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.