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Top Calfishing.com Freshwater Fishing in California topic #17965
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Subject: "RE: Shadow Cliffs Main Lake" Previous topic | Next topic
swimbaitWed Aug-18-10 02:54 PM
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#17968, "RE: Shadow Cliffs Main Lake"
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Wed Aug-18-10 02:55 PM by swimbait

  

          

I absolutely 100% blame the bad fishing in the main pond on lack of weeds. The lack of small fish is also compounded by catch and keep fishing during the spawn, which used to be very prevalent in past springs (those people don't come any more because there are no small fish to catch).

I talked to EBPARKS fisheries manager Pete Alexander about this several years ago when they were spraying the pellets from a fan boat. The rationale for the spraying of the weeds is that they are trying to kill off a species of small snails that contain the parasites that cause swimmers itch.

I've inquired with the park rangers at the lake as to how many people have actually reported swimmers itch and been able to confirm that they got it from swimming at shadow cliffs. The answer was 1 or 2 two people and they weren't totally sure they got it there.

It might seem more logical that people came home a little itchy because on any given weekend in the early summer there are upwards of 500 people swimming (and peeing) in the lake. But that is just my uninformed opinion!

So, because of a few maybe cases of swimmers itch, they killed off the majority of the good leafy pond weed in the lake. What is left is what we call "snot pillows" which is more of a tall algae which is worthless as fish habitat.

Pete's take on this was that they were only spraying the swim beach area and thus the rest of the lake would still have some nice weed growth for the fish. The reality is that 80% of the weeds are in the areas they sprayed. In addition, all of the weeded areas are upwind, so it would seem (again my uninformed unscientific opinion) that the poison drifted down the lake and killed off most of the weeds in the rest of the lake.

To my knowledge they have not sprayed for weeds in the last 2 years. However weed growth is still minimal in the areas where weeds were once prevalent. It's a shame. I tried to get them to not spray in the first place, but they did it anyway. Now you have no small bass to catch.

By comparison, the back ponds are filled with leafy weeds and filled with healthy bass. But we can't fish there any more because of the steelhead that might, maybe, some day, swim in to those ponds. There are of course none now, and no hope of them ever getting there now. That's our other issue that I continue to work on on a regular basis. If you hate it like I do, write a letter, find the right contacts and work the issue.

  

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Shadow Cliffs Main Lake [View all] , Livermore Kev, Wed Aug-18-10 01:25 PM
  RE: Shadow Cliffs Main Lake, Lake, Aug 18th 2010, #1
RE: Shadow Cliffs Main Lake, Nico, Aug 18th 2010, #2
RE: Shadow Cliffs Main Lake, swimbait, Aug 18th 2010 #3
RE: Shadow Cliffs Main Lake, Livermore Kev, Aug 19th 2010, #4
      RE: Shadow Cliffs Main Lake, Nico, Aug 19th 2010, #5
           RE: Shadow Cliffs Main Lake, swimbait, Aug 19th 2010, #6
                RE: Shadow Cliffs Main Lake, Livermore Kev, Aug 19th 2010, #7
                     RE: Shadow Cliffs Main Lake, Livermore Kev, Aug 20th 2010, #8
                     RE: Shadow Cliffs Main Lake, swimbait, Aug 20th 2010, #9
                          RE: Shadow Cliffs Main Lake, Livermore Kev, Aug 20th 2010, #10
                               RE: Shadow Cliffs Main Lake, Nico, Aug 20th 2010, #11
                                    RE: Shadow Cliffs Main Lake, Livermore Kev, Aug 20th 2010, #12

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