Mountainy things? Kick sleeping bears? Don't shower or shave for
three weeks?

Well, I didn't shave, and we tried to avoid the bears. Other than that we
hiked, visited Big Trees State Park (HUGE trees), went 165' below the
surface in a massive limestone cave, and the like.

Middle of the day - good lord.

Yeah, well... not much choice there.

Wow - how big is this place?

As answered above, pretty big. These resevoirs in the Sierras are dammed up
to get the biggest bang for the buck. So they look for deep canyons, that
can hold lots of water. As RG says, everything but the concrete ramps float,
and they're constantly being adjusted. The lake is currently dropping about
3 ft / week, and currently, is at about 960ft above sea level. The ramp we
launched at is usable to about 860', and they say there is another
"unimproved" ramp below that (whatever that means). There are many ramps
that are high and dry right now.

Hopefully, we'll get a decent rainy season this winter, and fill things back
up again.

--Mike




"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:39:59 -0700, "Mike" wrote:

My family spent the last week up in the central Sierra Nevadas, and had an
awesome time on New Melones Lake. It's a large resevoir in Angels Camp
(Gold
Country, Frog Jumping). We had a cabin about 20 miles from the lake at the
4000' elevation, so we did "mountainy" things, and boated.

Mountainy things? Kick sleeping bears? Don't shower or shave for
three weeks?

My 8 year old can now stay up on the wakeboard about as long as he wants.
He
just stays in the clean water, and occasionally rides over the wake (no
jumping). It's pretty awesome to watch... seein' a little guy out there!

WHOO HOO!!!

Fishing was fair, but we were doing it in the middle of the day, so no
surprise there. A few blue gills, and some smaller bass... no keepers, but
we don't usually keep anyway.

Middle of the day - good lord.

The lake is currently down over 100' from it's "full" level, but my
sounder
still showed depths to 350'. Still plenty of water there. That's what two
dry seasons back to back, will do.

Wow - how big is this place?

All in all a GREAT time.

That's all that counts.