First Time at Oroville!

Lake Oroville is a premier fishing lake in Northern California. It is well known for its hard fighting spotted Bass population as well as various pictures of the California drought. 

I got together with Moses and after being stood up by Charles and we made the 2 hr drive out to Lake Oroville. We got onto Moses’ Bass boat and went for a drive. Lake Oroville looks like it has dropped quite a bit but also has areas as deep as 280 feet according to the boats fish/depth finder. And wouldn’t you know it, there appear to be MANY fish chilling down there. 

We started in the middle fork in a shallow looking area that appeared fishy. We threw a bunch of different lures but no takers. We moved along, searching for bass and although they occasionally appeared on the FF, They weren’t biting anything we threw at them. A bit later we moved to a deeper area that was rockier and wouldn’t you know it, moises caught his first spotted bass there on a crankbait. We continued to cast all we had at them but no takers. 

 

We moved out to the south fork, stopped at a rocky point. At this point I was using a watermelon /pearl rubber worm.  I cast a worm out toward the bank, reeled in a little until it fell off of what appeared to be a fairly steep drop off. That’s when I got my first ferocious bite from what I imagined would be a big one, but ended up being a small spotted bass, my first spotted bass. In my opinion spots fight pretty hard, I was impressed. 

Moses ended up catching a couple more  spots and I landed one more. After that we had lunch on the boat and scouted more areas to fish. Only problem was that after lunch, the bite turned off! 

Even though we continued to fish, we didn’t have a single bite for the rest of the afternoon. 

We alter talked to people that told us most of the fish there hold in up to 50 feet of water. We mostly fished between 10 and 18 feet. We learned a little bit by fishing this lake and didn’t get skunked so hopefully later on this year we can swing back out there and slay the big spots for which the lake is known. 

Total Fish = 2 Spotted bass.