This year's Clear Lake Invitational was a tough tournament for the 34 participants, both weather and fishing wise, but Clear Lake did kick out some good fish and it still took 27+ pounds to win over 2 days.

Day 1: We launched at 6am in Rodman's slough by the bridge. It was howling windy in the morning from the North, the trailing edge of the cold front that blew through the day before. I fished around the bridge all morning carolina rigging, spooning, dropshotting etc. Around 7:30 I spooned a 3lber off the pylon on a 1/2oz hopkins spoon and lost another fish not to long after that that I hooked but couln't catch up with as it came straight up to the surface. The wind kept blowing but not as bad as in the AM. At 10am I left the bridge and started throwing a speed trap. I worked off the bank a ways and was rewarded with two fish on back to back casts, a 3 and a 2 and a half. Thinking I might have something going I stayed with the crankbait for another couple hours for nothing. In fact the rest of the day was brutally tough, I never had another bite until the 4pm weigh in.
Weigh in was a mixed bag, only one limit came from Rodman, that was Paul with 11lbs something caught on 4inch worms. The top three spots were brought in by the Sonoma guys with 17, 15, 15 limits caught from I don't know where on I don't know what. I had 8.42lbs for my 3 fish good for somewhere around 8th place.

Day2: Day 2 I went with Joey, Brian, Eric, and Tim Jr. to the Keys. It was heinously windy once again. I fished in the keys and kicked out to the rockpiles as well. The keys were very shallow with the low water and I think a lot of fish had moved out of there. Needless to say we were all skunked so at 10am Brian and I headed back to Lucerne to try the weedbeds. The wind was from the south, straight off the bank, so even though there weren't waves, were were still getting blown around pretty bad. I threw my 9inch slammer for about an hour hoping for a big bite before switching to the speed trap again. Caught a 2 and a half pretty quick on that but nothing after that. Tried flipping in the weeds and shaking it for a long time but never got touched. At noon we bailed and wen't back to rodmans. Well I had fished those damn pylons so much the day before but I went back out there with the spoon and caught another 2 and a half. That stoked me but I lost a good one right after that that I really could have used... Oh well.
Weigh in was a lot sparser on Sunday. Most people brought in 1 to 3 fish. Rich from the Sonoma Club got 'em though again and brought in another good limit for a total of 27+ pounds. He reported catching his fish on spinnerbaits in Glenhaven around the docks. I was impressed. The guys with good limits the day before held on to their spots for the most part with 17lbs and 15lbs taking 2nd and 3rd place approximately. I wound up 7th with 12 something which wasn't bad all things considered. There is definitely a lot to be learned about Clear Lake with so much water available. If I had known the keys were so shallow I would never have gone in there and if I had payed more attention to the wind direction I probably would have done things differently as well. But that's all for next year.
I should get the final results from Jeff or Andy pretty soon and have them online at
http://www.bass-n-tubes.com


-Rob