Backpacking in Henry Coe – Bass fishing from Packrafts on Mississippi Lake

[Manfred]

Seven BPLers met Friday evening at Henry Coe despite the forecast of rain and even thunderstorms with hail to backpack 13 miles into Henry Coe to go bass fishing on Mississippi Lake. Friday night at Poverty Flat was dry. Saturday we hiked most of the way to Mississippi with sunshine and intermittent short showers. Once we arrived a thunderstorm with hail came down. It was amazing to see the front of hail move slowly across the lake and finally hit us. After the hail was over we had clear weather for the rest of the weekend with abundant sunshine on Sunday. The bass fishing was great and we had bass filet for everyone for Saturday dinner and Sunday lunch.

My photos are in this Garmin Adventure . If you want to know why Rebecca's trail name is now "Miley" just look for the photo with the huge wrecking ball in the middle of nowhere. There are also many photos of all the wildflowers that were literally exploding all around us. It was a fantastic sight.

Thanks again to Rebecca, Debbie, Justin, Morgan, Brian and Andrew for making this a fun weekend.

Manfred

[Randy Nelson]

That looks like a lot of fun!

[Lori P]

That ball was dragged behind a tractor to remove brush, back in the day when Coe was a ranch.

There are also a couple of air strips out there, as well as old cabins, rusting stoves and miles of pipe.

I was in the camps at Manzanita point, giving a backpacking workshop, or I might have joined you. Willow Ridge is easier in the rain.

[Chris S]

Looks like a fun weekend. Sorry we had to cancel at the last minute, but it turned out to be one of the only weekends for us to use our ski passes this season, so we had to take advantage of that. Hopefully we'll be able to make the next one.

[d k]

Many thanks to Manfred for organizing this, and to him and all the other participants for being such a fun and generous group to hang out with.

View of the lake pre-hailstorm:

Justin, Morgan, and Manfred inflating packrafts:

Hanging out in Andrew's Trailstar during the post-hail drizzle, sharing Rebecca's cinnamon whiskey and Brian's "squirlbon":

Andrew's stylish fishing socks:

Manfred cooking bass with a miner's lettuce garnish:

Originally identified as the bass that Morgan caught on my eBay "tenkara" knockoff…this is actually the bass that Brian caught but donated to me. (Luckily for some of us, not all the fishing people wanted to eat their catch):

Chef Justin's chocolate/cinnamon/ghee/"evaporated cane juice" pancake dessert, missed out on by the early-to-bed folks:

Dusk on the lake:

Many food pictures, but most of my scenic ones didn't turn out as well as the food and people pictures!

[Paul Wagner]

We've only done one trip to Henry Coe…now you've got us motivated to do another.

But my guess is that those flowers weren't literally exploding. More likely they were blooming in huge numbers….grin

[Andrew F]

Thanks everyone for the fun trip. Biking was a lot of fun, particularly the downhill on Sunday but Brian and I did miss out on hiking with everybody. Brian took some amazing shots, he's still going through them but I'll post this one as a teaser until he sends me the rest. Coe HQ sunsets rarely disappoint.

[Alex Wallace]

That shot is beautiful.

[Virginia Craft]

Mmm…chocolate/cinnamon/ghee/"evaporated cane juice" pancake dessert

[Andrew F]

More photos:

[d k]

Mmmm indeed…those of us who stayed up later divvied up numerous pancakes as they came off the heat. "evaporated cane juice" was kind of a recurring joke during the trip, stemming from a conversation early on about how manufacturers must think we won't recognize that as a euphemism for "sugar": "oh look, there's no sugar in these, only evaporated cane juice – and juice is GOOD for you, right?"

[Rebecca 510]

Thank you, all, for a very fun weekend! It was great great getting to know all of you, exploring new parts of Coe, sharing food, trying a packraft, and hiking out late because none of us wanted to go home.

Very nice photos!

[Warren G]

There are some really good places in the park to find bass. My wife and I rode to Miss Lake a month ago and had good fishing. We camped in the same place y'all did. Last weekend my wife and I rode our bikes out to Coit lake to camp, and then rode out to Kingbird Pond for a day trip. I had the best fish on a HornyToad and a white spinnerbait. What did you find works best?

[Author]

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