The bass are still there, but are more spread out
How could one of the best lakes in North Carolina become, almost overnight, one of the toughest to catch a bass?
Consider Shearon Harris Lake. In 2017, Bassmaster magazine ranked it as one of the top four lakes for bass fishing in the Southeast. Today’s poll is anyone’s guess.
First to dispel rumors:
- UFOs didn’t beam up Harris bass;
- Commercial fishermen didn’t set gill nets;
- Neither Duke Energy nor the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission killed the lake’s hydrilla — but its submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) did vanish.
Actually, the answer to disappearing Harris bass is simple — they didn’t. Without shoreline grass, largemouths simply scattered across the lake’s 4,151 acres.
Why and how did this happen? A number of factors came into play:
- The N.C. Division of Water Quality put 4,000 sterile grass carp in the lake to eat hydrilla;
- Natural forces already were reducing SAV;
- Baitfish dispersed;
- New fishing patterns emerged;
- More non-anglers began to visit the lake, many because of COVID shutdowns, and the lake’s two boat ramps were overrun;
- Crowded weekends made for water-safety concerns;
- Major bass tournaments moved to other sites.
Blasts from the past
Shearon Harris once resembled a Florida lake, thick with hydrilla growing from its perimeter to 15 feet from the shoreline. A slot limit — no keeping bass between 16 and 20 inches — helped create a base of big largemouths.
Anglers often landed hefty five-bass limits, while tournaments saw astounding catches and sizes of bass.
Spring was the best season, with lunkers attacking lures in grass-filled shallow waters. In April 1996, Sanford’s Dennis Reedy and his partner landed a 10-fish 71.88-pound Harris creel during a Piedmont Bass Classic tournament, including a 9.82-pound lunker. Twenty-one years later, in March 2017, a five-fish limit caught by Shane and Bonnie Burns totaled 41.90 pounds, a PBC record.
However, by 2019, changing conditions made such whopper limits only fond memories.
Grass explosion/implosion
Aquatic vegetation enhances bass fishing. Hydrilla, elodea, primrose, squarestem spike rush, hyacinth, bulrushes, water willow, maiden cane, pickelweed, softstem bulrush, giant cutgrass, American lotus, whitewater lily, spatterdock, water stargras, American pondweed and eel grass offer hiding places for baitfishes, baby bass and adult fish.
But hydrilla has been classified as a federal noxious weed because it expands each year to choke out other plants. If hydrilla were a land plant, it would be kudzu.
Hydrilla once clogged coves on Lake Gaston on the Virginia-North Carolina border. Property holders hired mechanical harvesters to rip it out, sprayed chemicals and released grass carp until it finally lessened its grip.
Carolina Power & Light, which would later become Progress Energy, opened the Harris nuclear power plant in 1987, and hydrilla appeared soon thereafter. By the mid-1990s, hydrilla covered 1,000 acres. During that time, bass numbers and sizes exploded. CP&L sold out to Duke Energy in 2011.
Then, it began to decline.
“We worked with the N.C. Division of Water Quality to stock grass carp in the lake and treated hydrilla with herbicides only around boat ramps,” said Kim Crawford of Duke Energy.
Kirk Rundle, a fisheries biologist with the Commission, mostly agreed with Crawford.
“As far as I know, no spraying was done, but almost 100% of the lake’s hydrilla is gone now,” he said.
Rundle said hydrilla began to disappear in 2015, with 232 acres left by 2018.
“Then, the N.C. Division of Environmental Quality and Duke Energy put 4,000 grass carp in the lake,” he said.
By October 2019, a survey found no hydrilla.
“I don’t know if the grass carp affected it that much,” Rundle said. “I think water quality also declined, and turbidity may have increased.”
Baitfish scatter
With no vegetation to offer safety from predators, the baitfish, mainly threadfin shad, dispersed into schools that now roam open water.
“The (shallow-water bass) fishing at Harris is terrible, compared to what it used to be,” said bass pro Josh Hooks of Apex, N.C. “The grass is gone, and there’s no structure at mid-depth ranges. That means baitfish and bass have gotten out of Dodge.
“In 2019, I caught fish in deeper water than ever. There’s some riprap at the new Holleman Bridge and bullrushes on banks where you can catch ’em, but you can’t pattern ’em.”
PBC events leave Shearon Harris
Phil McCarson of Durham, who operates the Piedmont Bass Classics tournament trail, said water safety, declining angler interest and tough fishing led him to move events from Harris.
“With everyone trying to use the lake, it’s gotten dangerous on weekends,” he said. “Launch ramps are crowded, and speed boats, wake boarders and water skiers roar around the lake, which is too small for a 90-boat tournament, plus the other folks. We’ve had some bad scenarios, and I’m afraid somebody will get hurt.”
McCarson said lack of shoreline grass pushed anglers to open-water areas and increased aggravations and collision risks. So he moved his tournaments to much larger Falls, Jordan and Kerr lakes.
New patterns for Shearon Harris
When blueback herring numbers exploded at John H. Kerr Reservoir, aka Buggs Island, over the past 10 years, largemouths changed their feeding habits, leaving shorelines to search the open water for schools of bluebacks.
Anglers adapted, and Hooks has used the same tactics at Harris.
“Old patterns have changed,” he said. “You can catch schoolies in summer, but they’ve become nomadic to chase baitfish and don’t sit on structure.”
Only two patterns work, he said: schooling fish and fishing the first offshore ledge in front of bulrushes.
He uses deep-diving crankbaits, Rat-L-Traps or Texas-rigs large plastic worms with heavy bullet weights when he finds structure that holds largemouths, and he casts Zara Spooks or Pop-Rs at surface-feeders.
“Forward-facing sonar helps you follow schools,” Hooks said.
Time to rebuild Shearon Harris bass habitat
With hydrilla gone at Shearon Harris Lake, biologist Kirk Rundle of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission knows bass fishing has changed. He is leading efforts to keep several fish species healthy by planting and protecting native submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) and placing fish attractors in the lake.
In 2018, the Commission started a five-year Aquatic Enhancement Plan at Harris. It includes installing 30 acres of fish attractors — polytrees, MossBacks, Shelbyville cubes and spider blocks — by 2023, cutting and cabling 20 trees to fall into the lake, enhancing habitat in three fishing coves and an acre of family colonies of SAV. Fences will protect plant colonies from grazers such as turtles, muskrats and grass carp.
(Picture by NC Wildlife Resources Commission)
“If no more grass carp are stocked, the hope is founder colonies will grow,” Rundle said. “In theory, once it gets started, after years (it) will work its way outside enclosures and provide fish habitat. Our estimate today is may take 10 years (to rebuild the SAV at Harris).”
Rundle is also concerned that spotted bass and flathead catfish may be put in the lake illegally. Spots crowd out largemouths, and flatheads prey on everything. The good news is Commission sampling shows Harris with as many bass as when it was flush with grass.
“Electrofishing and trap nets for crappie look at CPUE (catch per unit effort), then we check for weight, plumpness, age and growth,” Rundle said. “Bass have adapted to what’s going on out there. Harris is still the best bass lake in the state, and also has excellent crappie numbers.”
That means to catch Harris bass, modern anglers, as Janis Joplin once sang, “have to try just a little bit harder.”
DESTINATION INFORMATION
HOW TO GET THERE — Shearon Harris Lake is about 20 miles southwest of Raleigh, N.C. , roughly just east of US 1 north of Sanford, N.C. It is served by two public boat ramps, Holleman’s Crossing on Holleman Rd. and Crosspoint on Crosspoint Rd.
SIZE/CREEL LIMITS — Harris is managed with a five-fish daily creel limit and a 16- to 20-inch slot limit; no bass between 16 and 20 inches may be kept. There is a 14-inch size minimum, with a two-fish exception.
FISHING INFO/GUIDES — Bill Manning’s Bass Fishing Guide Service, 919-723-8569, billmanningfishing.com. See also Guides and Charters in Classifieds.
ACCOMMODATIONS — Econo Lodge, Sanford, 919-774-6411; Budget Inn, Sanford, 919-775-2814; Days Inn, 919-213-7238; Hampton Inn and Suites, Holly Springs, N.C., 919-552-7610;
MAPS — Fishing Hot Spots, 800-255-6277, www.fishinghotspots.com; DeLorme, www.delorme.com.
that’s a good story and explains the situation well, thanks!