I got to spend Friday On Clearwater Lake by Annandale wife my wife practicing for a tournament on Sunday. Having grown up on the lake, I had plenty of spots I wanted to check out. From what I had heard it sounded like the weeds weren’t nearly as developed as usuall. I heard that the lake association spent quite a bit of money to try to kill off the milfoil. Their attempts definatly knocked it back, but didn’t knock it out. It appeared they killed off more of the cabbage and coontail than anything. The water was very green, with clarity of only a foot or so. We weren’t going to see the bottom in 15′ as we did when I was younger.
The first spot we hit was a hump that came out of 30 foot and topped out at 3 foot. The existing weeds were scattered from 5-12 foot. We pitched Outkast Money Jigs with 7 inch Berkley Power worms. Darker colors worked best and produced some nice bass like the first one pictured. In this same spot we also managed a few nice walleyes in the 14-18 inch range. Clearwater has always seemed to give up more weed walleyes than many lakes ans are under fished. I’m sure if he had some live bait with the day we could have caught even more. We hit 4 other spots like this and managed to catch bass on each, and either catch or see on the Aqua Vu, walleyes as well. most walleyes seen were in 12 foot just outside the weeds.
Next we worked some clearer water we found. Here we found quite a bit more coontail, and it was bright green. Again the jig worms were the best bait, but we also caught fish on lipless cranks. To my suprise this crappie decided he wanted to hit the crank. It was just one of those days where we also managed to catch rock bass, sunfish, and pike while bass fishing. The panfish were very active and of quality size.
Come tournament day Sunday we had similar weather conditions, but the fish were running quite a bit smaller. 12lbs won, and my 8.5 was good enough for 10th. We caught lots of fish again in the same areas until about 10am. From there on the fish got real tight lipped. There were lots of people out on the lake taking part in a great sunfish bite. About every weed edge is holding nice quality fish right now.
thanks Mike for the report, will be heading up to Clearwater in a few weeks. have not been able to get there this year yet. used to do descent on some of the reed edges and dropoffs with jigs. and top water is always fun. did you try any topwater, buzzing or frogs?? what were the water temps, thanks, Jack.
The water was mid 70’s. The reeds did put out some fish on jigs, but were small for me. There was a little too much wind for a topwater early.