return to james lake

it was time to head back to james lake and try some ice more ice fishing. tom, mike julie and i headed up the freshly plowed road to the small sheltered lake. being small and sheltered, there was 3 inches of wet slush on top of the ice. it was wet.

plowed road up.  in the sun!

there was a lot of snow. our fire pit was dug down over 3 feet, leaving us with nice natural white cold seats.

the fire on the bank.  julie and tom got it ripping nicely.

it was warm and sunny, what else could we ask for, except maybe some fish.

we had the lake to oursleves all day.  pretty minty.

the lake is a reservoir, thats the dam

the fire after 4 hours of burning finally got to the grass

slush trail to the holes.

onyx collecting the firewood.

After a few hours of swimming back and forth between the holes and the fire, the sun was sinking and it was time to head down.  the road was pretty easy to drive and it was a successful day.  mostly because we don't measure success by the number of fish we catch.

the a-team stopped by.  mr. t didn't catch any fish either.

gonna try again next weekend.  try for fish, but having a blast doesn't require much effort. 

you don't need fish to have a good time

now armed with an ice auger, tom and i decided it was time to do 2 things.
1) use the ice auger
2) use the 4wd lo range on the 4runner

to accomplish these 2 things, we headed up to james lake via bata rd. we had 1st tracks all the way up.

the road crosses the high rim trail and a creek simultaneously. here. see?


once we got up to the lake, we did a little exploring around and found this and many other large tractors.

tom whipping up some hot dogs with bbq sauce.

and yes, we did use the auger. the 2 small black dots on the ice behind tom are our holes.

no we did not catch anything. maybe it was the fact that we only checked to hooks twice in 5 hours. maybe its that we don't know how to fish, and maybe its that we just don't really care. you don't need fish to have a good time.

james lake camping

Never been to James Lake in the summer before, so jeff, kris and i took this trip so we could cross it off the list. The campsite was occupied, but they left soon after we arrived, so we got a primo spot to ourselves.



James lake is pretty small and has a dam on one end.

fished but never caught anything. need to come back with a boat.


the water seemed higher when we left than it was when we got there.


we brought glow sticks. turns out the stick part is optional.