The last few weeks I've been digging around in my map drawer and reading an old book by Ron Kovach about bass fishing in California. On my fish-n-maps there are those familiar annotations in red text that say things like, "Good for crappie in creek channels with brush". In the old book there are writeups about Lake Shasta that talk about the excellent smallmouth fishing.

All of this got me to thinking about the history of our lakes here in Northern California, and how little I really know. I never had a chance to see these lakes before they were built, or fish on the opening day, or watch as the bass grew large, or died off, or were replaced by other species of bass. I just have this sort of skewed viewpoint - the result of showing up a long ways down the evolutionary road.

It would be so useful to have that frame of reference and to understand where in the cycles we are now. When I first started fishing for bass I tended to view the lakes as static entities. As if there would always be the same numbers and size available. Of course this is not true, but learning that and adapting to it has been hard for me.

It would be cool to hear some stories from some old timers about some of our lakes and how they used to be. There's such a wealth of knowledge out there about the past, but I think sadly most of it will be forgotten.

haha i have that book too. I ws reading about Perris and the spots and I was thinking, "what spots?" All I ever hear about are the big Floridas coming out of there. But hey, I'm a kid so what do I know? :7 :7 :7 :7