As summer is coming to an end and fall is just around the corner, Clearlake is starting to transition with cooler over night temps and slightly cooler water temps. Water temps right now range from the low 70's in the morning to mid to high 70's by afternoon. Water clarity is just perfect with about one foot of visibility and a nice army green color in most areas. The water level is relatively high for this time of year with a reading of 2.85 on the Rumsey gauge. What a strangely mild summer we had this year with not many super hot days. The summer bite was decent but the topwater bite kind of sucked for the most part. I couldn't hardly buy a bite on the whopper Plopper this summer while last year they were cartwheeling on the darn thing. We did catch some Rico fish and some on the frog this summer but not a whole lot.
The good news is that the bite is finally showing signs of improvement and that's because the cooling water temps has the bait fish heading towards the shore and the bass are actively feeding. The reaction bite is all about first thing in the morning to about 10am and slows down after that. One of the more productive patterns for mid lake and south has been throwing lipless cranks and square bill cranks on a rocky bottom in pretty shallow water of 1' to 10' deep. I have had good success on both shad and crawfish pattern colors. The key is to keep your head down, cover water and just crank down a rocky shoreline and you will catch fish. I have been using the LV500 in the lipless and the strike King KVD 1.5 or the LC BDS-4 in the square bill.
The north end is finally starting to kick out some fish on shad pattern chatterbaits and spinner baits. The key up north is to target shallow and offshore
weed clumps with your baits and make your retrieve thru the small lanes and openings in the grass. I have been doing well on the 1/2oz Zman jack hammer chatter bait with a Missle Baits Spunk Shad 5.5 trailer which I throw on 40# straight braid. Don't be surprised if you get the rod jerked out of your arm from a giant catfish from time to time as they are feeding up shallow and hitting bass lures like crazy.
After the morning reaction bite is over I have been switching over to skipping a 5" whacky rigged Senko under the shade of the docks and picking up a few fish that way. Also a Texas rigged 6" Senko has been good on the tule edges and tule shelves. I would imagine there would be a good mid day punch bite also happening on the weed mats but I haven't tried it much myself. There is a decent jig bite deep at Henderson point and some of the offshore rock piles in the rattlesnake arm mid day and afternoon. I have noticed two things that are happening lately when the bite is really good. One is that I can see the bait flicking at the surface and around the cover and two is that there is a slight breeze coming out of the west. If these two things are happening, they are putting on the feed bag. If it is dead calm or the wind is coming out of the East, not so much.
Good fishing and please do your part to protect the resource.
Troy Bellah
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