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While the nights are down to 30 degrees, the days are producing decent bass at Clear Lake. There's been an afternoon bite and if you can find the fish you have a good chance at those 6-10 pounders that the lake is famous for. The best trick to finding the shallow fish is to use a side finder locator rather than just the normal depth finder. Unlike the spring, summer and fall months, those big bleeps on the screen are going to be bass, not carp or channel cats. And though most of the schoolie bass, 1-3 pounders, will not show shallow.. every couple hundred feet of structure will show a big fish or two. Remember the lake record bass at 17.5 plus pounds was caught in 3' of water in early February. Now you've located one, how do you get her to bite? These fish will chase in cold conditions so the ripper and cranker do get fish, but if you slow roll a spinner bait or finesse a big worm you can be very successful also. Slow means way slower then you think! |
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Shaking plastic (large 7-12") worms or baby brush hogs real slow will also draw strikes. Most of the bites will be very soft with just minimum of line movement. Wind will hurt you with this presentation. For some added fun if you switch to live night crawlers some of these bleeps will turn out to be 8 to 20 pound channel cats and they will try and pull your arm off once hooked. They even jump once in awhile. Clear Lake is open all year 24 hours a day for fishing. Most of the winter tournaments still produce 3.5 to 4 pound averages. Someone always figures it out, and gets close to 20 pounds for their 5 fish. What's nice about fishing Clear Lake in the winter is you will find almost no fishing pressure compared to spring and summer; no jet skis, no water skiers, and hardly any sportfishing except for us types that bundle up and would rather do it live than watch it on TV. Set the hook at the slightest line movement or inconsistency in the retrieve. This is winter bass fishing, the swings are free, and you won't catch anything without taking your shots. 'till next time,
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Sometimes let the spinnerbait rest on the bottom and just twitch it for 30 seconds, then lift your tip, bring it up 1.5 feet and let if fall again. The strike will occur on the fall 90% of the time.
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