Clear Lake

[bassmonster]

After all those fish kills, dont we need to replant clear lake with Florida's again? How often should this be done?

[Dewayne]

If I remember correctly Clear Lake LM are Northern strain. You also want to remember that Florida strain fish are very tempermental and will shut off with changes in weather conditions and not bite near as well as their Northern Cousins.

Since the die off was primarily driven by a normal peak/valley cycle in the food chain I am not sure what good a plant would do. If you plant fish and the bait is not there to support them over the winter they will just die off. There is still a very good breeding population in the lake and it should be able to recover on it's own. Actually the lake is not that bad, we were just spoiled for a few years.

The big algae blooms we are seeing this year will provide a lot of food for the shad. If we have a warm winter and a lot of the shad survive we will see the bait population increase again and the number of bass that survive the winter will increase. In about 2-3 years we will see Clear Lake once again fishing great. Then at some point it will cycle again.

[robertthornton]

There is still a huge population of fish in clear lake, We had a club tournament the last weekend, and caught over 50 fish in 12 hours.
we had 37 pounds for 10 fish. Are weight for the first and second weigh in was just over 18. Are second weigh in we had 5 fish from 3.8 to 3.15, so there are alot of 3 pounders in that lake. Cant wait till the fall should be a blast.

[Ridge_Runner20]

After all those fish kills, dont we need to replant clear lake with Florida's again? How often should this be done?

Fish kills? The only significant "fish kills" I remember at Clear Lake were the big carp die-off late last year (virus, IIRC), the normal hitch die-offs in late-winter/spring (normal dynamic equilibrium) and the shad die-offs from the late '80's and this past year (see hitch issue). In the past 20 years or so, I can't say I remember any significant fish kills involving bass.

And someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm 99% sure there were Florida strain LM planted in CL to supplement the original Northern strain population.

RR_20

[Oldschool]

Florida strain largemouth bass were planted throughout the state, including Clear Lake and the CA delta, during the early 80's.
Massive fish kills don't occur from lack of prey, it's almost always due to extremely low DO levels, radical water temperature change, chemicals or desease.
Tom

[finebassfisher]

yea northerns dont get too big

[FATGUY]

fished clear lake this weekend and thats the smellist and algea bloom i've ever seen... the ramp saturday night at red bud was choked with alge way passed the end of even the courtesy dock . they came in saturday night and busted it up so we could launch sunday morning by the time we had weigh in aroud 12 it was packed solid again. the chunks of alge floating around looked like the peat dirt does in the delta. some of these chunks were 4x4 and 4-5 inches thick . and the alge was bad all the way to henderson . never seen it this bad in all the years i've been going there.. oh yea and for me fishing sucked .. some guys did ok but i went as a non boater and the first thing the boat broke down.. we finally went to a place i like in jago and he caught three and i got one all in the last 45 minutes.. bob g

[clearlakeoutdoors]

The baitfish all have a winter die off to some extent.The floridas and northerns have been cross breeding for years. I think it would be good for the lake to stock some more florida bass. What would it cost and who would pay for it?
Dave