Overwhelming best describes the first couple of days of the Lake County boat inspection program for the quagga mussel.
The Lake County Board of Supervisor”s recently-passed ordinance that requires all boats launched on waters in Lake County to pass inspection for the quagga mussels took effect on Tuesday and hundreds of boaters had their boats inspected so that they could receive a required sticker.
“Not in my wildest dreams would I have believed that so many boaters would show for the mandatory inspection,” said Melissa Fulton, CEO of the Regional Lakeport Chamber of Commerce and a member of the county”s mussel task force.
According to Fulton, more than 1,000 boats were inspected and received stickers on the first two days of the inspection program and an equal number are expected to be checked this weekend. Some were local boat owners but the majority came from out of the county. There are two major bass tournaments coming up this weekend and next — WON BASS Pro/Am and FLW-Outdoors Stren Series — and many of the fishermen are coming from Southern California, Arizona and Nevada.
Fulton said there were a few glitches as expected because the inspection program is so new, but overall the inspections went very well.
“I was impressed at the attitude of the out-of-county fishermen. They completely cooperated and I had only one complaint and that was from a tournament fisherman from San Diego who didn”t want his boat inspected. When I explained the reason for the inspections and the fact that the county where he lives has 11 lakes infested with the quagga mussel, he still said he wasn”t ever coming back to Clear Lake. But he was the exception. Everyone else was polite and expressed a desire to keep Clear Lake clean of the mussels,” Fulton said.
Fulton said they ran out of stickers but expect more in today. All boats passing inspection receive a sticker that”s good until Jan. 1, 2009. Boats registered in Lake County aren”t required to be inspected as long as they don”t leave the county, but they still must display the sticker.
Bob Higgins of Limit Out Bait and Tackle in Clearlake Oaks said he was extremely busy inspecting boats and handing out stickers. He said that by noon on Wednesday he had inspected more than 225 boats and had run out of stickers as well as the forms that boaters are required to fill out. The tackle shop is one of the 13 locations around the county designated as an inspection station.
I spoke with at least 25 fishermen at the Tackle It tackle shop on Tuesday in Lakeport and talked to others that same day on the launch ramps at Library Park. I asked the fishermen what they thought of the requirement about having their boats inspected prior to launching. Every fisherman said there was no problem with it and they all said they would cooperate fully because they don”t want the mussel to reach Clear Lake.
WON BASS will hold a two-day pro/am tournament starting on Saturday and Fulton said that WON BASS tournament director Bill Hutcheson has been extremely cooperative and that he will make sure his fishermen comply with the boat inspection requirement.
Good fishing forecast
On the fishing scene, the bass fishing should take off this weekend as temperatures are forecast to be in the mid-70s. That means the water temperatures will rise to more than 60 degrees and the bass will move onto their spawning beds. The WON BASS tournament should produce some heavy weights. The weigh-in for the tournament starts at 3 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday at Konocti Harbor Resort & Spa.
No local waters have been stocked with trout this week. Lake Pillsbury will be stocked next week. At Upper Blue Lake, the trout action has been fair and the bass fishing is improving. At Lake Pillsbury, there have been very fishermen out on the lake. I was there on Sunday and there were only two boat trailers in the parking lot at Fuller Grove.
No reports are coming out of Indian Valley Reservoir. The lake level is down about 70 feet from full and dropping as Yolo County begins drawing water from the lake for irrigation.
