Bay Area Freshwater

Lexington Reservoir

by Ed Hood June 15, 2013

Bass fishing opportunities in the south bay are numerous and Lexington, above Los Gatos, is offers a ton of shoreline access in addition to non-gas powered boats. Lake access is available all around the lake via Alma Bridge Rd. which loops around the entire lake. From Hwy. 17 south, take the Alma Bridge Rd./Bear Creek Rd. exit and loop back over the highway. From there, you can either take a right and and park at a large turnout where trails on both ends of the turnout will take you to the lake. The trail to the left gives you more access to the lake and large flats areas and coves and the trail to the right takes you to more secluded coves. You can also take a left after crossing the highway and go up to the boat launch ramp or continue past the ramp/main lot and fish the various turnouts along the east side of the lake where there are also numerous good coves to fish. The east side of the lake is much steeper than the west side, so watch your backcast so you don’t put it into the side of the hill.

Map and more details available at: http://www.sccgov.org/sites/parks/Maps%20Here/Pages/Lexington-Reservoir-County-Park.aspx

Largemouth and crappie are the main draws to this lake. The bass activity is very inconsistent, unfortunately and wind (like many lakes around the south bay) does tend to pick up in the afternoon. But it does have some of the best structure out of any of the lakes in the area and holds some large bass in the 5+ pound range.

I fished this for a little over two hours between 6pm – 8:30pm and had a few bumps but nothing caught and things were quiet around the lake. My friend had the catch of the day: a 7″ largemouth that absolutely inhaled a yellow Dahlberg Diver. I had worked the coves and flats area on the west side of the lake with a surf streamer called the Bulla’s Beach Bug matched up with Orvis’ Hydros bass line and Helios 2 908-4 tip rod (this is the second time I have used it and cannot stop raving about it) to start off with. Match it up with 7.5′ 2x tapered leader so the heavy bass flies can turn over and your presentations will be excellent. Thankfully the wind didn’t pick up at all and it was an easy day of casting on the lake. Lexington has a good population of crawdads and orange salamanders and a streamer with some orange in it is usually a good fly to start off with. Also with the water being a bit murky, the brighter colors are generally recommended. I did get a few bumps with this fly but my reflexes were slow and wasn’t able to get a solid hookset.

Around 7:30pm, when the sun is almost off the water, is when topwater action starts happening. After putting some worm slidersthrough weedbeds and getting nothing, I decided to switch over to an awesome frog diver pattern Umpqua makes. Well, the topwater bite didn’t happen and I left fishless. That’s just the nature of Lexington, very bipolar: it’s either on or it’s not. Nevertheless, it is a great lake to get out to and it is very closeby.