Cleawox Lake Fishing (2024 Stocking)

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This smallish lake tucked at the base of towering dunes on the central Oregon coast is popular for many reasons, including some pretty good trout and largemouth bass fishing.

For anglers, the 87-acre lake is most enthusiastically fished during the spring.

This is in large part because the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife regularly dumps hatchery-reared rainbow trout in the lake.

Trout Fishing

The trout plants often begin in February and continue a couple of times per month into May or early June, often resulting in some 20,000 or more trout provided for anglers during that span.

Better yet, many of those thousands of trout are often ODFW’s larger “trophy” trout, which fight robustly and make a bigger meal than the legal-sized trout also planted here and elsewhere.

Trout fishing will be best during the stocking season through spring and into early summer.

Still-fishing with bait is the most common method of catching stocked trout. Try some PowerBait on a hook tied to an 18- to 30-inch leader. which will allow the bait to float right into the path of trout swimming just off the bottom.

If trout are near the surface (you’ll probably see some jumping or at least dimpling the surface), try fishing with a half of a nightcrawler on your bait hook and position that about 2 feet beneath a bobber. Bobber fishing can be especially fun for kids and other new anglers, because the bite is so visual.

Casting and retrieving spinners and spoons is another tactic that can work well at times, especially when the trout are extra feisty.

Fly fishing can be an option where you have plenty of room for a backcast, which will limit your options if you’re on the mostly tree-lined shore with a walking path close to the bank. But a float tube would be perfect for this.

Bass and Panfish

Spring is when fishing improves substantially for largemouth bass as well as other nonnative warmwater fish found in Cleawox.

By mid-spring, largemouth bass tend to move into shallower water for spawning, and they can be aggressive in feeding and defending their territory at this time.

Try fishing soft plastic lures that look like smaller fish or crayfish. Imitating a stocked trout with a larger lure may flush out the lake’s biggest bass, but Cleawox isn’t particularly known as one of Western Oregon’s best bass lakes.

Crankbaits, jigs, spinnerbaits, and other lures are also good techniques for catching bass.

Cleawox Lake also has populations of crappie, bluegill, yellow perch and bullhead catfish. Fishing for some of these species can be good at times, and they are fun to catch for kids.

Natural baits such as worms will catch most of these fish, with the perch and catfish typically found on or near the bottom. Bobber fishing with a smaller worm on a small hook also can also be great, especially for bluegill but also for other types of gamefish.

Small jigs can also catch these types of panfish, especially crappie but also perch and bluegill. Sweeten the tip with a small piece of worm, a mealworm, or a Crappie Nibble to tempt more bites.

Planning Your Trip

Most of Cleawox Lake is located on public property, and lakeside trails and dunes provide excellent access for bank anglers. Small boats also can be launched for access to the entire lake.

Cleawox Lake is well-known in part because it is in part of Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park, one of the most popular state parks on the Oregon coast. The state park offers hundreds of campsites and many other amenities and also provides access to larger Woahink Lake nearby.

The lake also provides access to parts of the sprawling Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area.

Cleawox Lake is located just four miles south of Florence and is just off Highway 101.

2024 Cleawox Lake Trout Stocking

Oregon Resources

ODFW Weekly Fishing Report
ODFW Trout Stocking Schedule
Oregon Fishing Regulations
National Weather Service