docks and walls where he likes to fish, and talked about how tough the bite had been with the storms. Unbelievably he had gone out in all that weather over the weekend. His boat got soaked, but using minnows a father and son were able to catch fish.
Now that is a guide working for his money!
Ok our turn. With all the rain that hit California this year Clear Lake was at the "full mark" and a little over. So the lake had spilled back into tules and trees that held 4 to 5 feet of water that hadn't had any for a long time. The bass love cover so we spent the day combat fishing in all of that. We went into cover, right next to trees, and into the mouth of creeks that have sand and gravel bars that usually wouldn't let you get back in these places.
Bob lives on Clear Lake and in low water years he has shot photos of the shoreline and the structure that is exposed at low water. That really helps now when the water is high. You can be in his boat and he will tell you about a big flat that runs from the mouth of this creek then drops off fast, or a point that extends out towards the deep water that you can fish. It is pretty amazing to hear him go on like that. It is tremendous knowledge to have and we used it as we fished creeks, flats and tules that in most years were too shallow to get at.
We ended up using Bob's "power drop shot" method deep in the cover. About half way into the day a fellow guide pulled up and said he had has 6 fish so far with minnows, we had 8 with the rigs Bob had us use. The day of combat fishing way back in the cover with his power drop shot method ended up with about 10 fish, I lost 2 and of course Jesse out fished me big time. Our best 5 ran into the upper teens, maybe 17 or 18 pounds. It was a great day on the water and even in pretty tough conditions we caught fish and got them all in places that most people would either wouldn't know about or wouldn't dare take their boats.
The weather held off until we had just hit the dock and Bob showed us some trick knots and rigs to use as Jesse was headed to a tournament the next weekend at Lake Shasta, and I was headed home to think about when I can get out on the water again.
