Bass Fishing Forum - Westernbass.com

I just thought I would update everyone on how Cachuma's new lake entry process is going, and how it effects tournament events.
I went to Cachuma on Friday to pre-fish. They had two lines for the inspection process which started about 7:00am. Their process is very similar to that of Casitas, "clean & dry", and VERY thorough. They do ask you to lower your outboard or outdrive to its lowest position. If any water at all drops out, you are not turned away, but when you go to the wash-down station, you will have to hook your motor up to a flushing device, and run it for 5 minutes. The physical inspection process took 7-9 minutes per boat. At that point they ask for your drivers license, and then "sweep" it in a reader to determine if you live in a county with infected lakes. If you do, you are subject to a 14 day quarantine,, If not, you are then directed to the RV "dump station" area to have you boat sprayed with 140 degree water. They had two lines, and two persons doing this. Again, they do a very thorough job, taking 7-8 minutes to process each boat. The men spraying the boats were very friendly, and took care not to soak the inside of your boat. At the end of your day, as you pull your boat out of the water, there were two Rangers positioned all day, asking if you wanted your boat "tagged". This is a simple process where they run a wire through the front hook eye of your boat, then through your winch, sealing the wire with a crimped on lead seal. This will allow you not to have to go trough the above process the next day, or the next time your return to Cachuma. The Rangers were all very helpful, and tried to make the process as simple as possible. But as you can see,,, it is very time consuming. Now on to the tournament: They did not open the gate for inspections until about 6:30am, as they wanted good light to do their inspections. Boats with tags were told they could go to the launch ramp,,, but upon arriving there, no boats were allowed to launch until 7:00am. Since the general public, and tournament boats are in the same line, it was 8:15am before all 15 tournament boats were in the water, inspected and washed. First boat released was about 8:20am !
So while it is great to be able to get back on Cachuma, you can see that whether or not you are in a tournament, this process, depending on how many tournament and public boats there are, it will take a very long time to get on the water. Jim Reyes the tournament director tried to get the lake staff to process tournment boats separately, but was denied. So one can only imagine what it would be like for a WON Bass So. Calif. event averaging 45-50 boats to be processed?!
As far as how the tournment went,,, the lake is full, with surface temp about 57.5 in the morning, and it go up to 62-63 in some areas in the afternoon. There is a huge algae bloom everywhere on the lake. 8+ won the event, big fish was 5-1/2,,,, 15 teams weighed in 34 fish ! Mark and I had a great 10th place finish with one fish weighing .83 of a pound ! (and that beat two other teams who had one fish !) The Good news is, the new ramp and docks are beautiful. Sorry for such a long post,,, I don't post often, but thought some of you would be interested.
Dennis Taylor

I'd like to thank the staff at the lake as they're all super helpful, and did
a great job. It's good to be back at Cachuma, but the fishing was the worst I've had there ever.(Our big fish ate a Senko an went .94 pound)

Why did they have two pressure washers on Friday and only one on Saturday. We were the fourth team to be cleaned. Then we waited forever as we watched all the private boats go out ahead of us. Fishing was horrible at best. We got a small limit and were very surprised to be in third place. The rangers were nice and it was nice to be back on Cachuma, even if the fishing was tough.

Might be a good idea to have tournment boats preinspect the day or weekend before and get the tag on ther boat

Scott,

That will probably most likely happen with all the prefishing the weekend before. But the lake wasn't opened until Friday. Also in any tournament we will still have to wait for the last person in the tourney to launch. It would have helped if the tourney guys would have gotten to the lake a little earlier. Then we wouldn't have had the piublic boats getting pressure washed with us. I know that I got up at 2:15 to make sure that I was in line really early. But it doesn't help when guys show up as late as they did. We just all had to wait patiently.

sure doesn't sound worth the time and trouble. get on the road by 4:30 from los angeles area arrive at 5:45-6am wait 1 hour too get inspected, launch after 30 minutes too 2 hours depending upon demand for amount of boats too be inspected. I don't love fishing at any lake that much. This takes all the fun out of the feeling of being on the water in the quiet hours of the early morn waiting for your first tic, set, drag rip. guess it's better than closeure but not for MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess it's all good. At least we can fish a lake in the Ventura -Santa Barbara area.
I was out on Saturday. Fishing was slow. Caught 5 boated 4 (2 smallies) none broke the 2 pound mark.
What's with the alge bloom?
Casitas needs to get with the program!

I saw that algae bloom yesterday, wow that is as wild of an algae bloom as I recall.

I believe it is related to teh Zaca Fire, alot of runoff this winter becasue of the fire and I am sure an extra load of nutrients came in.

Bump. For Michael.