We Finally Made It And It Was Everything We Expected

To White Pines Lake that is.

I met Yuki at Wells Fargo in San Andreas and we headed to Angels Camp for coffee at Starbucks.

Once coffee was securely in the cup holders (notice I made that plural because we were in separate trucks) we headed up Highway 4 to the town of Arnold. Not enough space for a float tube and a kayak in the same truck.

I made a quick stop at Ebbetts Pass Sporting Goods for a carton of red worms. I got mini crawlers since they stopped stocking red worms. Then I had to hunt Yuki down because he didn't stop. Found him in the Day Use parking lot at the lake. Well, I found his truck, he was no where in sight.

Once I located him, we drove over to a little (when I say little, it's about 4 feet wide and about 8 feet long) concrete launch ramp where we put in. Yuki in his kayak, me in the Float Tube Cumberland.

All I brought along was "3". There isn't anything in that lake big enough for a larger rod. Being the somewhat "good" fly fisherman I am, I started out with a Zug Bug. I wasn't 25 feet from shore, in fact Yuki didn't even have his kayak in the water yet, and I hooked up with the first Bluegill. I've never caught anything on a Zug Bug before. With-in five feet, hooked the second one. This time I took a picture.  

Second of the day

From there, past the park area, and on toward the far end of the lake, I got nothing else on the Zug Bug. For a while, I tried the Caddis Pupa (remember from Yosemite), but nothing there either.
 

Yuki catching up to me.

 Thought I'd better take some shots of the lake for your viewing pleasure.

The launch ramp is over there somewhere.

Yuki cruising by

The other side of the lake

 Down at the far end, Yuki hooked the only Crappie of the day.

Looks a lot bigger in the photo below.

IPhone Crappie picture

By this time, we were at the far end of the lake. In the photo below, it's way down in the back. 

The far end.

We fished around that area and brought a bunch of little Bluegills to hand and a couple small Bass. They were way too small so we put them all back.

To the right of the picture above is the dam which is in the picture below.

The dam

We continued to catch a bunch like the one below.

Not big, but fun none the less.

Yours truly far off in the distance

Yours truly a little closer

I did have a plan for fishing this lake. If you haven't heard, the heat wave of the past couple weeks has slowed down for now. If you can call high 80's a slow down from 100's. BUT with the cooling, we get what is called the "Delta Breeze". The Delta Breeze can come whipping through Fairfield and Vacaville at about 25 to 30 mph. It brings with it, cool air from the coast, but also makes it somewhat windy all over.

At the lake today, we had winds of about 5 mph with gusts maybe as high as 8 to 10 mph. When I first launched, I scoped out the direction of the wind which was from the dam (opposite side of the lake) toward the launch area. So I made my way around the side (fishing all the way) and when I was ready to call it a day, I was over on the dam side and let the wind push me across to the launch area. My mama didn't raise no dummy.

Almost to the end of the post and I guess I'd better admit to fishing most of the way around the lake with a hook and piece of mini-crawler. I know I mentioned being a "good" fly fisher, but sometimes you just have to do what the situation calls for.

How many did we catch? We both stopped counting at around 10 each. We caught a lot more and missed a lot more, but we had a hell of a good time. I don't think all the ones we caught were Bluegills (not counting the two Bass and the one Crappie), but like me being Entomology stupid, I'm also Sunfish stupid. It's just not that important.

No fishing next week, we're off to Hendy Woods State Park  next weekend. Click on the link if you'd like to see a bunch of pictures of the park. Heading to Elk, California for a burger at Queenie's Roadhouse Cafe (previously seen on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives) and then some wine tasting in Anderson Valley. 

Stay tuned.