Largemouth Bass
The northwest end is where Kelso's largemouth story starts — shallow, weedy water where Sixteen Mile Creek slides in and the flats warm first. This is a bass reservoir by default: about 30 hectares, warm and shallow top to bottom, exactly the habitat green bass were built for. From the beach-and-inflow flats to Pirate's Cove to the boardwalk margins, the whole shoreline reads as one long cover map. Fish it like one.
← Back to Kelso Reservoir conditionsHow it fishes
Bass season opens the fourth Saturday of June and runs to November 30, and at Kelso that whole stretch is a shallow-water game. The reservoir has no real deep-cold refuge — it's a warm creek impoundment start to finish — so the fish stay tied to cover and weed edges rather than chasing a thermocline.
Work Pirate's Cove and the northwest flats early, when the shallowest water warms first, then follow the shade along the boardwalk margins as summer settles in. Largemouth here eat what the reservoir grows: sunfish, perch, and crayfish along the vegetated edges.
One local wrinkle — Conservation Halton permits worms as the only live bait, no minnows or crayfish — so plan around soft plastics and worms rather than a livebait forage match.
Structure
A named shallow cove off the middle of the reservoir — weedy, warm, and shallow, the kind of back-pocket cover largemouth hold in through the season.
A boardwalk lines one shore; fishing off the boardwalk itself is prohibited, but the shaded, dock-like margin beside it is documented shoreline cover — most of the reservoir's largemouth get logged along water like this.
The warm shallow head of the impoundment where Sixteen Mile Creek enters; community catch logs are dominated by largemouth and pumpkinseed out of this end.
Regulations
This is a summary, not the legal regulation — confirm current rules with the official source before fishing.