FishwithJD

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Crazy Pix: Lake Tahoe from Drought to Near Record Snow in 2 Years!

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With the Sierra snowpack sitting at almost 200% of normal as of March 6, 2017, let’s not forget how far we have come. Here are some photos I shot on a trip to our place in Tahoe back in February of 2015. What an amazing difference!

It looked like summer in the winter of 2015. Here’s a view off Eagle Rock on the West Shore…a spot I’ve never been in the dead of winter…

Looking south off Eagle Rock towards Sugar Pine Point and, eventually, South Lake Tahoe. It was so depressing and scary to see it in February with no snow…

I took a picture of the monkeys that snowless winter, pretending to sled on the driveway, where they normally have their pretend Olympic Games…

And here’s that same driveway now…

The lake level this year is back up above its natural rim but in in Feb of 2015, it was looking bleak…

With the lake back up, the Truckee River is now reaching it’s outlet at Tahoe City. In 2014 that was clearly not the case. This is the view off the dam looking out towards where the lake is supposed to be…

The Truckee was all but dry below the dam too that winter. Here’s looking back upstream towards Fanny Bridge in Tahoe City…

Summer? Nope…Dead of winter 2015…

 

So, just how much snow have we had this year? Well, here are the totals as of March 1:

Mt. Rose: 650″
Sugar Bowl: 635″
Boreal: 598″
Kirkwood: 577″
Squaw Valley: 575″
Northstar: 561″
Heavenly: 556″
Sierra at Tahoe: 492″
Homewood: 483″
Diamond Peak: 411″

Short answer: A LOT OF SNOW!!

Underwater Video: Lake Tahoe Mackinaw 200 Feet Deep!

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We just never know exactly what’s happening under the surface do we? I was over a big school of mackinaw on Lake Tahoe the other day and they didn’t want to bite. It seemed as if they had no interest whatsoever in our gear.

Boy was I wrong! I dropped my trusty [easyazon_link identifier=”B00R8I6W5O” locale=”US” tag=”fiwijd-20″]Okuma WaterWolf[/easyazon_link] camera down there and found that the curious little buggers were, indeed, very interested in my gear…more specifically my sinker! Check it out!

Lake Tahoe: Your new destination for Trophy Goldfish!

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The next world record goldfish just may come from the most unlikely of places…Lake Tahoe.

But if you want to get in on the action, you had better hurry because state wildlife officials are in the process of trying to rid the lake of several non-native invasive species.

Goldfish, largemouth bass, bluegill and crappie have all been illegally dumped into Tahoe over the years. While you wouldn’t expect these warm water species to thrive in the cold, clear waters of Tahoe, they have found a shallow, weedy sanctuary in the environmental abomination that is the South Shore’s Tahoe Keys.

When they built the Tahoe Keys, they basically filled in a very productive estuary and marsh and turned it into a housing development and marina. The resulting shallow warm water now doesn’t get flushed out by the upper Truckee River and have become a haven for warmwater invasive species.

When I used to run a six-pack charterboat out of the Keys back in the day, I would catch bass & crappie off the docks in the afternoons after my charters. There were some big bass in there, too — I saw largemouth to 10 plus pounds and crappie in the 2-pound class.

To read more about this issue, check out the Sac Bee

Take a trip to the Bottom of Lake Tahoe…just like the guy in the Godfather did!

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Lake Tahoe is one of those places that has almost intrigued me. There’s just something about that clear water that inspires one to ponder what might lurk down there. At its deepest point, the lake bed is 1,600 feet beneath the surface. While I couldn’t get down that far, I did get my camera down to 100 feet last summer and had a look around.

Here’s what the guy wearing the concrete shoes in the Godfather may have seen…

Ramp Inspections: Coming to a lake near you?

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Without proper planning, you could be locked out of your favorite lake...watching the sunrise from the parking lot!


Invasive species like Quagga and Zebra mussels and New Zealand Mud Snails are spreading at a rapid clip to lakes and streams throughout the West, and because of the threat these non-native critters pose to our water ways, you may soon find launching at your favorite lake more of a logistical hassle than ever before.

Local authorities are taking the threat very seriously, as these invaders are a really bad deal. In short, they are filter feeders which can completely alter entire ecosystems by removing phytoplankton from waterways — the stuff from which all other life begins. Also, they clear up the water, allowing sunlight to penetrate deeper, causing a proliferation of aquatic plants that can change species dominance.

To battle these guys, some lakes have completely banned all outside watercraft, while many others are requiring increasingly thorough inspections before you launch. Take one of my favorite fishing spots for example, Lake Tahoe. There, you have to pay for a complete inspection prior to launch (it was $30 for my little 14-foot skiff). Click here to read more…