THIS IS NOT APRIL FOOLS or a TROLL.
Pass this on to anyone you know that fishes Clear Lake.
Lake County just passed an Urgency Ordinance last week to combat the spread of Quagga and Zebra Mussels into their waterways. As anglers/boaters/float tubers, we can expect this procedure to spread to other waterways. I prefer it to the option many lakes in San Diego County chose, which was to close the lakes to boating, PERIOD.
On Tuesday, March 25, 2008, the Lake County Board of Supervisors enacted an urgency ordinance to protect the water bodies of Lake County from quagga and zebra mussel infestation.
Effective immediately, this ordinance:
Requires a mandatory inspection for any water vessel prior to launching in a Lake County water body, beginning April 8, 2008. This applies to all motorized and non-motorized vessels including boats, trailers, kayaks, canoes, jet skis, inflatable rafts, etc. All vessels will be required to obtain an Inspection Sticker prior to launching.
Establishes the first phase of an inspection program, which includes a special interim program for local vessels to obtain inspection stickers at no cost beginning April 8, 2008, through June 30, 2008.
Bans the disposal of live bait and any liquid that contains or has contained live bait into Lake County water bodies.
By 5:00 pm today the web site
www.co.lake.ca.us/mussels and phone number (707) 263-2556 will be updated to include locations of inspection/sticker stations signed up so far as well as instructions, a questionnaire form, and an affidavit to sign. The forms will be available online, and should be filled out prior to arrival to Lake County, so the lines will move faster at the inspection/sticker stop. They will want to know what waters your boat/tube has been in the last 30 days, CF #, and contact info.
The places that for sure that have volunteered to be early am inspection and sticker locations this weekend for out of town boaters are Ed Clark at Tackle-It in Lake Port and Troy Bellah at Clearlake Bait and Tackle at Red Bud, and Dave Brabeck from Clear Lake Outdoors North (96 Soda Bay Rd). Be sure to support and thank these guys for stepping up to help make this work as they will most likely be two of the few locations you will be able to get early morning stickers and are taking time away from their business to do it. (Thank you very much Troy and Ed for helping us out of town guys) In addition to these locations most of the Resorts around the lake will be participating as well so they should be able to help you out if you are staying with them.
As far as the inspections, the requirement will be clean and dry. I don’t know how the rain will affect this requirement, but everyone knows that people fish rain or shine so it will be taken into account. It sounds like the answers on the questionnaire is what is going to determine your relative risk of transport and inspections will proceed from there. As I understand it, the county is working directly with bass tournaments to make contact with their boaters that will be coming from Mead and Havasu where the mussels have been found. These boaters will most likely go through a more rigorous inspection and may require some sort of decontamination.
Float tubes also need to have the sticker as well attached to their tubes near the front.
Lastly, please remember that your inspectors are an all volunteer fleet and there will be some glitches until this thing has a chance to run for a while and it will be constantly evolving so please don’t take out frustrations on the volunteers. It will only make it more difficult to get volunteers in the future and make it harder for everyone to get inspections/stickers. Suggestions for improvements to the system should go to the Lake Co. Department of Public Works or the Lake Co. Chamber of Commerce.
Almost every other county and water ditrict in California is having meetings in the next few weeks/months discussing this same issue, I hope they all do as good a job as Lake County is planning to do.
There is talk of roadside inspection/washdown spots in the future. Any boat coming from the Colorado River, Lake Mead or Lake Havasu is being stopped at the Agricultural Inspection Stations at the border now.
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