Revitalized fishing pond hopes to ‘catch on’

Calaveras Enterprise

When thinking of someone fishing, the image of an old guy and his fishing pole typically comes to mind, but what about the children?

Lake Camanche and East Bay Municipal Utility District seek to answer that question, and that response started to materialize Saturday, Oct. 4, when renovations began on the catfish pond located on the south shore of Lake Camanche. The impetus behind the effort is to create a new child-only fishing spot in an attempt to get more kids out of the house and casting into the water.

The idea was spawned by South Shore Park resident Gene Buie, who credits another resident, avid fisherman Walt Eberle, with giving him the idea and prodding him to present it.

“I happened to go to an EBMUD advisory board meeting that was also a project meeting, and when they got through, they asked for any comments,” said Buie of when he first pitched the idea a few months ago. “I told them that I didn’t hear anything about the kids, and we have an idea that we want to make this pond a children’s pond, and it’s escalated from there.”

The idea has been highly welcomed and praised by all parties involved, and work on the pond got going soon after the idea was expressed.

“I think it’s something that a lot of people have interest in,” said Scott Wiemerslage, a ranger and naturalist for EBMUD. “There’s a pretty good head of momentum going with it. There are people on the EBMUD side that have pretty good feelings about it, all the way up to our top management in the Natural Resources Depart-ment. Couple that with the enthusiasm that the homeowners had, and we just tried to make something happen with it sooner than later.”

The catfish pond is fishable in its current state and contains populations of catfish and bass, but it’s generally remained unused because of large tulles and catskills coming up out of the shoreline that are all too easy for anglers to get their hooks caught in – not to mention an undergrowth called milfoil that can snag lines below the water surface.

On Oct. 4, over a dozen South Shore Park residents, along with some EBMUD and Lake Camanche employees, started to hack away at the vegetation with a litany of chainsaws, weedeaters, pitchforks and other tools. They will continue to do so for the next few weekends until they have created safe fishing lanes for on-shore casts.

After that, they intend to lay down a type of water-safe covering to prevent the vegetation from growing back up above the water.

“There are different ways to get this sort of thing done. Some people might choose herbicides, and they’re very effective, too,” said Kent Lambert, manager of the Mokelumne Watershed and Recreation for EBMUD. “This way is a lot more labor intensive, but it doesn’t have the effects of herbicides.”

While there are herbicides made to be safe for pond application that would only affect targeted species, the minimal risk and perception of herbicides swayed EBMUD to go in favor of taking the growth out manually. Also, the plan is to only remove the vegetation actually in the way of accessible shoreline, as it does provide for the habitat of the pond.

“A lot of it is native. The tulles and the catskills, they belong here,” said Lambert. “The part of the shoreline of this pond we’re impacting is, at most, 10 percent, so it leaves a lot of the habitat untouched.”

The pond will still be usable during its renovation, and EBMUD officials are optimistic about having all they want done to it completed by March 25, which is a free fishing day put on by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

There are a few more plans for the pond, including the installation of docks that stretch out into the middle of the pond and the planting of more fish so the kids will have some good catches. Both of these would mimic the adjacent trout pond at Camanche’s south shore, which tends to be the biggest draw for fishing next to the lake.

“We’re going to get a little competition between the two,” Lambert said of the ponds. “We’re working with biologists, and we’d like to plant this pond with a species that can self-perpetuate. As opposed to the trout plants we do in the trout pond, more along the lines of bluegill or Sacramento perch are a couple of the species suggested that would be good for this. For the opening, the idea is to plant enough that are catchable size, because we don’t have that lead time. But for this to be a long-term kids’ fishing pond, we’d love to see a population that sustains and builds upon itself. So we want to make sure we choose the right species.”

There is also deliberation needed in the stipulation of a “kids-only” pond regarding the cutoff age. Currently, ages younger than 16 is the limit most likely to be implemented, and anyone 16 or over would only be allowed to help the kids fish.

“We talked about 16, because that’s the point at which you need a California fishing license, so that’s the logical threshold,” said Lambert. “But we’re still working on a lot of those elements. Once we get more physical elements done and this project has some actual momentum, things will continue to evolve.”

Ultimately, the pond im-provements should do well in accomplishing the goal of getting more children fishing and enjoying the outdoors.