Last month, Sacramento’s Vince Mack and his wife Kim were going after Clear Lake’s big catfish on their 18-foot Tracker aluminum boat. They were soaking cut mackerel baits on 8/0 circle hooks in a deep volcanic hole when a fish hit.
“I was slow trolling for catfish with some clients, and was 50 feet away from Vince when he got that fish,” according to Captain Steve Johnson, who spoke to Wired2fish since Mack was unavailable for an interview. “I’ve fished Clear Lake for 29 years, and Vince does everything right to catch our big channel catfish — and the lake has some giants in it.”
A Big One Bites
Johnson says the water temperature was about 52 degrees. The big cats in California’s Clear Lake go deep this time of year, staying close to big schools of shad that want warmer water near lake holes.
“He was ‘spot locked’ in that hole with his bait near bottom,” said Johnson, who runs Captain Steve’s Adventures guide service. “When his line went tight, he thought he had a snag. Then he felt a head shake and knew he was tied into the biggest catfish of his life.”
Using spinning gear with 30-pound test monofilament line, Vince eventually worked the big catfish up from the depths. When he got it near the boat, Kim netted it.
“He weighed the fish in his boat and yelled over to me that it weighed 41 pounds,” Johnson said. “Then he got another, better weight of it and hollered ’44.10 pounds!’”
Confirming the Record
Johnson continued: “That’s when we knew he had to get it weighed on certified scales for it to be a Clear Lake record channel cat.”
They took Vince’s big catfish to a nearby UPS store, where it weighed 44 pounds, 10 ounces — making it a new Clear Lake record channel cat. It shatters the previous record, a 33.57-pounder that Frank Gentle of Kelseyville caught in March 2019.
Vince’s big cat isn’t far from the California state record catfish, a 53.5-pounder that came from the San Joaquin River in 2008. The International Game Fish Association world all-tackle channel cat caught in 1964 from South Carolina’s Santee-Cooper Reservoir weighed 58 pounds.
A Reputation for Big Cats
Johnson explained that big channel cats are the norm on Clear Lake. And they seem to be getting bigger every year.
“Just about everyone catches 20-pound cats these days from Clear Lake,” he said. “Just recently, I had customers who, in one day, caught five channels from 22 to 26 pounds, and some kayakers get fish weighing almost 30 pounds.”
Clear Lake has earned its reputation as a giant largemouth bass spot. In a recent tournament, a pair of anglers had a record-setting five-fish largemouth limit weighing 45.16 pounds.
But Johnson says catfish are the top dogs in Clear Lake.
“They’re the top predators on Clear — lions in the water,” he noted. “I’ve fished for catfish all over the country in tournaments, and Clear Lake is tops in my view. We’ve really got some of the best big channel catfishing in America right now.
“And with Vince catching the lake record fish — well, it just couldn’t happen to a better guy.”
