Lake Minden Recon

Yesterday, after church, I convinced my wife to look around at Lake Minden, which is just 30 minutes away from the church in Davis or from our house in Woodland.

So we looked around after getting a free day pass to evaluate the place. Lake Minden is a private lake because they bought their water and they pump it from a well. So they have their own fishing rules and you wouldn't need a license to fish there, only pay the fishing access of $5/person plus $10/car for day use.  And then there's the membership thing for $525/year, you can get a total of 30 days camping nights free at an RV site with water and electricity.  They have about 16 other sites in California and about 80 sites the entire US and Canada.

The lake color is stained, and very shallow, most are in the 3' depth and the deepest portion is about 5-6'. And it is loaded with carps, turtles, some panfish, catfish and bass. The lake is very warm right now. It is a very safe place to practice kayaking.

As we travel around the Lake Perimeter, we saw some nice tules, should be a good spot for bluegills & bass, and we saw some turtles, we saw only a couple women fishing for catfish the entire lake. We saw the pump in operation at the northern side of the lake. If you are a die-hard catfish person, this would be the first spot to try because it has a little flow. If you set out a caryfish trap in there, all the scent from your "crayfish bait" would call out the cats to your traps and you simply fish there. Of course it is effective for as long as the pump is sending water, or else it would not be so productive. I was wondering why no cat angler was there.

There were many campers and beach goers swimming, and sorry I could not take pictures of people in swimming trunks or beautiful ladies in bikinis, and post them here. But there were many people enjoying the beach that day.

Most importantly, there were plenty of big carps, and they look like mini-humpback whales with their mouth gaping at the surface, but no blowholes. Below is the pic of the various carps. The moment we stop the car and take the pic, they would submerge their heads out of the camera, too frustrating to take their pics. I hope you can see their silhouette from the pictures below. They are truly huge and are scattered all around the lake. They could be a challenge to catch. I'm running low on crab bait, and if my regular fishing holes got fished out of carps, I might try this area.

Here's a view from the beach towards the marina.

And the carps...