Clear Lake Mission - The Barta Way

Well today is Liz's birthday so I decided that we should get away for a couple of days this past weekend.  I gave her the option of going to Clear Lake
or down south to the O.C, which I fully expected her to choose...she chose Clear Lake.

Never having been there before I done a bit of recon by reading info from http://www.catfished.com and previous reports that I found here.  I wasn't very confident that we'd end up hooking into anything but the chance of landing a bass, which I haven't caught since I was a kid, or a crappie which I have never seen before made the thought of a long drive seem not so bad.

0515 Saturday morning, the alarm is going off, and I found myself making the "go/no go" decision.  Fortunately I decided it was a go and by 0600 the rubber met the road.  Driving up 101 with sleep still in my eyes I realized I was hungry so we made a quick stop at Jack in the Box.  A few minutes later we were back on 101 heading up towards Hopland and onto 175.  I don't know if any of you know of or remember a road affectionately referred to "la rumorosa" in Baja, but I remember some of the stories my parents would tell me about, not good stuff, when we would travel over it going to visit family.  175 gave me flashbacks of that road.  It's not real bad but there were a couple of times when I could have sworn we were going around a curve and I could see the back end of the yaks that were strapped into the bed of my Tundra.

After a few miles of those curves, almost to the top of the hill before dropping into the valley, we were greeted by our first view of Clear Lake.  What a breathtaking view it was.  A few miles later we arrived at the town of Lakeport and stopped at the bait shop to load up on 2 dozen minnows (1 doz medium and 1 dozen jumbos). While loading up the minnows I asked the guy a couple of questions about where would be a good launch spot.  He mentioned that State Park would be good but that the launch at 3rd St. (I think) or the launch at County Park would be free...so we headed out to County Park.  Side Note: Check that all the minnows in the bucket are alive before you leave the store.

1000 and we arrived at the County Park.  After setting up and launching I immediately hooked up a small minnow, hoping to catch my first crappie.  Lots of fish were being marked on the fishfinder and sure enough after paddling about 20 feed from the dock I seen the minnow start going crazy and then the rod loaded up, pretty much the same as when Mendo striper fishing.  A short fight later I had landed my first LMB since I was a kid.  I would estimate it to be ~4lbs.  Decided to keep it.  Trolled around the area for a bit longer but didn't get any more bites.

Made a left turn towards the lake front homes/docks trolling a minnow and tossing out the crappie jig but still no luck so we continued a bit further up to the tulle line where I ended up hooking into another LMB, this one going ~6lbs.  Since I had already kept one this one was photographed and released.  By this time Liz was starting to feel a bit left out but a few minutes later she hooked into a LMB of her own, ~4lbs, kept.  That's when I realized that there were actually a lot of fish just hanging around a few feet below the kayaks.  It was kind of cool to see all of those fish just hanging around and being able to see them attack the live minnows.  Kind of reminded me of the fish tank they have over at Bass Pro in Vegas.  The unfortunate thing was that once the bass attacked the bait you needed to have a hook up or the bait would die and the fish wouldn't have anything to do with it.  A lot of the fish in the tulies seemed, to my untrained eye, to be in the 10 - 12lbs. range but of course those weren't biting.  In the next couple of hours I landed another nice sized fish and Liz landed two more, all released.  Unfortunately no fish on anything but the live bait.

1530 and we were starting to look like boiled crab so we decided that it was "Oco Time"  and packed up the yaks.  As we were done strapping up the yaks I decided to stay and fish off the dock for a few minutes. I tossed the crappie jig and landed what one of the locals called a "hitch" and then a few minutes later my first ever crappie. With my fish caught, it was time to head over the hill to Ukiah where we rented a room at the Motel 6...Yes, I know, believe me I felt the same but I still don't have racks and needed somewhere I could lock up the boats while I went out to have a Sapporo and the room fit the bill perfectly.

We got to "Oco Time", which Sean recommended to me the last time I was up there, at about 2000. We pretty much ordered one of everything and I think two of some.  Finally after having eaten way too much Sushi, an order or Mendocino Oco, and a cold Sapporo we went back to the room for a night of rest in a really uncomfortable bed.

Morning time rolled around and the options for the day were to drive south and paddle/fish Lake Sonoma or head out to HWY 1 and down south back home to Mountain View.  We decided to do things the Barta way...we were going to drive home on HWY 1.  That's one long drive, but so worth it.  I finally got to see a lot of the places that are mentioned in a lot of the reports I see here. We stopped at the Mendocino Headlands, Elk (checked out what I think is the infamous Elk hill), Point Arena lighthouse, fished the Arena Cove Pier for a skunk, and finally stopped in Tomales for dinner at the William Tell House.

Sure, we slept in a hotel that i usually try to avoid (but which served it's purpose pretty well), and drove just shy of a gazillion miles at about 15 MPG. But on the bright side we fished a beautiful lake, caught some beautiful fish I hadn't caught before and some I hadn't caught in a really long time, had some really good food, and most importantly spent some quality time with my partner in crime. How much better can it actually get?   

I wet my camera and I think it may not be working anymore...hopefully the pictures I did take are still ok.  If they are I'll post them later.

One question I do have though is why aren't there any cleaning stations, I didn't notice any, where anglers can clean their fish? 

Total catch of the day
Angel:  3 - LMB landed - 2 released
   1 - Hitch - Released
   1 - Crappie landed/kept

Liz:    3 - LMB landed - 2 released

Excellent report. All these CL reports are making me homesick, at least to go fishing.

Oh, the memories of many trips over 175. I think we had 4 or 5 regular spots where my lil sis used to "chum" every time we took that trip. But the view from the top is nice.

Way to go, Angel. Told you the bassin' was good. Catfishing is good too in certain places. For a shallow lake but large lake, the fishery is in good health. Your trip timing is great too, considering the storms today.

Howard

BTW, happy birthday to Liz...

Nice report! Happy B-Day to Liz    Now cough-up the pics 

Great report, Angel--you must have ONE special gal if she wants to go fishing on her BD! Let's see some pix! I look forward to seeing both of you on the water soon. Belated happy BD, Liz, from another fisher(WO)man.

Janice aka "Big J"

the Barta Way!     hhahahahahaha.  love it!

great report.

On my way down HWY 1 I noticed this.... http://www.bodegabay.com/discover/bodega_bay_fish_fest.html

Has anyone here gone before? What's it like? Worth going to?

Hey Angel,

I work in Bodega Bay (Bodega Marine Lab) and go every year to the fishermen's  festival.  This year there will be a new "wooden boat race" in which teams of contestants such as myself try to build a boat of the materials provided in less than 3 hrs and then foolishly paddle a short course for fame and glory.  If you want to see me nearly drown, it's a "can't miss" event.

As for the rest of the festival, I usually try to volunteer at the beer both for a few hours (I know the group that runs it) and I do a lot of "quality assurance" while I'm there so I have a good time.   The rest of the festival is okay... lots of booths (food, gifts, etc..), and a parade of boats where all the salmon boats get decorated and motor by the festivities.  Last year all the boats flew black flags because their salmon season had been severely cut back.

Brian

Sounds like a good time, I think I'll put it on my calendar.  Let me know if you need any help with the QA 

and a parade of boats where all the salmon boats get decorated and motor by the festivities. 

Brian, how about we get a group of NCKA 'ers to join the parade with our fishing kayaks....maybe we can get a booth going and display our yaks and maybe answer questions for those who are interested in our sport  I'd be in for that. I have the picture boards from the Fred Hall Show. Let me know if this is possible. I'm sure we can generate some interest 

Joel,

I'll check on club booths and whether or not it's too late (or if there is a fee).  As for the commercial salmon boat parade,  I kind of doubt they'd let us join in.

But do you really want to give up one of your weekends to sit a booth? 

Brian

Come to think of it, I don't think they could stop a fleet of fishing kayaks from entering in from the harbor side of the park.   People would yell out "Look at those freaks, they think they're going to be able to go fishing out of those little plastic boats!"  From there you can educate them about the madness.

Brian

Angel, I didn't mean to thread-jack your post.  Sounds like you had a nice trip by the way.

But do you really want to give up one of your weekends to sit a booth?  

.....To represent NCKA = Abosolutely! I did it for a whole week (with Chuck) during the Fred Hall Show. I HAD A BLAST just chatting about kayak fishing all day. If there was a job description just like this, I'd quit my million dollar modeling career with speedo and go for it

No need to worry about thread jacking, any discussion is good discussion.