Well here goes. I'm just one out of a couple million fisherman in this State, but I've sat on my ass complaining about things long enough so it's time to stop complaining and start trying to do something. As many big fish come out of San Pablo Dam, I believe the lake is really in trouble. The fish population is unbelievably top heavy and factors like carp, spotted bass, dropping water during the spawn, and catch and kill of trophy bass is going to make us all look back in a few years and say "REMEMBER WHEN SAN PABLO USED TO BE SO GOOD".

So I don't know where to start, but DFG's website says that for questions on regulations, you should email epert@dfg.ca.gov, so I did and here's what I said. I'll keep you all posted on what we find out. I fully expect that I will get no where with this, but you don't know for sure until you try!

I am writing to find out how one would go about pushing for a change in regulations at a specific lake. Specifically, I am hoping to bring about regulation changes at San Pablo Dam Reservoir to protect the trophy bass fishery there.

I am not a biologist, but I do spend a lot of time at San Pablo Dam and I believe that while this lake is unquestionably one of the best trophy largemouth bass lakes in the world, it is also in need of protection.

There are several factors that combine to cause a low survival rate among small bass at San Pablo Dam.

1. Predation by carp. There is a tremendous carp population at San Pablo that preys on the bass eggs during the spawn. Something should be done to reduce the number of carp in the lake. Bow fishing is not legal at the lake and the carp are largely unmolested and allowed to reproduce in great numbers.

2. The introduction (illegally) of Spotted Bass. In the past 3 years I have watched the Spotted Bass population increase steadily. Although it will be basically impossible to remove Spots from the lake, it is increasingly going to cause the Largemouth population to decline.

3. Dropping water during the prime spawning months of March through June. The majority of San Pablo fish spawn in April and May. The fish spawn in very shallow water due to the poor water clarity. When the lake is dropped 2 or 3 feet, it can and has ruined the spawn at Pablo very severly.

4. Catch and kill of large bass by anglers not targeting bass. On a typical spring day, 100 to 300 anglers are fishing at San Pablo. Although many of them do not catch any bass, in a typical week during the Spring anywhere from 1 to 3 large bass over 6 pounds are caught and killed. This includes several extremely large bass in the past 3 years including at least 4 bass over 17lbs.

On the other hand, San Pablo Dam is a very healthy lake in terms of bass forage. Trout, shad, silversides, crawdads, bluegill, crappie, goldfish, etc are plentiful. Given the chance, Largemouth Bass grow very large and are extremely fat and healthy in the lake.

I really believe that if regulations were put in place to limit the take of Largemouth bass to two fish per day, none exceeding 20 inches in length, it would help with the overall number of bass in the lake, and make it possible for the largest trophy bass (which I believe there are actually not very many of in the lake over 16 pounds) to grow even larger. I personally caught an 18.0 pound bass this year at San Pablo, released it, and the same fish was caught again 5 months later at 17.8 pounds and released again. Just between myself and a few friends, we have caught and released the same individual bass no fewer than 4 times in the past 2 years. As great as this is, it's also a sign that the actual number of large bass in San Pablo is smaller than people might think.

I know that the anglers in the State of California have their rights to take Largemouth Bass for the dinner table. But maybe at San Pablo, they could get by on the trout and catfish. And maybe with a little help, San Pablo dam, which to my knowledge has had almost no management of the bass fishery, could produce the largest bass ever caught in Northern Califorina.

If the person who receives this email can’t personally do anything about the regulations, could you please point me in the right direction as far as who I should talk to. I've never tried to pursue this type of thing before.

Thanks and Regards,

-Rob Belloni
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