I grew up fishing calaveras lake and catching tons of channel cats in spring and fall. I moved away for about 6 years and came back 3 years ago. I have a hard time catching any channel cats and also hybrids where I used too. I have a hard time believing it is fished out because all the little drinks we used to catch and undersized hybrids. Anybody out there have any answers/theories

I have fished Cally a lot over the years and yes there were good numbers of nice Channel Cats being caught all throughout the year. Seems over the past three or four years the catfish bite has slowed down a lot. I personally do not target them but friends of mine who do say that Calaveras has it's good days and it's bad days.

Used to be you could go out on Calaveras blindfolded, throw an anchor out, and start fishing for catfish and limit out just about anywhere on the lake.
Now you have to hunt for them, and use a bait that the finicky fish prefer that day.
You know it's bad when even the guides are befuddled.
TPWD recently stocked 220,000 fingerlings in Calaveras so that was something that wasn't done in the past as the catfish population took care of itself even with the heavy pressure.
Talk to people and guides and they point fingers at those plecostamus or plecos which are aquarium species that got into the lake and have pretty much taken over and some claim that they interfered with the spawn of the catfish by consuming their eggs, but that's one theory.
Sadly we seem to be losing our local fishing holes with dams breaking, and our powerplant lakes dying, so it's looking bleak.