Lake Oroville, CA

[flagold]

Hello C-Brats,

This is a great site and resource -- thank you. I bought a 22 CD and am planning a trip to Ca this summer and am wondering how far one can get up the N. Fork of the Feather River, and if there are any creeks draining into Oroville that the CD will go up. What is the best/most secure location to launch and leave the tow vehicle in those parts? If anyone knows of charts for that lake and the creeks associated with it, I would appreciate knowing where to get them online (I'm in Fl, the local boat shop doesn't have much). This is an opinion question, but does Garmin or Raymarine/Furino/the rest have superior charts for rivers? I note Raymarine (Navionics Gold/Standard) seems to have no riverine charts for that area (looking at their website). I am outfitting the CD and river/lake charts will be a factor on which GPS Chartplotter I purchase.

Thank you and again, great website!

[El and Bill]

Flagold --
Your treasure website is sure an interesting one! Now, to your question -- we have been using Garmin Blue Charts for navigable rivers -- and they are excellent -- we have just been working on the one that includes the Columbia River for our Columbia cruise this fall.
Garmin also has a Fishing HotSpot CD that we have used for Lake Powell and Lake Mead and it is great -- they have lakes all over the US -- check their directory to see if they have coverage for lakes you are interested in.
The Fishing Hot Spot CD, besides detailed charts for specific lakes, has a download for US Recreation Lakes and Rivers that includes all the lakes and rivers of the US -- it is accurate and very useful, although that section lacks depths so must be used with caution. We just used it on Lake Mohave in AZ without a problem.
There are waterproof paper fishing charts, with depths, for most popular fishing lakes in the US -- they are inexpensive ($5 or so) -- we pick them up locally and like to have the paper as a backup to the electronic charts.

[flagold]

Thanks, I appreciate that very much. Will look for some local charts when I get out there.

MM