Top 5 Patterns from Clear Lake – Day 1
Prespawn, spawn and postspawn patterns all in play
Wayne Breazeale leveraged his local knowledge to find the right areas to sack up 23 pounds, 10 ounces and grab the day one lead at the Costa FLW Series Western Division event presented by Evinrude on Clear Lake.
Fishing a mix of Yamamoto Senkos, drop-shots and a darter-head jig, Breazeale sought to stay out of the wind today.
Here are the details of the rest of the top five.
2. Joe Uribe Jr. – Surprise, Ariz. – 21-12 (5)
Taking advantage of an early morning reaction bite, pro Joe Uribe Jr. sacked up 21-12 for second place.
Uribe upgraded late in the day, but a strong start put about 19 pounds in the livewell by mid-morning.
“In the morning we were throwing reaction baits in low light, and we had a good productive hour and a half. Once the sun came out, it kind of slowed things down,” Uribe says. “When that happened, we resorted to drop-shots and finesse tactics the rest of the day, and that worked really well.”
Uribe used a 6-inch Roboworm (margarita mutilator) on his drop-shot. He also threw a Neko-rigged Daiwa Yamamoto Neko Fat worm.
A key element of his highly productive day is the returning grass. Clear Lake lost nearly all of its grass to herbicide treatments last year, but spotty regrowth is creating isolated oases of opportunity.
“The grass is starting to grow back, and anywhere you can find good grass there’s a lot of fish, a lot of bait, a lot of life,” Uribe says. “The fishing’s really good, but getting the quality, that’s the thing. We caught a lot of fish today, but you’re going through a lot of 2 1/2-pounders.”
Another significant element was the armada of black grebes – a water bird – that corralled baitfish and actually pushed the bass around the tule banks Uribe targeted.
3. Vince Hurtado – Turlock, Calif. – 19-1 (5)
With Clear Lake currently entertaining fish in all three stages of the spawn, Vince Hurtado crafted his game plan around the strategy of interception. His realized his objective by targeting the likely travel paths and the right habitat.
“These fish are coming in and out, and I’m just trying to catch them when they’re coming in,” Hurtado says. “I’m catching them in grass, but I need the right grass. I need really bright, green grass.
“We caught probably five or six limits. We caught fish all day. I caught two good ones in the morning, and I lost two more good ones.”
Noting that he fished reaction baits and bottom baits throughout the day, Hurtado says he mixed it up to give the fish different looks, but he also considered the conditions.
“The reaction baits were best in the wind, and when it died down a little, I’d drop down to the bottom,” he says.
4. Sunny Hawk – Salt Lake City, Utah – 18-13 (5)
He had to scrap his original game plan, but Sunny Hawk’s refocused effort yielded a strong limit of 18-13 that landed him in fourth place.
“I didn’t do what I thought I would do,” Hawk says. “I was actually planning to do an offshore postspawn/prespawn deal, but I just didn’t see that happening. The wind never picked up enough in my area.
“I found some bed fish late on the last day of practice. I caught three of them and then just fished for more. I caught a couple more on a green/black SPRO frog.”
Hawk caught his bed fish on a Yamamoto Flappin Hog in sparse tules. For the frog, he targeted gaps in the tules and the outside edges of tule berms.
5. Jason Borofka – Salinas, Calif. – 18-4 (5)
When Jason Borofka learned he would be the 26th boat out in the day-one takeoff order, he figured his big opportunity had likely slipped away. Fortunately, fate smiled, and the California pro got his day going with a relatively easy 6-pound, 14-ounce bed fish that buoyed a limit of 18-4 and earned him the fifth-place spot.
“I found that fish at the beginning of my practice, and it was really obvious where it was spawning, so I thought everyone had seen it,” Borofka says. “I went and checked it yesterday, three days after I’d found it, and it was still there. In practice, I got it to bite on the first cast, so I thought, ‘This is an easy one.’
“I wanted an early flight, but I was the 26th boat out. I went down to that fish just to see if anyone had found it, and there wasn’t a boat for a mile in either direction. That fish was right there, and it only took a couple of casts to put her in the boat.”
Borofka caught this fish and all his other sight-fished keepers on a Texas-rigged plastic. The big fish was on a broken dock, and the others were scattered across tule and rock habitat.