Lake Pardee Opener - Ouch

Lake Pardee closes at the beginning of November each year and reopens on Presidents Holiday Weekend. Today was the much anticipated opening of the trout (and other fish) season at the Lake.

Last year it was a wild and wooly time. There were limits of Rainbows being caught hand over fist. There wasn't a complaint to be had.

I left the house at my customary 0730 and after a stop at Starbucks for coffee, drove out Highway 88 to Ione Buena Vista Rd. From Ione Buena Vista Rd I turned left on Stony Creek Rd for the two mile trip to the entrance to Lake Pardee Recreation area. I mention all these turns because the lady at check in said that the line at 0500 this morning was almost out to Ione Buena Vista Rd when she opened. She estimated about 300 cars, trucks, and vehicles with boats were in line.

Leaving home at 0730 I figured I'd miss the crowd and when I got to check in I had been right, I was the 5th car in line. Once inside, I drove out to Porcupine Point by the dam and as luck would have it, caught a car leaving as I drove up. Since I needed to do an article for the newspaper, I just grabbed my camera, notebook, and with coffee in hand walked down to see who was catching what. What I found was, nobody was catching anything.  

I spent the better part of two hours walking and talking to those fishing around Porcupine Point and the only fish I saw was one lucky guy had one on his stringer and as I got all the way around the point, four guys were walking out with 3 on their stringer. That is all the fish I saw this morning.

You can see by the number of people in the two photo's below there were a bunch of people fishing out there. The catching was so bad that I didn't even get my rods out of the truck.

The Mud Hole

The Boat Launch

I drove over to the other side by the Mud Hole and story was the same. Nobody catching anything. 

I inquired how this could be because the DFG was supposed to plant this week and as I drove in, a stock truck was just pulling out. First, the plant from the stock truck (not the DFG truck) this morning, would be fish that were drugged and would not be biting until, maybe, the afternoon or tomorrow. As far as the DFG plant, I got two stories. One that they planted on the 13th and the other, that they didn't plant at all. All I know for sure was that there were a lot (and if you've seen Jeff Dunham and Peanut you know about), A LOT of pissed off fishermen.

As I was driving out I made sure to stop at check-in and prepare them for the onslaught of complaints they were going to receive, but they said they were already getting them. 

I went back out the way I came in and as I was driving toward Highway 88, I made a last minute decision to detour a couple of miles and go over to Camanche North Shore. The temperature was due to hit 67 today and it would have been a waste of good weather not to sit out by the lake and enjoy it. 

Just a quick comment on Camanche, I didn't catch anything, but the sun and warmth was nice.  The guy next to me did catch two nice Rainbows, but both came early in the morning and I didn't get there until 10:45, but I gave it the old college try. 

That's it for this adventure. Hey, there's always next week. 

Till then. 

Mark