small lake
by kent brown
Story & Photos
C
48
practice course
lear Lake, The Delta, Oroville, Shasta-All the bodies of water that every angler here in California strive to learn and master and often times the lakes that cause us the most frustration. One of the things that I still do and enjoy is spending time on some of the smaller bodies of water that we are so fortunate to have dotting the map here in the West. These smaller lakes offer the same type of fishing that you will encounter on the larger lakes and usually are stocked with largemouth, spotted bass and many times boast some of the best smallmouth fishing anywhere.
There is a long list of these lakes like Whiskey- town, Shastina, Alamanor, Black Butte, East Park and if you don’t mind that 14-mile dirt road there is Indian Valley Reservoir. Moving further south and east you have Bullards, Collins, Camp Far West and yes even Folsom. The Mother Lode offers lakes like Amador, Camanche, Pardee and Salt Springs and you can even jump over the Sierra’s and find bass in many of your favorite trout lakes-even Tahoe! For most of us, our love of bass fishing started with fishing small, farm ponds, sloughs and many of these