Lately I have had several residents come in looking for resident stickers because they either have boats that have never been through the process or they did not hear about the program until they were ordered off the water (too late ?) by the sheriff or volunteers.
I have also experienced visitors who came into town after dark who launched directly into the lake, fished all night and then got bumped off the lake in the morning (too late ?) by the sheriff telling him to get his inspection and tags. There have also been entire weekends with no inspections at tournament blast offs and periods without a sheriff”s boat on the water while it was in the shop for repairs, not to mention many changes to the program from its inception, with more changes to come, at least for the visitors. They may be made to stop on the highway to have their $50,000 bass boat power washed by Calworks personnel. If it were me I would turn around and head to Lake Sonoma instead.
And here is some more buffoonery. The county is paying $15,000 of your tax dollars for biologists to figure out if waterfowl can transfer the mussel. But, for free, I will tell them that by their own standards of one microscopic pair surviving up to one month out of water, that certainly waterfowl, seaplanes, otters, muskrats, beavers, and CDF helicopters with dipping buckets can all easily transfer the mussel. How about that? Perhaps I should charge $5,000 just for that piece of information.
In conclusion I will say that the mussels can have a beneficial side. If it becomes established in this lake, we are likely to see the end of all the algae blooms, which, along with the visitor tag system has caused and will continue to cause less visitors coming to Clear Lake. So, I am calling for an end to the program as it is an impossible to enforce system that is driving business, which means revenues and employment, away from Lake County.
In the end, the mussel will get here and the county has no plan for what to do when the inevitable happens.
Jerry Sloneker is a resident of Clearlake and is employed in the fishing business.
