Bass Fishing Forum - Westernbass.com

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OROVILLE DERBY CANCELLED! There are a two reasons we decided to cancel this event which the least important is Lake Oroville is way down! The water levels and temperatures are hot and not best for boating/fishing. But the MOST important is there are NO SALMON. Last year during Covid our group advocated CDFW not to release the lake Oroville salmon in May when spotted bass are most active and are going to eat all of the 2 inch baby Salmon. CDFW disagreed with us and said that due to Covid restraints and staffing restrictions that they must release the fish early into the reservoir which they normally don’t plant it until the fall. We knew that this was going to become a problem last year when they planted the fish in May and now this year there are VERY FEW one—year-olds that survived Therefore the derby would be very difficult to conduct when most boats were not catch any fish.

To make matters worse CDFW completely neglected our observations and planted the lake again two weeks ago(2021) to which we now know that the fishery will be lost again in 2022. The decision was made due to low water situation‘s in the drought which are partially man-made and the worry of having a disease outbreak in the Hatchery. The only salmon that are currently in the lake are holdover fish that are two and three-year-olds which isn’t really enough fish to conduct the Derby responsibly.

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Likely the reason why you are starting to see above average sized bass being caught from this fishery!

Csuhchris: My brother and I was talking about this, this morning and thought the exact same thing you did. The stocking of those baby salmon definitely helped boost the bass fishery for sure. We have seen much better average bass this year then all other years.

Oroville will be a "baby Bullards" if they keep it up! haha