Outdoors : Need Bass Spotted? Rowe’s the Man

The Lake Perris dam is 2.2 miles long with a bike path on top, and Gil Rowe will walk most of it to reach his favorite fishing spot.

He is pleased to see that the water level is up and waterfowl are diving to feed beneath the surface.

“These birds are pretty good crawdad catchers,” Rowe says. “If they’re bringing ‘em up, the bite may be starting.”

Bites at Lake Perris have meant world-record spotted bass--the all-tackle record and all but one of the line-class records listed by the International Game Fish Assn. Rowe, 41, a medical photographer from San Bernardino, holds or shares six of the seven.

As a relatively small reservoir in Riverside County, artificially created with imported fish, how did Perris come to be the top spotted bass fishery in the world? Are they on steroids?

Nope, crawdads.

“This lake is loaded with crawdads,” Rowe says. “They’re all protein. That’s why the fish get so big.”

Crawdads--properly, crawfish or crayfish-- are the staple of Lake Perris, where the bass gobble them up like chocolate chip cookies. It follows that Rowe has caught all but one of his records with crawdads.

Alabama spotted bass were introduced into Perris in 1974, soon after Gov. Ronald Reagan dedicated the reservoir as the last link in the California Aqueduct System. The fish came from Ft. Lewis Smith Lake in Alabama--previously the world’s best spotted bass fishery. One by one, Rowe and other Perris anglers have picked off the Ft. Lewis Smith records until only one remains--for 10-pound test line.

Rowe caught his first record fish in 1982, one that has since been surpassed. He approaches the task with his own methodology, sometimes defying traditional fishing doctrine.

He owns no fancy bass boat but fishes exclusively from shore, casting either from the face of the dam or from adjacent Bernasconi Beach. It has been his experience that boats only drive the wary bass down.

Most freshwater anglers believe in fishing early or late in the day.

“Most of the record fish I’ve caught have been at about 1 o’clock in the afternoon,” Rowe says.

He doesn’t believe that water temperature is terribly important. The environment can change quickly at Perris whenever Silverwood Lake--the reservoir up the line--releases a fresh rush of water.

“I’ve seen the water temperature drop 12 degrees in a week,” Rowe says. “If I paid any attention to water temperature, I wouldn’t be out here a lot of times when the bite’s starting.”

It’s 8 in the morning when Rowe reaches the farthest “cut” in the dam, where the thoughtful builders used small, walkable rocks for easier access to the water’s edge. He offers no guarantees.

“Some days I don’t catch anything,” he says.

He hooks a three-inch crawdad onto a No. 4 single hook and casts it about 50 feet out into 10 or 12 feet of water.

Rowe Tip No. 1: Big , live bait, with small hooks. “The old saying that you use big bait to catch big fish still works. (But) you can’t use a real big hook with light line because you can’t get the hook set. I fish almost all live bait--crawdads, mudsuckers, night crawlers, waterdogs. My favorite is the crawdad.”

At 8:13, Rowe’s rod bends double, and he rears back hard to set the hook.

“There he is,” Rowe says. “Came right off the rocks. Did you see me bouncing it over the rocks?”

Rowe Tip No. 2: Work the bait. “The biggest mistake people make with live bait is they ‘soak’ it. While you’re back here drinking a beer, your crawdad has crawled under a rock where the fish can’t get at it.”

The bass is trying to escape into the rocks. Rowe holds the rod extended over his head to keep its head up.

“Spotted bass are all tough,” he says. “I think they’re tougher than largemouths. They pull harder. I used to say they never jump, but the last two or three big ones I’ve caught have jumped. Scared me to death.”

He brings the fish to shore and lifts it gently. It sparkles in the sun with a chartreuse iridescence. Rowe removes the hook from the corner of its mouth.

“This fish has been caught before,” he says.

Perhaps by him. He measures it at 19 1/2 inches and lays it back into the water to swim away. The Perris limit is two bass--spotted or largemouth--over 15 inches, but Rowe releases all but potential record fish.

Continuing to fish, he encounters frequent snags in the rocks below. Frequently he must break off his line and tie on new hooks.

Rowe Tip No. 3: Don’t worry about snags. “If you don’t lose 20 hooks a day, you’re not doing it right. Sometimes you’ll get hit coming right off the snag. The fish has been waiting for that crawdad to come free.”

To some anglers, it wouldn’t be worth walking three or four miles round-trip and fighting snags all day.

Rowe: “One record can be an accident, but when you get two or three it’s mostly work. The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

At 8:55 a.m., he notices a bird feeding offshore and casts to the place.

Bang! He plays in a spotted bass that measures 18 inches.

Rowe Tip No. 4: Be alert. “Fishing crawdads, 80% of your hits will come on the sink. You’ve got to be ready for that.”

He smiles and says: “That fish ate the bait before it hit bottom. If we were keeping, we could go home now.”

Rowe sets the rod in the crook of his arm to write something in his logbook, which he will transcribe onto a computer for reference. He has a record of how many fish he has caught on every fishing trip--how and where and how big.

Back to work at 9:15, he has his rod suddenly all but jerked out of his hands.

“It’s a big one,” he announces. “My pulse just went up. Do you want a world record on four-pound (test line) today? All we’ve got to beat is 7 (pounds) 5 (ounces).”

But two minutes later, the fish works himself into some rocks and is gone. Rowe reels in an empty line to show where the fish sawed it off.

“That’s one of the problems of shore fishing,” he says. “You don’t get a good angle all the time. Fish aren’t that smart, but they have a real good instinct for staying alive. That’s why I like to switch baits.”

He puts on a mudsucker, hoping the fish will return.

Rowe is a latecomer to bass fishing. He grew up fishing for trout and salmon in Washington.

“I’m not the only one that catches these big fish,” he says. “Bob Ramos, a guy at work, got me started. The second or third bass I caught, that was it. Bass fishing has the aspects of hunting--you have to find ‘em. Trout, they’re always there. You just wait for ‘em to bite.”

His best fishing buddy is Dave Togashi, a cabinetmaker in San Bernardino who held the four-pound test record for a while. Togashi calls him, “Rowe the Pro.”

Rowe Tip No. 5: Do your homework. “Get the IGFA record book and learn what the rules are. A lot of things guys do will disqualify them. If two of you are fishing in a boat and you hang a big fish and it runs around the boat and you hand the rod to your buddy so he can clear it, you’re disqualified. Nobody can touch that rod or line or anything but you.”

A sample of line--Rowe takes 100 feet--must accompany the record claim, along with confirmation from a witness and certification that the fish was properly weighed. He has taken record fish to the nearby A&J; Ranch Market and asked the grocer to serve as weighmaster.

“They may look at you stupid, but that’s the rule,” Rowe says.

He carries a hand-scale for preliminary weighing and has committed the records to memory. He knows of one unfortunate fisherman who caught what could have been a record spotted bass weighing “eight-something.”

Rowe says: “His buddy told him the record was ‘nine-something,’ so he ate it.”

The spotted bass’ days may be numbered. A few years ago when fishing went flat, the lake’s managers decided it was because the crawdads were eating the bass’ eggs. So the public was invited to collect all the crawdads it could, any way they could.

Rangers dressed up in crawdad costumes. There were crawdad races, crawdad cook-ins.

Meanwhile, unknown persons attempted their own solution by introducing some hybrid Florida largemouth bass, although California Department of Fish and Game regulations prohibit the introduction of a new species into a lake. The largemouths have thrived to the point where they threaten the spotted bass’ survival.

“Fish and Game didn’t want ‘em,” Rowe says. “This was the only pure trophy spotted bass fishery in the world. They’re worried they’ll outforage the spotted bass.”

DFG biologists, having created a world-class fishery, were outraged and heartbroken. Bob Rawstron, chief of the DFG’s Inland Fisheries Division, says: “I’ve already castigated the organized bass fishermen. They know who did it. We really don’t have a plan of what to do there.”

Bruce Van Vort, general manager for the lake’s concessionaire, says: “I don’t know who put ‘em in, but . . . I’m in favor of the largemouths in here. For years, guys like Gil were the only ones catching fish. Nobody else was coming out here fishing. (Now) it’s become a people’s lake.

“If they could keep the limit on spotted bass to one or two and go to five on the largemouth, that’d be OK, but people can’t tell the difference.”

So unless a plan is developed to save the spotted bass, the largemouths may take over the lake.

Until then, Rowe says: “There are days I’ll know I’m not going to catch anything--seven, eight, nine trips. But I’ll know that somewhere along the way, one of these big fish is going to bite.”