Upper Lake Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

Tuesday turned out to be a wine tasting day. After getting up late and having a late breakfast, we (Katherine, Me, Ken, & Ranae) piled into the truck and headed toward the few wineries in the area. Lake County has many, but they are scattered all over the county.

First stop was a wine and olive olive oil tasting place. Couple of bottles of wine and a couple bottles of olive oil and we were off to the next place.

Second stop was not so good. Wine wasn't to our liking and the prices were steep.

Back on the road, the option was lunch and another winery (somewhere in the county) or lunch back at the park. We chose the park. It's a democratic society, camping is.

Hills are recovering after the fires last year

You can see the same section from another angle

The other side of the lake

While everybody sat around, I went down to the dock and soaked some more PB. Add one more trout to the list (now 3). Another sunset and the day was done.

Wednesday morning found me out in the kayak attempting to get a Thin Mint down far enough to entice a fish. I guess it just wasn't anything they wanted. So I attached myself to the dock and threw out some PB. Add fish #4 to the list. .

Later in the day the Bass (some quite huge) started circling a fish ball of, I'm guessing a shad of some type. Every once in a while they would dive through and the shad would scatter just like you see on national Geographic. The best photo I could get in the one below.

Fish Ball

If you double click and make it big you can see hundreds of small fish swimming in a circle. I have a video on my phone that I'll add to another post as soon as I can figure out how to get it to where I can show you.

Later that day while dinner (Tri-Tip, we eat well on vacation) was on the BBQ, I walked down to the lake right by the trailer. I figured if the fish were over by the dock, why wouldn't they be over here?

Wednesday fishing spot

Just a simple, throw out the rod and set on the bait bag, wait and see what happens.

Here is what happened:

Fish numbers 5 & 6.

This was our 6th year camping at Upper Lake. I guess you can say I now have a fish for each of those 6 years. The Tri-Tip was excellent along with home grown tomato's and Mozzarella with Balsamic Vinegarette dressing.

And, of course, ending the day with a sunset picture.

We'll be back next year.  Our reservations are already set starting 8/30/2020 for 5 days.

Our next trip is the North Coast Redwoods in 11 days.

With that, I'll leave you with a couple of extra photos.

Crane on the fishing dock. Dinner????

Ken & Ranae

Their motor home

The swimming dock

That's it for this trip. 

Hendy Woods State Park, next stop. 

Stay tuned. 

Upper Lake Sunday and Monday

We got to Upper Lake about 2:00 pm on Sunday. It's about a 4 hour drive from home. It took another hour or so to set up the trailer. Wasn't as bad as Redding last year (111 degrees), but still hovering just above 100.

We sat outside until the kids arrived about 4:00 pm. They got caught in a bad traffic accident by the airport on Interstate 5. Must have happened right after we went through there because we didn't have any problems.

Once they got set up and we had the required beer (805) at the beginning of every camping trip, I wandered down to the dock to see what was shaking. 

Usual Camping Spot

There were a couple guys fishing and they had caught a couple trout. TROUT !! Surface temperature of the lake was 76 degrees. TROUT ? Yup, Rainbows about 10 or 11 inches. Well I came to find out that out from the dock about 25 feet the water was so deep that it was probably 60 degrees down at the bottom. 

So I put out one rod with the usual rainbow Power Bait on a slip sinker rig and low and behold, 5 minutes later I had my first rainbow trout out of Upper Lake. I gave it to the guy next to me since I wasn't keeping any and he held it up for a historic photo.

First Rainbow from Upper Lake

Shortly there after it was dinner time and I called it quits for the day.

After dinner, I took several sunset pictures and this is one of them.

Monday morning my son and I got the kayaks off the truck and down to the lake. My wife and I set out for the far end of the lake to see what was there. My son and daughter-in-law were out in their two person Inflate-a-Yak (not the Sea Eagle) and already to the other end.

The first picture was from our camp spot across the lake.

Fishing dock on the left

Then in the second picture, is a 10x telephoto to the far end of the lake, our goal. Can you see that little beach in the center (double click to make the picture big)? That is called the "narrows".

Telephoto

Narrows? More lake? Oh yeh. Actually we found another part of the lake just as big as the picture above. By the time we got to the end of that one and yes it was finally the end of the lake, we were ready for a rest. We had all the way back to go. We never knew that part was up there. 

So we finally got back, arms and shoulders aching, and called it a day. 

I decided to sit down on the dock and soak some Power Bait. Again, 5 minutes after casing out, another Rainbow the same size. Number two for the week. 

I'll end this post with another spectacular sunset. 

Tomorrow, the rest of the week.

Stay tuned. 

Upper Lake

Just a taste. Come back tomorrow.

Yakking On Woods Lake

You remember the post about a month ago when Yuki and I fished Woods Creek at the outlet of Woods Lake. Here is a reminder.

July 8, 2019

Note the snow

Yuki 7/8/2019

Well, yesterday we put our kayaks in and I had a couple things I needed to do at the lake. First I wanted to try out the (now not so new) fish finder. I still don't have a handle how that thing works. I'll only say that it kept flashing 19 ft even when I was sitting on the shore. More research needed.

So after getting my Lifetime Kayak (total weight 50 pounds) in the water, we put Yuki's new (he didn't tell me he bought a new kayak), in. I don't have the information on his kayak except it is a fishing kayak and the thing weighs about 300 pounds. I lost all though of information just struggling to get that sucker in the lake. OK, so maybe is only weighs about 90 pounds. Either way that kayak is HEAVY.

Good, now we're on the water paddling to the other side which he says is where the fish are. He's already been yakking in the lake before with his daughter the Biologist and awesome photographer.

There are a lot of little water falls feeding the lake with last years snow runoff. As usual, click them to make them bigger. 

One waterfall

Beaver Abode

Shots around the lake

Beaver house again

The far side of the lake

We are not alone

Kind of rocky in some places

Another part of the back side of the lake

Ooooh, another water fall

You notice how much snow can melt in a month. From July to August sure makes a difference.

I suppose I should say something about the other reason we came to Woods Lake, fishing. Since this is a fishing blog it seems the right thing to do.

I started with a Thin Mint on my lake rod with intermediate sinking line. When nothing hit, I switched to a black Woolly Bugger. In the mean time Yuki is over there in the Ocean Liner kayak (it's 12 feet long) yelling "I got another one".

One time I looked over at Yuki and he was standing up in the kayak. One would think after the Yuki incident of March 25, 2013, he would be strapped into the chair with a seat belt. He's braver than I am.

On with fishing. Since none of the flies I tried (including a Mickey Finn, good for Brookies) I switched to my spinning rod and Kastmasters. Silver Kastmasters always worked good in Red Lake, why not here. Because this is Woods Lake not Red Lake. Jeez they are only about 5 miles apart. Is there no communication between lakes up there?

Well, when flies don't work and Kastmasters don't work, one has to slump to the depths of night crawlers. I got a single hook from Yuki (obviously I wasn't planning on fishing worms) and a half of crawler and stuck that worm out there. Damn if I didn't get, not one, but two bites in about 10 minutes. Caught me so off guard I missed them both.

As a last resort I put on the other half of the night crawler on and sure enough this one I hooked and brought to hand. Small, about 7 inch Brookie, but big enough (3 inches would have been big enough) to scare away the skunk.

With one fish (slipped back into the lake before I could get my camera out) and 2:00 pm rolling around, we called it a day.

Next trip is Upper Lake camping with the family at the end of this month.

Stay tuned.