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Lake Berryessa Night Trip Produces Steady Bass Action

By: Charlie Myer
July 28, 2000

More Articles by Charlie

Lake Berryessa has been one of the better options for targeting black bass in the north state during the past week and I had a chance to sample the fishing the night of July 21.

I met Jody Jordan from Vacaville at 7:45 pm at Markley Cove Resort where we put his Ranger 518 VS in the water and made the run to the north end of the lake to try and get in some last minute topwater action before we ran out of daylight.

We started out the trip on a small point near the mouth of Putah Creek. Jody started out with a chartreuse/white Zara Spook and I started with a Lucky Craft Pointer Minnow. On his second cast, Jody had a nice fish boil on the spook, but it didn't take the bait. A few casts later, he had the same thing happen, but the fish never took the bait down.

Unfortunately, that was our only surface action over a half-hour period so we broke out the night light and rigged up our night-fishing rods with a variety of spinnerbaits, jigs and plastic worms. Jody then pulled the boat up to one of our favorite points and nosed in to 20 feet of water.

While I was still tying on my favorite brown and orange Weapon jig, Jody stuck the first fish of the trip on his very first cast with a Berkeley Power Worm. It was a 15 inch largemouth weighing about 1-3/4 pounds. On his very next cast, he stuck another largemouth of the same size.

I quickly tossed my jig into the same area and was smashed as the bait fell off a small ledge in about 12 feet of water. After a quick hook-set, the fish immediately broke water then dove straight under the boat and put up a spirited fight before it gave in. This was a good smallmouth, just under two pounds.

Jody took one more fish off that point, then we headed down to the Narrows where we worked over several underwater humps in 14 to 25 feet of water. While the bite was far from wide open, it was steady and we managed to put a fish in the boat every half-hour or so.

Our last stop was back in Markley Cove where the trip began. I was throwing a 10 inch Power Worm and Jody was throwing a 1/2 ounce chartreuse spinnerbait. We worked the west shoreline targeting several small points and landed another 4 fish, 2 largemouth and 2 spotted bass. Jody had the big fish of the night, a 2.9 pound spotted bass and we landed a total of 14 fish.