Lake McSwain Campout May 2008

The family and I went camping at Lake McSwain, Ca this past weekend. It was a fun and eventful trip filled with Trout fishing, potluck’s and wildlife viewing. Check out the video. This was my 1st attempt at video production with the new CyberLink PowerDirector Ver 7 software that I purchased so cut me some slack. The jury is still out on the software though. I am not too happy yet.



I have had several crashes already and I can’t find a simple fade out feature on a video clip. It crashed the 1st time I attempted to use it right after the installation. I believe it was due to the FFDShow software. As soon as I uninstalled the FFDShow software PowerDirector ran fine. It does look promising but there is much to learn and it has crashed several times. I recommend you save and save often.

I attempted to use the feature that allows you to upload your video to YouTube, but it doesn’t seem to want to take my Google login id. So I had to do the upload manually. The nice thing is that it creates the video in a format that YouTube will accept. If I were using a normal YouTube login, it would most likely work fine.

We arrived at the lake Friday evening and pulled into our designated RV camp site. We were greeted by my parents who were already up there. My dad had already been fishing so he had the technique down. Although I wasn’t expecting to fish that evening, the offer was made so I took it. There wasn’t much light left in the day but we went out for an hour or so. Roland caught all the fish on this trip. I had a few strikes, but the hook wouldn’t set. We were slow trolling rusty colored wooly bugger style fly’s. We theorized that the tail on the fly’s we were using was too long.

The next day after a nice breakfast I took my wife out for some tolling. I used an old favorite fly of mine. I was not confident in the rust colored fly that I had used the night before. Not long after setting the lines I hooked up and caught a nice sized trout on my fly. After that we didn’t catch a fish for an hour and a half or so. We were kept entertained though by some of the local wild life. My wife was also reading her ladies magazine and sharing what she read.

We were trolling along and I heard some twigs breaking behind me. I turned around and saw a Deer strolling along the shoreline heading for some shade less then 50ft away. It was approaching 100 degrees so I can’t blamer her and was actually surprised to see a deer up and about this time of day. I quickly grabbed the camera and caught the tail end of her as she went behind a tree.

While filming her I glanced up and to my right I saw a Bobcat, just 50 yards away from the deer. I got some good footage of the bobcat as well which you can view on the video as well. Perhaps the bobcat was looking for an easy meal and woke the deer up from her resting place. Had the deer had a small fawn with her, then I bet the bobcat would be eating, however the doe appeared to be alone.

We were finally reached a point as we were trolling up the canyon where the water temperature started dropping from 57 degrees. Lake McSwain is fed by Lake McClure. The water from McClure must be taken from the bottom of the lake cause it is really cold. As it fills in lake McSwain the water temperature will change significantly throughout the entire lake. In a short space the water temp went from as high as 60 down to 51 degrees. Once we neared the temperature change around 11AM, the fishing improved. I caught two more trout on the same Rusty colored fly within 10 minutes. I had shortened the tail by ¼ inch and I didn’t miss any fish on this trip. The fish we caught were slightly larger though so this may have had something to do with it as well. It was 11 and we needed to get back for the potluck so we had to call I quits for now.

While back at camp I cleaned the fish, filmed a small cottontail rabbit and a California Whiptail lizard that seem interested in me. Perhaps he was waiting for a hand out. We enjoyed a potluck lunch had a long nap and then I decided to do some free diving.

I needed to try the wet suit without my hooded vest to confirm if the suit would still fit. It is still much too tight. So I will be looking for a new suit before my next dive in cold water. The water in the lake was around 55 degrees so there was no way I was going in without the suit. By the time I was done, my face was numb. I can see why the hood is important to be comfortable.

I didn’t see much underwater. Visibility was low and it wasn’t an ideal dive spot, but this was just another learning dive for me. I started with 20lbs which was what I thought would be good for this dive. It was too much. I ended up being most comfortable with only 10lbs. Diving in fresh water is different then salt and I wasn’t wearing the hooded vest so this must be the reason for the difference in weight requirement. I did see a carp that appeared to be guarding his nest. I forgot batteries in the underwater camera so no pics. But it wasn’t all that interesting. The rest of the dive consisted of mud, weeds, clam shells and rocks.

We went on a couple more fishing trips. One Saturday evening and Sunday morning and caught more trout. We saw a Coyote on Sunday morning taking a stroll. Trout fishing was decent and we enjoyed the fish Sunday evening. The fish was fresh and tasty. I will be having the rest for lunch today. Mmmmm. I have to apologize for the quality of photo's. They are all video snapshots.