A trip to clear lake and Mendo

All,

Here is a post I put up on my club board.

I cannot thank Scwafish (Sean) enough.  He is far to modest about his knowledge of this fishery (Mendo Stripers).  He was friendly and helful and his son was a lot of fun too.

I hope you like the post.

All,

Rob4k invited me to go up to hang with his buddies at clear lake this week, so I eagerly took him up on it.  He and his friends had a timeshare right on the lake and two boats to fish from, so it sounded pretty good.

A short 4.5 hour drive (stupid traffic) from santa cruz found me in Nice, California.  I called Rob from Lakeport (accross the lake) and we agreed to meet at the condo.  Well I get to the condo to see that Rob was not there.  I get a call from him, he's having boat trouble and can't get to the condo!  D'oh!!  Well a couple of his buddies show up with the other boat and we go out and tow Rob in.  Not the best start to the trip, but hey, its vacation....no worries.

Turns out it was a clogged fuel bulb and we fixed it easily the next day.  At any rate, the first night we all chill and eat pizza and drink beer in preparation for the next days fishing.

Here is a shot of the view from the balcony of the condo:




It was a pretty sweet little place.  I spent some time getting my gear ready.  With three people on a boat, I had to cut down.  Here is the arsenal:




Rob woke us promptly at 5:30, and I quickly put the pork butt on the smoker (which I brought with me, 10.5# of pork baby!!) and we headed over to lakeport to get another boat part and launch.  Word was from the previous days fishing that the bite was tough.  We started pitching senkos into standing reed beds.  Rob soon had teh first bass of the day in the boat:




Check out how fat this guy is, and this will lead into another phase of the story:




There was a good reason for why the bite had been tough.  The lake was one giant school of threadfin shad.  I'm not kidding, everywhere you looked was a huge school of shad.  These bass were pigging out at will, and you really had to work to get them to bite.  Every dock, every weedbed, every downed tree.......everything had a resident school of shad.  Here is the piling on the dock at our condo:




and here is the view down the dock.  LOOK HOW MANY SHAD THERE ARE!!




This did not stop Rob from catching another fish, here you can see the fighting fish above the senko:




And now he is landing it:




In the same area where Rob got this fish I noticed that there were some gill beds, and I rigged up my 2# rod with a triple threat.  Good move me!




We all put on the triple threats and started to wack 'em.  Check out the size of these gills!!  And beautiful spawning male colors...Here is one of Robs:




Check out the belly on this guy!  These fish are so well fed.  I was really, really impressed with the quality of the fishery.  Lake Barrett should be this way!!




I also caught a redear:





Well, we hit that bed for a while and took 12 or so home to make tacos for lunch.  It was getting on noon and time to get out of the heat and tend to the smoker and cook tacos.  We headed back and got to cleaning the fish.  Just look at the quality of these gills:




They made excellent fish tacos.  Fresh shore luch is the best!!

That night we had the best intentions of catfishing, but it didn't happen.  The pulled pork sandwiches were excellent.  That evening we were just fooling around watching videos and movies (Robs brother is an excellent aspiring filmmaker) and Rob insisted that we document his dedication to the Warriors.  Note his fasion style of the sock with the thong.....excellent!





We all went to bed with full bellies and dreams of the fish to come.

The next morning Rob got us up early again and we headed out to chase bass.  I had a better idea on how to match the hatch so to speak on the bass this day and after a little while of looking for big moe on bigger senkos, I did the sensible thing and went to a 4" cut tail....and drop shot...I finally nailed my first bass fishing an Aarons magic drop shotted off the end of a dock:




I caught another on the cut tail, and Rich and Dragus caught fish on small spinner baits.  Here are Rich and Dragus roaring down the lake on Rich's Skeeter.




We pulled in to get out of the heat and have lunch.  I had some extra plans in mind for the evening.


I also participate on a northern cal kayak board.  One of the guys on that board is very accomplished at catching striped bass on Lake Mendocino, you saw PAL hook up with this guy just last week and have good striper success.  I was mentioning on that board that I would be at Clear Lake and he suggested that I meet him Friday night at Lake Mendo (conveniently just 20 miles away from Clear Lake!!!).  I jumped at the chance.

I met up with Scwafish (Sean) at 5:30 at the south ramp, he showed up with his son, Chris, right on time and we paddled out.  On the way I just peppered Sean with questions and he answered them all in good humor.  We were trolling live shiners while looking for the boiling stripers.  After a while of trolling Chris spies the first boil in the distance.

I was awed.  We were a good 200 yards away and it was amazing at the ferocity of the boil that you could see at that distance.  It was absolute mayhem!  Chris took of in hot pursuit as Sean and I just eased that way figuring the boil might not last until we got there and conserving our energy for a sprint if a boil showed up closer.

It turned out the the boil did not last, but we slid into the area and continued to troll and look for more boils.  We figured that they had come up once, they would do so again.  I felt that we had a good shot at getting to a boil, and I wanted to be sure I knew the range I had with my spinning rod.  I had the live shiner on my brand new, never caught a fish before, Clarus and CuradoSF combo, and I had a cut tail senko on my Clarus Epixor combo.  So, I was just casting out the cut tail to get the range, hoping beyond hope that the blind casting would attract attention.  It didn't.  Disapointed, I stowed the spinning rod.

Right, and I mean right, after I put down my spinning rod, my bait rod goes bendo, seriously bendo!  I had backed the drag down as the curado has no clicker, and when I grabbed the rod out of the rod holder I tightened it down as much as I dared (thank God for the excellent drag on curados that you can modify with fish on!!).  

I have never seen so much line leave a reel in the fresh water!  I was fishing 12# Stren Original and I was just watching line peel from the reel with a drag setting that was pretty tight.  The best way to describe it was the same way that the yellowtail stripped line at the 9.

The fight consisted of a series of long powerful runs separated by some pumping of the rod and regaining line.  The fight must have lasted 10-15 minutes, or so it seemed.

I finally got the fish to color and almost fell out of my yak!  Holy moly, this thing was huge!!(to me at least).  I lipped it with an absolute death grip, there was no way I was losing this fish!  It weighed 8# even on my spring scale.  The second largest freshwater fish that I have ever landed (behind a 20# carp).

Sean lent me a stringer and told me to bleed the fish.  I hooked it to the side of my yak and let out a mighty victory whoop.

We continued trolling but never saw another boil, nor hooked another fish.  I didn't care (but Sean's son Chris seemed dissapointed) and we headed in.

Here is a shot of Sean and Chris on the way in:




And here is the money shot of me at the ramp:




I was one fired up yakker.  I am already fired up for my next trip to Mendo.

I went back to the condo and took the bragging rights for the evening.  I also filleted the fish (and vacuum sealed it for the trip home)....It was incredible the size of the gonads of this fish!  It was a spawning male, and had sprayed milt in my yak and on the dock, but I was not prepared for what I saw when cleaning the fish.  For families sake, I didn't take a picture, but each of this fish's gonads was the size of two hotdogs side by side.  Absolutely huge.

We finally made it catfishing that night, but beers and cocktails dictated a relatively early termination of that venture.

This morning we got up and treated out aching heads to some quality local "greasy spoon" breakfast.  MMMmmmmm grease.  

I packed up and came home a happy guy.

MolBasser

Sounds/looks like a great trip Mol.

The shad look pretty thick.  I bet it would make great bait for those stripers at Mendo (if its legal).

Stuart

If I had a way to transport them, they would have been excellent.

They are legal bait, but I had no way to get them there alive.  Threadfin croak if you look crosseyed at them....

MolBasser

Stuart-you are on the money.  When I can catch them at mendo they are the best by a long ways, but they are fragile like chovy's.  

Chris glad you had a good time, only wish we would have gotten into some topwater.  Here's a pic I took out there...

Some more shots curtesy of scwafish!

What a guy!  He can take a mean picture too!!




Hook up!





Fighting the fish:





Still fighting:





The final result:






MolBasser

Hey Scwafish!

How old do you think that striper is?

MolBasser

All,

I just finished a surf and turf type dinner.  Fillet mignon and striped bass.

Scwafish was plugging striper big time in its table quality and I remained skeptical....

NO MORE!

Striper is definately in the top 5 of fish that I like to eat now.  Very nice flesh with large flakes and smooth flavor.

MolBasser

What a guy! He can take a mean picture too!!

I agree.  Sean takes the best fishing pics

Those sunnies with the long 'ears' are the largest subspecies of sunfish.  They'd get stocked in private ponds in the midwest and reach astounding size, literally the size of a dinnerplate.