"Don't call it a comeback!"

To my 344 friends and family I want to say thank you for theoretically not abandoning us!  We were in Alaska from June first to October seventh and have been recuperating ever since.  Why didn't I blog in Alaska?  Because the internet is the equivalent of two tin cans and a length of string.  Not possible.  Well, you've been home since October so what the hell have you been doing?  Nothing.  Everything.  Sleeping.  Basically, Alaska is MEGA.  I'm not sure what the opposite of MEGA is, but I'm trying to achieve that state right now.  It takes time to want to re-join the general population.  It takes a LOT of time to get over all of the "modern" amenities that your real house has.  Most important of all of the re-introductory activities, beside the benign (washing laundry a few feet away from my room instead of a country mile, showering whenever the hell I feel like it, sleeping in until I feel ashamed of my laziness, washing a two day full sink of dishes, etc...), or the mildly important (remembering how to pay your bills, buying food with your own money, having to drive to get things that you need, catching up with friends and family that you have not talked to in four months, etc...) is remembering that you actually like to fish!  You're not teaching anyone, you're not NOT fishing, and you're on no one's clock.
So.....you may have noticed that I have changed the name of this site from "Oregon Fly Fishing Anonymous" to "Oregon Fishing Anonymous."  Catching fish is awesome, no doubt, but the learning process of assessing habitat, discovering behavior, accounting for elements (water level, clarity, tide, etc.), proper presentation, and finally doing everything right is the most gratifying part of the whole package.  Basically, we'll use bait and gear to get ahead and then figure how we can catch fish on the fly if possible.  Aside from that, there are a lot of other things that I want to share as far as crabbing, clamming, and whatever else may strike me.  So, we're from the Oregon Coast and want to utilize (sustainably) our fisheries and continue to discover what else is out there.
So, we have been fishing a bit when the river has been in shape.  We did fall kings and actually did pretty well on bobber and eggs.  First trip we had to buy eggs from the local shop because there is nothing in the freezer after Alaska.

We did well the first day with one hen and a buck near a downed tree stump early on in the day.  After that, we floated all the way down to Cloverdale before we saw anymore kings.  Here we managed to hook another few jacks (that went back to the water) before we headed for the take out.  Sorry again for the late posting as this day was in mid-October.  Just trying to catch back up with the program.  We did fish kings again around November 7th and caught a 25 lb. buck and a heavy handful of silvers.  

Now that we're kind of transitioning over to winter steelhead and the kings are petering out, we've been focusing back on the estuary and more saltwater activities.  We did go on the first official steelhead trip of the season and caught one winter, but for reasons unknown did not take a picture.  It was a long float for one fish and a few cutthroat, so I'm reverting to my prior post about winter steelhead.  JUST WAIT!  We've gone out a few times now and half-assedly clammed, pumped shrimp and fished for flounder.  Interestingly the flounder size this time of year is much smaller than we were seeing earlier this year in the spring.  It is something to take into account that we've had a huge tide swing lately, so maybe that has something to do with it.  The most important thing that has happened this fall is our new boat!  How many boats does a person need?  We have four now, so.....at least four.  A buddy of ours from Sisters, Oregon owns the company Fish Craft so before we went to Alaska this summer we commissioned him to build us a boat.  A very specific boat, at that.  He's actually filing it under a demo boat because he's never built another like it with our mods.  It's going to be the ultimate bay boat when all is said and done, but we've yet to put it in the water.  Some weekend plans put us behind on the boat as well as home projects and undesirable weather, but here it is in most of its glory.

I say most of its glory because....BAM!!!  Now with more motor!

Actually, we were forced to mount the motor now on the unfinished boat because our motor guy heads out for two months on vacation.  We'll still be sending her back in for powder coat and some odds and ends.  All in all it's pretty exciting to see where we're headed.  Rockfish and ling cod and crabs, oh my.  That's all for now.  If you kept checking back here you're truly a loyal oregon coastie follower.  If you just showed up I'll try to keep it as consistent as last year before Alaska.  

Cape Meares Lake

The middle of last week on one of the hottest days (around seventy something degrees) we decided to give Cape Meares Lake a try again.  From what we've learned in the past this lake is only an option when there is absolutely no wind, which is usually never.  It sits right on the ocean with no buffer except for a little bit of raised beach on the ocean side and a man made shorty wall on the bay side.  We haven't really been able to explore the lake in the past because we didn't have a boat with a motor.  It was either man powering the raft in the wind, or Tippy and the trolling motor with a finite amount of battery life.  While it's not an extremely big lake at 120 acres, if you're on the other side and have to row back it's not going to be easy.  This lake is regularly stocked by ODFW and we often see a hog line of plunkers on the roadside bank, but I've never really successfully caught trout here.  I'm sure if you sat with the Powerbait and plunking setup waiting for fish to cruise through, you would probably pick up some fish.  With small lake streamers on fly rods we've gotten hits a few times, and actually seen the acclimated fish rising on midges.  From what I'd noticed on a previous trip after the lake had been stocked, the rising fish tended to congregate along that roadside area between the boat launch and the dike that separates the lake from Tillamook Bay.  I'm guessing that the trout stay here for a few reasons.  It could be the deepest part of the lake, though it's hard to see depth because of how tannic the water is.  I'm fairly sure that the entire lake cannot have a depth greater than fifteen feet, though we don't have a depth finder on the Heat and internet research was not productive.  This roadside area also maintains the longest amount of shade throughout the day.  It is where the inlets and the outlet of the lake are located.  Lastly, they are dumped in the water at the boat launch which is also on that roadside.

Today, since we had the Heat, and it was about the best possible conditions, we decided to go hunt for bass and explore the outer edges of the lake.  When we arrived there were only to old guys plunking on the bank, no boats, and the kayak squad was thankfully somewhere else.  This may be something to note if you plan on stealth fishing for bass here.  It is an extremely popular lake for kayak lessons.  If you see kayakers, find the trout because the bass will be blown.
We used the motor to get across the lake and then poled around the edges with T on the poling platform that he affixed to the back of the boat.  The clarity of the water was terrible.  Two feet of visibility when there wasn't a breath of wind.  As you can see from the picture, the water is (and has been on every other trip) a constant brown.  I think that although it was frustrating as far as visibility, these conditions made the bass less wary about cruising around.  They were more apt to come out into the lake instead of hunkering under the brush along the banks.  We actually ended up seeing a ton of bass this day, but spooked the majority of them by putting the boat on top of them.  I tried blind casting through the reeds and in some open spots by the lily pads with a small popper (pictured above).  Unfortunately, the bass are just not to the stage yet where they will take top water.  I think that of all the coastal bass lakes, Cape Meares will likely see the earliest spawning bass because of how shallow it is.  The water felt like just cooled bathwater when I stuck my hand in.

Just another look at the "clarity" of the water. Blech.

As we poled around the edges of the lake blowing bass we noticed that they are definitely building their beds.  Good sign.  There were even a few times where T would say, "There's a dead bass right there!"  As soon as he would say it, he would look away for living fish and look back to see that the "dead" fish had disappeared.  That mystery played itself out to us later.  As we continued into shallower weedier water we started to notice that we were spooking another kind of fish.  There are a few other kinds of fish purported to live in this lake.  Supposedly there is a very small population of bluegill that are not worth fishing for because they are probably actually extinct here.  The only other mystery fish they could be is either the brown bullhead catfish or the channel catfish.

 A catfish in an Oregon coastal lake seemed laughable to me until we actually got close enough to observe the fish before we spooked it.  We could actually see the barbels on the fishes' faces.  It was really exciting at first because we had never seen them before in this environment.  It soon became frustrating because we realized that we had absolutely no way to catch them.  The reeds were to thick to strip anything close to the bottom and we had no scent to stick on a fly under an indicator.  Ah well.  We were looking for bass anyway.  We continued our way around the back corner of the lake spooking more small bass and catfish.  We decided to head back over to the place where T had seen the "dead" fish and the more developed spawning beds.  What we found was awesome.  T yelled and pointed excitedly at another "dead" fish, and I finally saw it this time, only it was moving.  It turned out to be two huge bass courting each other, or building a bed, or something.  The fish were actually tailing out of the water.  I've seen bass building a bed before, but I've never actually seen their tails out of the water.  We anchored up alongside the bed and just watched them for awhile.  They either didn't notice us dropping two anchors in the water and standing in a big green boat, or they just didn't care to move.  I'm guessing the latter.   T finally rigged up with a heavy streamer that he intended to drop right in the middle of the bed to see which one he could piss off first.  One of the fish took off, but the other made a wide circle around the bed and then aggressively swam up to the fly several times without actually hitting it.  These are about the best conditions that we ever get to see before we head to Alaska.  After several flies with varying reactions from the fish, T put on a streamer that ended up getting the best reaction of all.  I guess I can only describe it as closely mimicking a four inch trout.  After several false charges and tail pecks the bass finally hit the streamer.  We probably sat there playing the charge game with that fish for an hour.  It really didn't matter that it took so long because everything about the fish's behavior told us that at some point with just the right presentation through the bed, it was going to hit.

It wasn't the biggest bass, but it was a triumph anyway.  As you can see from the picture the wind had started to kick up as it was about four in the afternoon.  We did cruise around to look for some more fish in that same area, and did find a few others, but the chop on the water made it impossible to see how the fish were behaving toward our flies.  Without any way to see the fish eat, it was basically over.  We packed it in and motored back to the launch.  With only two weeks to go until Alaska, we're still hoping that we'll get one more windless day so we can go back for more.

Metolius / Black Butte Ponds

Day two of the four days at Camp Sherman we decided to stay on the Metolius.  We had thought about
heading to the Crooked River, but decided that it would be better to stay on the Met for the weekdays instead of battling the weekend traffic.  Despite this cleverly laid plan, it was hard to find a rock to stand on, so to speak.  Whether or not (many times not) people feel this way, I believe that the etiquette for a river should include the entire run.  Riffle.  Run.  Tail out.  I've had my fair share of honkies (that's racist) saddle up right next to me at the tail out while I fish the riffle and in my mind it should be obvious that if I started at the top, I intended to fish all the way to the bottom.  Just because you got your Disneyland fast pass doesn't mean you don't have to wait in some sort of a line.  I can understand the frustration that many have on the Metolius because it is an out of the way destination and chances are pretty good that it took them quite a drive to get there.  Is this worthy of breaching river etiquette?  Negative.  You're just (unfortunately for you) out the gas money.  So, as we combed the relatively few places that you have to drive into to fish on the Metolius we found most to be claimed.  Bummer for us.  Looks like it's driving game day on the Met.  Miraculously there was no one at Allingham Bridge and we claimed the territory for a bit.  Though this is probably close to my least favorite spot on the river for quiet and scenery, in the past it has been a pretty consistent fish producer.  I was on dog duty so I didn't actually fish here, but got the top of the bridge job spotting fish.  MIL put several casts through, but as before it seemed like the river was cooking a little as far as speed.  Weighted flies are the option on the Metolius, which definitely makes for more of a challenge than just dumping a couple of split shot, but for the better.  There were plenty of whitefish combing the bottom though and T finally was able to get his flies to the down to get a look at one.  Say what you want, but I'll take a whitefish any day versus skunk-o.

A nice rainbow on the Metolius is supposed to be the ultimate prize, but for us it's the bull trout.  Again, we dig weird fish.  T has "developed" two flies that are bull trout candy for the Met.  I quote developed because I don't necessarily think that tying a super long bunny leech constitutes a massive discovery, but I've never seen it in a fly shop either.  It seems too that anywhere you see whitefish, you're likely to find some bull trout.  T dead drifted a five inch weighted creamy rabbit leech through the run and tail out and discovered that our previous collected knowledge was still legit.  Bull trout cannot resist flesh man...

Now, it's pretty hard to hold a bull trout properly for a picture because their tail is floppy, slippery, and seemingly boneless. We've found it best to just keep them low to the water to keep them calm and for easy release.  If you hold one up for the classic photo it will undoubtedly flail and you will drop it hard.  It could hit your net, pop your fly (to have it stuck in its face until it eventually rusts. Brutal.), or just swim away before you actually get a decent shot.  This wasn't even close to the biggest bull trout we've seen in parts of this river, but it's always cool to catch one and they really look like dinosaur fish.  Very cool.  

After the whitey and bull trout we played the run around game hitting up Pine Rest and the spot just below it only to find them taken.  With this info we decided to opt out on the Wizard Falls hatchery and headed back to the cabin for the day for (you guessed it) beers.

The next day we headed back out on the Metolius after a consensus that the Crooked sounded like it wouldn't be that much fun for the drive that it took.  Also snakes.  Aside from the fact that I vehemently hate snakes (especially the poisonous bitey kind), we had the dogs again and didn't want to take the chance.  We headed to the Canyon Creek campground and set off for a bit of a hike to burn up some of the day and see some beautiful scenery.  This section has quite a bit of gradient in the river so the fishing spots are far between.  It was also apparently International Hiking Day as the trail was clogged.  After we had hiked for about a mile and only glimpsed one bull trout that chewed on T's fly for a while as he watched the birds or something, we decided to head over to the Black Butte Ponds.  Last time we had been to the ponds there had been a callibaetis hatch and we had worked hard to trick some of these big fish into eating on the surface.

It was a beautiful day at about sixty degrees but as always at Black Butte, the wind was up.  Not Florida flats windy, but enough to chop the water and leave little hope of rising fish.  The first lake had an incredible amount of vegetation and algae making it impossible to fish anything but top water, which was not happening at the moment.  The second lake (pictured above) we fished with small lake streamers; wooly buggers and egg suckers.  The main portion of the lake didn't fish at all, but the small canal between the algae lake and the larger lake seemed to be where the fish were.

For reference, waders are not necessary here.  We had just come from the Metolius and chose not to wader down.  Since it was toward the end of the day and T had proved that fish do in fact live in the Black Butte Ponds still, we headed back to the cabin to bbq and watch the comedy awards.  The next day (Sunday) was our last so we decided to head back to the Black Butte Ponds instead of fighting the crowds on the Metolius again.  There was zero wind and a callibaetis hatch that held a small candle to the one from five years ago, but the fish were occasionally rising.  I must have changed my fly thirty times to no avail.  The fish would take a natural (in the canal again) directly next to my pattern.  As much of a bummer as it is to not have the right fly, it never gets old seeing fish feeding all around you.  It's actually kind of fun when the fish are smarter than you, because it means there is still more that can be learned or at least attempted.  With the wrong flies and a run in with an aggressive kayaker, we decided to wrap the vacation up.  We tubed all the rods and headed back over to the coast.  

The Fall River

Before we head up north to work for the summer our family tend to come out of the woodwork realizing that this is their last chance to see us before we will be pretty much out of regular contact for four months.  Not saying it's a bad thing, it just keeps us incredibly busy.  Last week MIL and FIL wanted one more mini vacation hurrah, so we headed back over to Camp Sherman and stayed in a little A-frame for four days of fishing.  The first day we drove all the way over to the Fall River near Sunriver just outside of Bend.  The last time I had fished here was probably five to seven years ago.  We stopped into the Fly Fisher's Place in Sisters to say hi to some old friends on our way over, but didn't see them in the shop.  We did hear, however, that the Fall had a huge fish exodus.  For some reason they just weren't there in the numbers that they used to be.  They also mentioned that the river had recently been stocked and that there were plans to stock up to ten thousand fish there this year.  When I think of stocking I think of put-and-take lakes so the concept of stocking a river was strange to me.

We headed to the hatchery first.  It was kind of cold and blustery which is how I always remember it.  I may have never fished here in warm weather.  What I didn't remember and was pleased to see again were the heated bathrooms.  What a weird luxury to have in the middle of nowhere.  We walked down past the trophy pools (which I couldn't get a decent picture of) and stared at the bathtub fish for a bit before continuing down the very beaten trail and walking straight through peoples' back yards.  The water here is gin clear (there's still no better way to get around that cliche) so we had to play the spot and stalk game, which is T's favorite.  Walk a few paces.  Scan the water.  A few more paces.  Scan the water.  We had only walked about ten paces when T spotted the first fish.  A pretty decent sized fish that needed just the right drift, and ended up taking a green Stalcup's caddis emerger.  Indicators in the first part of this section were way too gaudy so we had to nymph old school and actually watch to see if the fish took the fly.  This is T's joint.  He digs seriously technical fishing and will go through his entire boat bag and all of his boxes to catch a fish that he can see feeding.  I don't actually have a picture of this fish because I got bored waiting for him to catch it and headed up river.  I will say that it is good to have a second in command when fishing for these fish.  A buddy on your left to yell at you to set when they see the fish eat and you don't.  We played the Fall this way the whole day.  It's not really a multi-person fishery anyway.  The fish here are quality in size but they are few and far between.  Really we didn't see any fish under twelve inches the entire day.  The next fish was just above the falls.  I had to stand far back so the fish wouldn't see me as it was super close to the bank.  I fished a callibaetis dry with a red and white zebra midge dropper.  I must have made a hundred casts to get the right drift and finally got the fish to eat.  Flick, flick, flick.....It was pretty cool though that I finally did everything right.  The Fall should be the place that every angler goes once they learn the basics.  This place will hone you into a fisherman or you're just not going to catch fish.  They hang in the hardest places to get a drift, under logs, but still in plain sight.  If there is any unnatural movement to your presentation you're SOL.

I think this ended up being the smallest fish of the day on the Fall, and I was really happy with it.  Beautiful, unmarred, all with vastly different spot variations.  The regulations for this river are pretty ambiguous as to whether or not retention is legal, but I feel if I ever saw someone keep a fish from here they would get a serious eye shaming and dog shit on their door handle.  Next we walked up to the place where all the toadies live.  I was pretty excited to see that they were still there in the same places.

MIL stood out here until her legs were numb from the forty-five degree water.  Again she had us coaching her from an elevated position and cast to the biggest fish I had seen in this section yet.  She ended up using a small pinch on indicator here as the wind was throwing a little chop on the water and there was no way we would be able to see the fish eat.  She never did get the big fish, because an assassin came from the logs and intercepted the drift.  It was still a good fifteen inch fish and was well deserved.  FIL waded in and threw a few more casts at the donkey fish, and actually hooked it for a brief moment, but couldn't keep the connection.  So, we all hooked up above the falls and landed three out of the four, never seeing the actual size of the big fish.  Still, so far this had been one of the most productive days collectively that we'd had on the Fall.  With the toady trout stuck, we didn't see any more fish and decided that since it was midday we should head up river to the campground.

When we walked above the bridge, it was kind of amazing how few trout were really here.  In the past this upper section of river had higher numbers of trout in smaller sizes.  When you stood on the bridge and looked down on both sides you could see five to ten trout feeding and tucking into the cut edges.  This day there were no fish visible from the bridge.  We walked up a bit to the spot in the picture and saw a huge trout with his big white mouth flapping open and closed, feeding actively.  We all took our shots at this fish, constantly changing the fly pattern.  It was a collective effort to watch if the fish had taken the fly.  Finally FIL got the right drift and got his trophy for the day.  We must have fished to that fish for almost two hours.

After everything that had gone by this aggressively feeding fish, it ended up taking a pickpocket nymph.  Our guess as we watched the fishes' behavior is that he had been specifically feeding on the emerging callibaetis and we simply could not replicate the right movement or drift.  The fish only ate after the hatch had ended and we figured he just became less choosey. Who knows, really.  Maybe our first five hundred drifts were just garbage.  It's always fun to try to put reason to things though.

It was about four o'clock when we finally hooked and landed the fish.  We walked up the river a ways just to know that we had, but we all knew we were pretty much done.  We had an hour drive back to Camp Sherman, we had all hooked and landed a fish on one of the clearest rivers in Oregon, and it was definitely time to get some Wendy's Jr. bacon cheeseburgers and drink some beers.  The Fall is not quite as I remembered it, but thankfully there are still some big fish in there.

The Edge of Summer

Today (Cinco de Mayo for the party people) started off with an unease before my feet even hit the floor.  Itchy.  T gets up about an hour before I do, but it was clear that tension was palpable for both of us.  Then, I realized that today was the day where we have reached the precipice.  We are at the very top of the roller coaster.  We're at the highest point where your stomach and your heart are in your throat and we know that it's going to go downhill fast from here and that we have no control over what will happen.  Basically, we're going back to work in Alaska in less than one month and all of the little things that have to be done before we get on the plane actually need to be accomplished.  We need a hotel room in Anchorage, an appointment to get the dogs ready to fly, packing, shutting down the house, etc...  It has happened every year for ten years and every year it is no less stressful.  Anyway the point is, being in the house today would have meant panic attacks all around, so we went to the closest place to fish.  Our little place outside of town.
We took the Heat and with the motor restriction on the lake were made to paddle around, which was kind of a fun way to see how well we could cooperate when rowing.  For a first time, I think we did pretty well.  We rowed around the edges of the lake and realized that it was the clearest that it has been ever, that we've seen.  Also, the lily pads were thick, so we were thinking that we were definitely going to see some bass in their usual spots.  The hydrilla was growing up from the bottom of the lake making it seem much shallower than it actually is.  Aside from the extreme hydrilla growth, the algae was thick.  Really it was the thickest I remember seeing and it soon became clear that if we saw anything bass related it would be the cloud of silt they left behind after we floated too close to them with the boat.  T blind casted a big mouse pattern into their usual places without a sniff.  Then.....the motherfuckin' stockin' truck showed up.

Once when we were fishing Hebo Lake we shared one of the allotted casting platforms with a kid who was spin fishing that had a little bit of a gangsta thing going on.  Flat billed hat, inexplicably long t-shirt, and a back pack filled with spinners.  He was a cool guy and the image that he was trying to portray didn't fit with a person that was out solo fishing for fun.  To each their own.  On this particular day, the stocking truck came and his eyes nearly popped from their sockets as he exclaimed, "IT'S THE MOTHERFUCKIN' STOCKIN' TRUCK!"  He bailed from our platform to go fish directly next to the firehose of fish coming out of the truck into the water.  Since that day and forever from now we feel compelled to shout his words each time we see it.

Anyway, with the bass under heavy cover and still not on beds, we decided to put the beat down on the stockers.  They like to hang out at the boat ramp for awhile after they are forcibly jettisoned into their new environment.  We paddled over to the ramp where, at this point, it was completely ridiculous for us to be in a boat as we could have made any cast from dry land.  We dropped the bow and stern anchor and attempted dry flies for a minute, but they were too stirred up and really had probably never fed for natural bugs on the surface.  Eventually we switched to the tried and true tiny indicator with a small pink and white ice cream cone midge.  One fly. If you need to (which we did today) you can attach a small split shot to the knot at your tippet connection.  Get it out to where the fish are and rope away.  I would recommend (as we did today) pinching your barb because unless you intend to keep your limit of these not so tasty treasures, it definitely saves the fishes' faces and makes it that much easier to release them.  You definitely don't get as many fish to the boat, but who cares?

I know it looks like he's squishing this fish, but really he just has big hands and it's an 8 to 10 inch stocker trout.  The fish is alive for now.

After about 50 fish to the boat and another lap around the lake for good measure we decided to pack it in and considered the afternoon a success in delaying the madness of go time.  We did see a couple of recycled steelhead on the last trip around the lake, but spooked them on approach paddling the canoe.  A trolling motor would have been preferable for stealth, but we weren't on a mission other than to exit the house.  So, the non-mission was accomplished and we can worry about all of that other stuff tomorrow.  Maybe we'll go see the stockers again.

Flounder Flat / End Game

With the 80 degree heat that came in yesterday there was no way that we were staying inside.  The dogs needed to get out and the best place to take them is the beach.  With our previous fly trips at the estuary the flounder defeat has just killed that idea for us.  Flounder win.  We get it.  Since we can't take the dogs in the Heat (canoe), we went on foot with the two light tackle spinning rods, the shrimp gun, and a jug o' sunscreen.
In our recent trips to the estuary (which I haven't blogged about because of the shame spiral they've inflicted) we've spotted the flounder and realized that they tend to group in a certain area and may actually be resident.  We have deemed this area Flounder Flat.  We had the hardest time because we would spot them, chase them down, and they would vanish.  Counter to everything that I have read online, Flounder are spooky as hell.  They spook at the thought of a shadow.  So yesterday we gave up on flounder on the fly, but we never really give up.
We hit the middle of the incoming tide and really had no agenda for the day.  We ran the hell out of the dogs, combed through the water next to the eel grass for cockles, and eventually pumped enough shrimp for a day of crab stripping.  We hiked to the outer edge of the area where we absolutely knew that the flounder were and experienced exactly what we knew would happen.  Crabs.  From what we've learned about this back area of the estuary, there are really no crab of any size, but a multitude of undersized assholes that will strip your bait right off and let go before you can reel them up to see them.  The only thing we haven't done here with the crab is actually drop a pot in the water which would be a bit sketchy to pull up in a canoe.  Maybe next time we'll brave it.  Anyway, we enjoyed the day, played a few crab, and then hiked back to Flounder Flat.  We barefooted up the beach and it kind of felt like we were in a different part of the world.  The sky had no clouds, the water was completely clear and aquamarine, and it was 80 degrees on the central Oregon coast.  I kind of felt like a teenager really.  Back when you could just enjoy a day with no reservation and dig your toes into the sand.  Apparently I am one of those weepy fly fishers that I always bitch about.  When we finally got to Flounder Flat, we set the rods with a weight about two and half feet above the hook baited with the sand shrimp that we had pumped earlier.   The tide was coming in so we cast "upstream" and set the rods on a stick.  The thing that I think was the kicker here was that with the incoming tide, it tumbled the weight ( 3/4 oz.) as it was trying to set.  Apparently Flounder are not only scent oriented.  They are also ambush predators that respond to a jigging action.  So, the motion of the bait combined with the scent as it tumbled was the golden ticket.

So, once we got to Flounder Flat we made three casts, set, and caught three fish.  With the appeal of catching the fish gone because we had figured it out with bait, we got to have a little science time with the fish.  Very cool.  Flounder are fairly timid and we got a chance to check out their behavior.  I always knew that they could bury themselves, but didn't know the extent.  So this is what they look like when they disappear.

This is the same fish.  T pushed it around a little with his hand until it went into survival mode, or just got tired.  Now, there wasn't much sand here so I think that the fish had a little trouble completely burying itself.  The other two fish were able to completely bury themselves to the point that you couldn't even see an outline.  The coolest thing is that they do a kind of submarine down bubble as they bury themselves.  With that thought I present my first video upload.  There is no sound because we kept saying stupid things and the sun glare is awful, but you get the idea.

In the video you can see the down bubble effect and also, that the fish apparently cannot swim backward.  It kind of looks like a trainer at Sea World.  T would just put his hand on the nose of the fish and it would have to redirect.  The coolest part was that when the fish gets under the sand it still needs to breathe, so there is a little bit of a breathing bubble.  If I had known then what I know now, maybe I would have been able to put a fly in front of a flounder that I couldn't see.  I should have been looking for bubbles (forehead slap)!  I'm now thinking that on an incoming tide we could drift the boat with a drop shot rig kind of back bouncing with scent and get into them on the flat.  Pretty much the next stop is wet suits.  Seriously.  Snorkeling with Flounder will happen.  We had a good day though, wore the dogs out,  and learned some things that may help us with catching them on the fly.  It may not be over, just over for now.

Visible Flounder (New Perspective)

So, before this hell cloud of rain and wind hit a few days ago, we had the chance to take the Heat out in our estuary to see what this flounder thing really is.  This whole flounder situation is like figuring out steelhead all over again.  You know, we learned about getting the right leader length, bead color, water level for steelhead, and it all took time.  That's how I'm feeling with the flounder right now.  This is a good game and I think we know the rules, we're just starting to figure out the strategy (to get all....movie trailer about it).  Something that we didn't know when we were blind fishing from the shore is exactly how close in the flounder come, when they do it, and why.  The Heat has given us a way to see straight down and travel around the flats to watch exactly what the flounder are doing.

What we've been observing is that the fish are definitely moving in with the tide (rocket science), and head to any depth on the flats between 10 and 2 to 3 feet.  The smallest juvenile flounder are even in the 6 inch to 1 foot deep water.  All of the flounder, no matter what age, are not like the gulf flounder of which I've found the most abundant information on the internet.  Gulf flounder apparently don't spook and are highly aggressive, but are in deeper (20 ft?) water with murkier conditions.  Anyway, what I know of our fish is that they are ghost spooky.  The idea of the shadow of the boat crossing their back spooks them.  We had first started fishing heavy sink tips but decided that with how shallow the water was, the sink trip dragging across the bottom was probably spooking the fish.  We set up in a drift with the tide or the wind (whichever was in our favor), so that we would float back toward the ocean while doing a slow strip or even just a troll almost to cover a large area of water.  We actually saw about 20 flounder all together,  but obviously didn't have the right presentation.  To confess, this was my birthday float, so we enjoyed a bottle of wine from the SILs and pretty much blanket casted our hearts out.

We did see quite a few of these sand lances doing what later research said was a spawning activity.  It was definitely cool to see these huge balls of sand lance and the flounder were always right in the vicinity.  New flies will be tied.

This photo was taken from the interwebs.  I didn't have the means to capture a sand lance at the time.

So again, no flounder to the boat, but I feel like we learned a lot.  We learned a lot just in time for some supremely shitty weather, so now I sit searching google for flounder instead of searching the estuary.  Soon.  On that note, here is my favorite picture found today of the starry eyed flounder.  The California Department of Fish and Game has a true artist on their hands...

Yeah, I'm a smart ass, but c'mon.  On a cooler note, we dredged the internet for this video today and got some insight into what it actually looks like when a flounder is interested in what you're waggling in his face.  When the weather clears, we're going to try this in a more fly fishy kind of way.  Rad.

Metolius Shake Up

Holy crows, it's been ten days since my last post.  I blame this solely on the fact that we have not been doing anything fishing related, and it has definitely been wearing on us.  Three days ago, we found a boat while cruising craigslist (which is a terrible habit) and decided that we definitely didn't have enough boats.  Also, we had been wanting to get over to the Metolius to fish and realized that we hadn't been there in about four years.  Conveniently enough, the boat was located in Bend so we decided to take a road trip and add a third boat to our arsenal.  Check out "The Heat."  Tippy is going to have a run for her money, I can tell you that.

Now, The Heat may seem like your average Coleman Ram-X Scanoe, but he (yeah it's a he) came with a badass galvanized trailer, a 2 horse Honda, and the ability to go almost anywhere.  Estuary beware.  Anyway, we were very pleased to get the boat and can't wait to get it in the water to see what it's capable of.  On to the Metolius...

 We actually used to live in Camp Sherman and fished the Metolius quite a bit in 2004 and 2005 so this was maybe our second time fishing this river since then.  When we first came to the Metolius in 2004 we were young and eager and slept on the ground in our sleeping bags.  We ended up freezing our asses off and had to zip our dog into the sleeping bag because we almost froze him to death too.  We decided to commemorate the first ass freezing by camping out again at the Lower Bridge.  This time however, we slept in the 4runner with memory foam pads.  Things change.  We didn't end up getting the whole boat thing wrapped up until about 3 pm, then actually made it out to the river by 4 pm.  We did make one little stop by Pine Rest camp ground before we headed out to Lower Bridge, but didn't catch anything there.

At Lower Bridge we ended up doing about a mile round trip hike up the left bank, mostly looking for bull trout.  In the past we have seen a few trout in there and hooked a few, but it's mainly a bull trout show.  T did end up hooking one in the flat right above the bridge, but couldn't keep his hands on it for a picture.  We've kind of figured bull trout out in that they will either be super aggressive and take a four inch black leech on the swing (which you always try first), or they will hit a four inch flesh leech dead drifted under an indicator.  They weren't having the black but did end up hitting the flesh which T promptly lost on the mid-river stump.  The last one.  Of course.  

So, I wouldn't say that we were necessarily prepared for this trip.  We confirmed the boat deal at 9 am, packed up by 10 am and hit the road.  There was no fly prep.  The next day we walked down river from Wizard Falls with very little activity as far as trout, except in the Idiot Hole where T did hook a 4 inch fish that was promptly eaten off of his fly by a bull trout.  Very cool to see, but not exactly what we were going for.  We decided to call the trip around 1 pm so that we would be back to the coast by about 4 pm and potentially take The Heat out the next day.  We did make one more stop on the way out at Pine Rest where T caught a trout to round the whole trip out.  For a not so well thought out trip, it ended up being awesome just to get to the other side of the mountain and dry out for a couple days.

Dogs Day Out

Our last trip out was with Tippy and the new motor, which the dogs did not get invited to so when boredom hit today around 1 pm it seemed only right to make it a dog day.  We decided to drive up the road a ways from our house to a place where three rivers come together for a little hike.  There is definitely more hiking involved than fishing on this stretch.

 The cool thing about it is that we’ve only seen one guy up here before (which was actually kind of shocking).

Now I know that I said I was over steelhead for the season, but there’s just something different about it when you can hike and catch them in very small water.  Most of the time you can see them, and if you can’t, they’re either there or they’re not.  The pools are so small and the fish will be so hungry at this point that they are going to eat if they’re there.  As an aside, the cutthroat fishing can be awesome, and they are everywhere.  Every little pool behind every little rock can hold a cutthroat; the biggest topping out at about 14 inches.  The cutthroat fishing isn’t open until May 24th, but by-catch is inevitable and they tend to hang in the same water as the steelhead (funny thing).  

This guy was nicknamed “Piggy” because aside from eating a ridiculously large bead, he puked this up.

A trudge up from this spot is the one place.  The one where a fish will be if they’ll be anywhere at all, and today he was there.  A regret that I have is that I didn’t try to skate this fish up with a dry.  When I threw my beads in the water, before they even had a chance to sink, he came up and hit them.  I actually didn’t really know what to do, reacted like an idiot, tried to set the hook, stung the fish, and ultimately lost it due to horrible hookset.  It’s one of those situations that you replay in your head while berating yourself over and over.  Oh yeah, and when the hook left the fish’s mouth I promptly threw it into the only spindly tree within reach behind me.  T was down river and probably heard the expletives, because he kind of made his way up.  I sat for a bit and rested the hole thinking that there was no way after stinging the fish that it would eat again, but it did eat a bead essentially on the surface of the water.  After about 15 minutes he ate on my first drift.  Wonder how long I really needed to wait.

He was wild and hadn’t spawned yet and looked like this was the place that he intended to do so.  He was super healthy and I was actually pretty blown away by how acrobatic he was.  Pretty much made my day because up here you never know what you’re gonna get.

After this spot there is one other up and down a very long muddy trail, which we hiked for the dogs and just to be out of the house.

I don’t know if I said it, but this is a seriously beautiful place with skinny water, and green everywhere if you come at the right time.  We didn’t catch anymore steelhead, but one up here is all you should expect and hope for.  More and you’re just lucky to be in the right place at the right time.  It poured the whole day, but the dogs wore themselves out, we had fun for a couple of hours, and it makes sitting down to watch television at the end of the day seem like an okay thing to do.

Tippy gets a "new" pair of shoes

T’s grandfather graciously donated a motor to us that he had been storing since the fifties.  He apparently used it for about 5 years, and we’re pretty sure that the year is 1955.  Lucky for us, his grandfather was fairly meticulous with maintenance.  We think that he must have repainted it at some point, but other than that, it’s a stock 1955 Mercury Mark 20 in seemingly great condition.

There are very few rubber parts in this motor.  She’s all metal and weighs as much as I do.  T checked the spark plugs, looked for any evident damage, ran some Seafoam through it, and then we fired it up in a garbage can full of water.  Only 3 or 4 pulls and it fired up after over 55 years of sleeping untouched.  It kind of looks like a classic car being pulled by a shitty old winnebago, but if it goes, it goes.

We needed a safe place to test it out so we hit the Little Nestucca on the end of the high tide so that at least we could float back down river to the boat launch if the Mark died.  It may be the loudest and most environmentally unfriendly exhaust belcher, but damned if it didn’t get us quite a way up the river.  

 We’d heard word of one or two springers that have been caught, most likely by accident while fishing steelhead, but we brought some rods anyway.    The water was moving pretty slow, almost too slow for a swing with a heavy sink tip, so we cast a few times as we drifted down, then lost interest.  We’re both on the same page that we should come back when the water drops a little so when the kings come in they’ll be in the obvious places.  It also looks like it could be an awesome cutthroat fishery, but it’s not open yet so, bummer. 

On the way down river it became evident that the years in storage have not been completely kind to the Mark.  They may or may not be small fixes.  We’re thinking an idle adjustment and maybe a personal adjustment to the lack of throttle sensitivity.  With newer tiller motors you can feel an adjustment in between speeds before the boat starts to actually speed up.  With the Mark it just kind of jumps into high like the Delorean.  Not sure if we just need to pretend we’re as hardcore as people in the fifties were or if there’s a genuine problem here.  I think we’re both in agreement that for now, lakes and things that won’t suck us out to the ocean are acceptable for the Mark.  No outgoing tides yet.

No Flounder today

After our vacation to Munsel Lake we still had the flounder in the back of our minds.  Yesterday (Sunday, March 30th) we caught the end of the incoming to hide tide at the estuary.  This was officially the last day of spring break in Oregon so we were lucky when there was no one in the spot where we caught the flounder last time.  It’s not a very obvious place for fishermen, but I expected to see people on the beach or on horses.  

I don’t think that we have ever hit the incoming tide in this spot and it was surprising how fast it rips in.  Even throwing our heaviest sink tips, the tide ripped our flies from the bottom.  The idea was to keep our flies on the bottom and slowly strip them in bumping along the bottom the entire time.  When it finally got to slack tide, it was easier to keep them on the bottom, but the feel is obviously completely different with a fly rod than a spinning rod.  It’s hard to keep a feeling of connection to your fly on a sandy bottom in the ocean as opposed to the feeling of a weight ticking the bottom on a spinning rod.  We did not end up hooking any flounder, but I did manage to launch what appeared to be a small greenling into the air.  My hook set might have been a little overkill.  I never made the connection with that fish and he promptly fell back into the water.  I call this a no skunk day because a fish touched the end of my line.  Not much else to report on this one, other than the importance of stripping baskets when fishing any ocean water.  Fly line wrapped in beach grass/devil sticks is the most infuriating thing ever.  Every cast.  No bueno.

Olalla Lake

Waiting to spend a week in Florence was killing us so we decided to pack up a few days early and head to Newport to fish Olalla reservoir and stay at the family house.  We’re pretty horrible at waiting for anything, for that matter.  Anyway, in our haste to get fishing we forgot that we were heading out on a Saturday, the first day of spring break, and the week after the lake had been stocked.  It was a zoo.  Luckily, Olalla has a roped and semi-improved launch so we didn’t run into the same problems as Big Creek Resevoir.  In general the crowd at Olalla seems a bit more respectful of each other.  The people are really nice and actually courteously say hello, or at least wave.  The photo is pretty far away (which is where we wanted to be) from the party, but all of those dots on the hillside are cars, trucks, and RVs.  The boat launch is just to the left in the picture.

Since we weren’t on a mission to slay a boatload of stocked trout, we skirted the edge of the lake looking for shallow areas that might hold bass.  Olalla is a fairly deep lake and slopes quickly from the banks.  On a whole tour around the edges and arms of the lake we only found a couple of areas where bass could possibly be.  We did actually come upon a school of about 8 bass that were hanging out under some downed trees in the most gradually sloping shallow area on the lake.  As is always our experience this time of year, they wanted nothing to do with us.  Some of the smaller fish did actually look at a small trout popper, but they were either lethargic because of the water temperature (48 to 50 degrees) or they could plainly see us because of the amazing clarity of the water.  

The scissors in the picture are the 4 inch Dr. Slicks, for reference.  These poppers are really fun to work, despite the fact that they weren’t productive this time.  On stormy days we’ve been painting some of these up lately and have been trying to test how they work in the water.  It’s been a good no-fish day project.

So, no luck with the bass again which was expected, but at least we know where they are now.  Maybe in the fall when we get back from Alaska the weather will still be warm enough that the bass will be aggressive.  Olalla Lake sits right outside of Toledo, Oregon which tends to get hotter in the day than Newport because it’s about 10 miles inland.  It could happen.

The main mission for the day was to get out of the house and fish, but we also wanted to check out Tippy’s sonar/gps system for the Munsel Lake trip.  We ended up marking the deepest spot on Olalla at about 75 ft.  

While the fishing was pretty weak (aside from stocked trout), it was good to get out and explore the lake.  It was amazingly clear with lots of structure, some sandy bottoms, and cut trees actually in the lake.  For anyone out there with a real summer, I’d look into the bass when it starts to warm up.

Munsel Lake vacation

Finally vacation!  Only about an hour drive from the Newport family house and we were in Florence.  Munsel Lake is right before you hit Fred Meyer, so we didn’t even have to go into town.  We decided to go straight to the boat launch because we planned to boat across the lake and keep Tippy in the water the whole week.  The little rental we booked had an awesome dock with a boat slip which was incredibly convenient.

We knew that the first day was going to be the best weather day, so we really tried to fish long.  It was pretty evident that the lake had been stocked a few days prior because all of the trout were still hanging around the launch area, as were the boaters.  We decided to go ahead and fish the trout instead of wasting the nice day scanning the perimeter of the lake for bass.  It was pretty damned windy when we got there and Tippy’s little trolling motor was barely pushing through on the highest setting, but we managed for awhile.  Stocker fishing was good and actually mildly exciting because there were a lot of varied sizes of fish.  The wind kicked up pretty good around 5 so we headed in, got settled, and drank some beer.  We loaded up again around 6:30 and had a shot at dry fly fishing at the main inlet that feeds the lake.  This part was awesomely frustrating because the fish were exploding.  Unfortunately, we were in the middle of a biblical midge hatch and the fish were taking the midges rising to the surface as well as some surface insects.  We did rise a couple of fish, but there was such an abundance of food that our flies were not all that rare or enticing.  At about 7:30 we decided to call it and so did the fish.  Off to the shack for more beer and leftover chinese.

The next day (Tuesday March 25th) it became apparent that we were going to have to split up.  Tippy rides two people (and two dogs) max so MIL and I took the kayaks.  This was my second experience actually using a kayak and my first fishing from one.  I absolutely had a blast doing this.  There was still a pretty strong wind coming directly from the part of the lake that MIL and I wanted to fish so we would powerhouse all the way to the other side of the lake and then drift with the wind until we were outside of the area where we were getting hits.  Do this 30 times in a day and you’re getting a pretty good workout while fishing.  Our arms were screaming at the end of the day.

With the wind situation there was no way that we were fishing dries, or that a midge could even control its flight pattern.  We have a kind of tried and true method for fishing stockers and actually have a fly that we call “the lake fly” for this exact purpose.  We use floating lines, tapered leader with a bit of tippet at the end, and a small black mohair leech with an orange tungsten bead (as seen in the boxes in the previous Munsel Lake Prep post).  It destroys stockers; they can’t resist it.  Just cast out as far as you can and do a variable strip.  I pleasantly found out that you can even troll this fly in a kayak (or other vessel) and that works well too.  

During the time the MIL and I were fishing stockers, T was looking into the yellow perch over in the deep part of the lake.  He was fishing by himself in Tippy with the dogs while FIL was still in bed at about 9:00 am.  Using the sonar he would mark fish in the depths and try to mark the gps, but the motor is on one end of the boat and the sonar on the other.  He really needed two people because with the wind by the time he got to the back of the boat to check and mark a location, he had already drifted off.  He did, in a brief break from the wind, manage to locate quite a few fish down deep.  He attempted to fish them with a fly rod, but it was basically impossible to get down to where they were, aside from trying to properly present all of the awesome flies that we tied up just for them.  Luckily, we had already pretty much anticipated this and brought the light tackle spinning rods and some small Gulp soft plastics.  He set up a drop shot rig and fished on a rise starting at 60 feet deep and retrieving up to a 40 foot depth.  With the wind, and running the whole show by himself, he managed to hook one yellow perch about 6 inches long, though he was marking many more fish.  Throughout the week the weather got progressively worse, so we didn’t end up fishing perch again, but at least we figured it out and got one.

About the weather.....We had been so jacked for this vacation that when the bad weather hit, we really just stuck it out.  When we went out early in the morning (around 8:30 or 9am) the wind was not so bad at around 10 mph.  It really kicked into rage mode around 1pm.  I live on the Oregon Coast and the rain was actually pretty impressive to me.

When it became apparent that there really wouldn’t be any other fishing than stockers, on the third morning we all decided to have a friendly numbers game competition.  Most and biggest.  That morning before we came in for breakfast was awesome!  We found pods of porpoising kokanee, which was a huge surprise.  We chased them around the lake and cast into the pods.  Bonefishing for the Oregon Coast.   The game immediately changed to most and biggest kokanee.  We hate eating trout, so we generally don’t kill them (FIL and MIL like them though so we whacked a few of the bigger ones), but I don’t think that I had ever eaten kokanee before this so we needed enough for a fish fry that night.  We went out again after breakfast and did see a few of the pods still and managed to catch about 8 to 10 kokanee for dinner, but throughout the day they seemed to dwindle and by the end, it was hit or miss.  The trout were actually also spreading themselves throughout the lake so that began to dwindle as well.

I’m aware that the picture is a little gruesome, but MIL was overzealous about her victory in the competition and decided to clean all of the fish before we could get a full body shot.  The trout is in there for body comparison.

The fourth day (Thursday March 27th) was kind of the final hurrah.  The weather had degraded to thunderstorms with brief periods of clarity which we took advantage of.  At this point the fish had all spread throughout the lake and fishing was pretty poor.  We all pushed pretty hard because it was the last day, but we were burnt out and had basically used up our fishery.  I did manage to troll up three trout, but could not actually catch any when I was physically casting.  On the first day the trolling thing was exciting, but on the last day it was kind of infuriating because it felt like a cheat or a lottery.  You never know when you’ll win.  After trolling the three trout I finally just let the wind push me home and called it a vacation.  We all came in around 3:30, pulled the boat out of the water, dry docked the kayaks, drank copiously, played card games, listened to FIL’s old motown music, ate steaks, and finished out the vacation.  All in all I’d say it was a great time with some unexpected fish, but somehow vacations never live up to the hype that you create in your own brain.  Maybe things would have been different if the weather was better.  I certainly have nothing to complain about though, and would go to Munsel Lake again.  Maybe more shine than rain.