Lake Sonoma Kayak-in Camping & LMB fishing March 12-14

After reading everybody else's reports I thought I should give one of my own.  I would have done it sooner, but I wasn't sure I could pull down photos from Ofoto or not.

Anyway, I went out to Lake Sonoma to do some kayak-in camping and fishing with some friends from work last weekend.  The weather was amazing and the fishing was pretty good.   Lake Sonoma is a fairly young resevoir (~22 yrs old) and they've left a lot of flooded trees standing in the upper reaches.



 They (the Army Corp of Engineers) have many designated boat-in only campsites.  We all decided that the "Skunk Creek" campsites looked the fishest on the topomap, if only because it was the farthest (~3 mi) from the boat launch.  Here's a couple photos of the campsite.




The fishing was pretty good.  The bass have begun to move into the shallows and were hitting soft plastics on the surface. 



I tend to practice catch-and-release fishing, but when it comes to camping my survivor instincts kick in so we kept enough to eat during the trip.



I think the four of us brought to the boat a total of 40+ largemouth bass and one crappie in two mornings and one evening of fishing.  Most of the bass were in the 14-15" range and we had a few in the 16-19" range, nothing huge but I was using my ultra-light and had a blast.

Oh, the first morning we got up early and on the water by 6am.  Fifteen minutes later I hear this rumbling noise and this line of about 15 bass boats  was slowly making its way towards me.  Luckily we were in a no-wake zone.  Anyway, I was fishing a nice point with structure and one boat pulls up beside me about 20 yds to my right and another 20 yds to my left.  Evidently there was a bass tourney that day and common courtesy isn't part of there clubs by-laws.

-Brian

Great report Brian and thanks for sharing your "spot" with the rest of us. I will definitely try to make a trip up there soon!

I haven't done any kayak-fishing-camp-in yet....but I'd love to try it soon  

I know lake Del Valle and Lake Mendocino have some kayak-in camp spots and some great fishing as well - can't wait to try them as well!

Evidently I couldn't link to ofoto.com images.  Anyway, I signed up for a myfishingpics.com account and I've fixed the images in my original post.

Brian

Great pics.  Looks like fun, I have fished up in that area a few times.

Nice report and pics.  Sounds like your group got into some good action.
What kind of plastics were you guys using and what colors were working best?

At some point we became convinced that the 3" Salt & Pepper Silver Phantom Bass Assassin Shads were the hot bait (see below).  I think that decision was based on the fact that we had a lot of them and they produced the first night out.  Later in the trip when we ran out of the bass assassins we found out that other plastics worked just as well.



Actually, the stringer of bass that I kept to eat in my report were all caught on a 1" crappie jig which I switched to after catching a nice crappie on the bass assassin.

You guys ever try using senko's?

The six-inch green (with sparkles) worked well at Steven's Creek for Large Mouth Bass

IMO: The slip float with a whole night crawler works well with LM Bass and bluegills when all else fails