For the past 6 or 7 years it has been my habit to head over to the upper Deschutes River at the end of the Oregon trout season to close out my personal fishing season. I really like the country around there, which has lots of campsites – free at this time of year – and unique scenery, along lots of big brown trout. I can fish or explore volcanoland during the day, and listen to the World Series in the evening. Followers of Basstravaganza2010 will remember that last year I left the Flint River in Georgia and raced across the US to make it back to the Deschutes before the end of Oct.
This year I decide to leave the Bullship behind and take only my pontoon boat, plus my bike so that I can leave it downstream, float down to it, and pedal back up to my car. Could not find the big chartreuse rapalas like the ones that were hot last year, so I have bought a can of spray paint and created my own.
Instead I head over to the Deschutes downstream from the Wickiup dam, where I have a special campsite beside the river.
The river is running higher this year. Even tho the lake is filling, they are letting more water out of Wickiup than usual in late Oct. Everywhere I go the seasons are out of whack, water conditions vastly changed from what I am used to. How will the big trout respond to this?
I row about ½ mile upstream and start throwing the big chartreuse rap. But the river is dead. Very few fish rising. Nothing chasing my big plug until I finally get a hit back near my campsite. A small RB of all things. Lots of them in here but they seldom hit minnow imitating plugs.
Fishing is awful so I set up my tent and sit by the campfire listening to the baseball game.
This is “high desert” country, about 3,000 ft elev, hot in summer, but they get snow every month of the year. In late Oct I know it will be freezing at nite if it is not cloudy, and I am correct. I get up long before dawn, make coffee, and head up to the Tenino boat ramp about 5 miles upstream. I will float back down to my camp, and then ride my bike back up to Tenino to get my car.
These pontoon boats come with a rack where you can load a car battery, and a bracket on the rack where you can mount an electric motor. But in this configuration the boat is stern heavy, and if is miserably frustrating and almost impossible to steer, cuz the steering control hits you right in the back of the neck. So I have modified mine by building a bracket so I can mount the motor on the footpegs in front, and have the steering handy and useable. Notice the white stuff all over the pontoons. This is ice. It is way below freezing. And the towel on the seat, so I don’t have to sit right on the icy cold plastic.
Normally the big pool at Tenino is swarming with active fish, but there is little action this morn. The pontoon goes like a rocketship with the new motor configuration, and I can spin around like a water bug. Just to see if I can do it I motor UPSTREAM, all the way up the long pool and thru the long set of shallows up to the next big pool. I am killing the battery by fighting up against the current, but I am amazed by how well the boat performs. There are a few big fish rising, but nothing will chase the big plug. I give u p and start drifting down, using the motor to hold position when I want to cast, or even trolling back against the current. I covering the water way better than I ever could before, but the fishing is totally dead, and extremely disappointing. Must constantly keep dipping my rod into the river to melt off the ice that forms on the line guide, and there is ice fog on the river as the sun rises.
The landscape here is all gently rolling, a landscape buried in volcanic dust from the cataclysmic eruptions that occurred very recently (in geologic time) at the Mt Mazama and Newberry volcanoes, among others. These repeated eruptions buried the upper Deschutes valley in layer after layer of volcanic debris. The dust compresses into layers and turns to a kind of clay. At one place along the river you can see these layers where the river cuts into them.
This river gets fished hard nowadays, usually in summer when it is running bankful and fast with irg water. Now that the flow is mostly being contained to fill Wickiup the level is way down, and I am the only boat on the river. Lots of other folks camping along the river now, but they are all deer hunters. I have the river to myself, and I often see tailing ends of monofilament hanging in the current. With the electric motor I can often drive back upstream and locate the lures people have snagged and broken off. By the time I get back to my campsite I have salvaged probably $25 worth of lures without even trying. But not a single fish or even a bite or chase – unheard of for this spot.
A big ponderosa snag has fallen right across the road where I used to camp. Glad I was not there then. But the ground is flat and the pumice soil is firm, so people have just driven around the wreckage to get back into the campsite beside the river.
Fishing sucks here – another year long fantasy busted. I am outahere, and off to another brown trout nirvana. East Lake – literally a volcanic eruption of brown trout.
There are 2 problems with life in this part of central Oregon: 1) The place you are at might blow up at any moment; 2) The place next to where you are at might blow up at any moment, and bury you and everything else in billions of tons of volcanic dust.
Most people are familiar with Crater Lake, now a national park, a huge volcano that blew up and smothered much of western N America in dust. The remains of the hollowed out mountain after the big blast, called a caldera, filled with rainwater to create the continents deepest lake, and a new small volcanic cone erupted out of the bottom of the lake to create Wizard Island. But few people realize that only an hour’s drive up Hwy 97 to the NE is another similar geologic feature called the Newberry Caldera – another volcano that exploded and filled with rainwater to form a big lake, in which a small volcanic erupted to create an island. But inside Newberry the little volcano kept erupting and the island kept getting bigger, until it got so big it split the entire lake into 2 lakes. These lakes are now named Paulina Lake (the one to the W) and East Lake (guess which direction?)
East1
A 20 minute drive off Hwy 97 will take you from 3,000 ft on the Deschutes Valley floor up the flank of the big mountain over the rim of the caldera into the gigantic blast zone at over 6,000 ft. Unlike Crater Lake, the inside of the caldera has largely grown back into forest, and you don’t even know you are inside a volcano when you drive in over the rim, it is so huge. A few pieces of higher ground remain around the rim, like teeth in a jawbone, and they look like mountains in their own right until you realize they are only remnants on the edge of what must have once been a very large stratovolcano. The highest point is Paulina Peak.
Paulina Peak, on the crater rim, looking back from inside the caldera
Even inside the caldera you are not really aware you are inside a volcano.
It is probably 5-6 miles across the exploded rim, and numerous eruptions have occurred in here since the first big blast. Lava flows have poured out across the inside of the caldera. In the following pic you can see a big lava flow between the car and P Peak. This flow is largely obsidian. If you are turned on by obsidian flows this is the place to be, cuz it claims to be the largest ob flow in the world.
The Big Ob Flow
They say that shattered obsidian is one of the sharpest substances in the world, even sharper than a razor blade. Some surgeons even use obsidian in place of surgical steel scalpels. There is enough obsidian here to do brain surgery on the entire human race, with lots left to spare. I can’t understand why they don’t build a big brain surgery hospital here.
Both Paulina and East Lakes were fishless when Euro immigrants arrived in Oregon. Trout maniacs hiked up the mountain long before there were any roads, carrying backpacks filled with water and little trout. There are no inlet streams for spawning, but the fish thrived. They are augmented now that there is a road by annual plantings from hatcheries. Both lakes have extensive shallows where weeds and bugs thrive. Although they are at hi elevation (over 6,000 ft) and buried by massive snowfall in winter they both grow huge trout. The Oregon state record brown - over 30 lbs - trout came from Paulina. For some reason I always drive right past Paulina and fish in East Lake. There are 2 boat launches and campgrounds, and I head down to the first, along the S side of the lake. Usually it is quite windy here in the afternoon, judging by the 5 or 6 times I have fished here – all in Oct. But today it is magically glassy calm, and very clear. The cinder cone which rose up to split the original lake into 2 is in the center of the pic, and the north wall of the caldera is in the background.
I pick out a site along the long pumice beach in front of the campground, unload my gear, set up my tent, and set up the pontoon. This is a spectacular and invigorating place to camp.
This lake has many fish – mainly kokanee, RB and brown trout - but no spawning streams. The RBs are spring spawners, but the kokanee and browns are ready to spawn now. The kokanee eat plankton, the RBs eat mainly bugs, and the browns eat anything that will fit down their throat. Adult kokanee are about 12–15” long, and there are lots of them. Once a brown trout gets up around 5 lbs they are big enough to swallow and adult kokanee, and food no longer is an issue. It is just a question of how much you feel like eating. There are lots of big browns in this lake, and they are not shy about showing themselves. But they are very smart, and they never bite for me.
I launch into a gentle breeze, and talk to someone in another boat who says they have been doing well – 25 fish per day (all released), mixed kokanees and browns up to 19” – jigging deep between 30-40 ft. I also pass a bank fisherman who is catching fish on a worm & bobber. I zip across to the opposite corner of the lake past the White Slide. This front mounted motor is superb! But my big minnow imitating plugs do not get a bite. Not unexpected. The predatory trout don’t like to come up shallow where I am throwing my lures during bright daylight. But wait until the sun starts to go down. I fish all the way back to the campsite, rebuild the campfire, and start sipping on the $2.99 bottle of wine I bought in La Pine.
Late in the afternoon I am sitting in my lounge chair when big fish move into the bay and start jumping. Huge swirls disturb the bay, and then big males, resplendent in brilliant fall spawning colors, start jumping, leaping 3 feet into the air flashing brilliant yellows and reds and oranges. Hey – it’s been 11 long months and I am finally gonna get laid!!!
I head back out in the pontoon. The bay is alive with power fish. Some are jumping for joy around me. Others casually swallowing kokanee too big to fit into your frypan. I have 3 rods rigged with plugs, but finally settle on a tiny ultralite rod with 6 lb line, cuz I can cast a floating lure better with this rig. Nothing will bite as I fish up a ¼ mile from the campsite, even tho I am in the shade throwing right thru swirling feeding fish.
But the moment the sun disappears from the far side of the lake things change. I would guess that at least 50 browns over 5 lbs, many over 10, jump in the bay off the campsite beach. They really put on a show for the tourist from BC. It is stunning to be sitting in a pontoon boat and have a trout 3 ft long leap as high as your head, close enough that you could catch it out if midair with a long net.
And now they start biting on my rap. I get 9 good hits, but – how can brown trout attack a lure with 2 sharp triple hooks and not get hooked, one of the great mysteries of the universe – I catch only 2. One was a beauty about 3 lbs, got off on a big jump. Then the bite dies off as it gets darker. After a ½ hr of deadness I am right in front of the boat ramp, ready to quit, when I get into a furious bite in the near dark. 4 nice fish in 5 casts. The last one is the biggest, about 20”. I try towing into shore but I can’t hold the fish off the bottom and out of the weeds with only 6 lb test line. So I finally call for help from a nearby boat and they land the fish for me with their net. Turns out – sad to say – this was the biggest fish of the trip for me. It was very dark by then, and I had forgotten to set the flash to work when I had the guy in the other boat snap this pic.
Next morn it is icy again, but after coffee around the campfire I am ready to head out again in the predawn. I am expecting a hotter bite, but it has slowed way down. Just E of the campsite there are cliffs of layered volcanic clay. The layers chronicle the eruptions that have occurred here.
It looks like it should be deep beneath these cliff, but the water is only a couple feet deep at the base. A few huge browns have moved in against the cliffs, jumping for joy and chomping the kokanee that are spawning there. But – as usual with these big fish – they will not bite for me.
I load back up quickly and head down the mountain into La Pine, get a motel room, homemade donuts from Wickiup Junction store, and settle down to watch the World Series game 1. I also purchase a $7.99 net from a chain store. Unlike bass, these brown trout have big teeth, and I already have a bad cut on one finger from a trout fang.
Next morn before dawn I head back up to East Lake.
The entire SE corner of the lake is still volcanically active. As the level lake drops in summer and fall you can see hot springs seeping out thru the beach here. The water is high this year, but in past years people with shovels would dig out pits in the pumice beach and make little pools of the hot mineral water that bubble up. Apparently there used to be a hot spring resort on the bank here – long gone now.
Most of the springs trickle up thru the lake bottom, and on a calm cold day they seeth into a mist at the SE corner of the lake. In this pic you can see the mist from the springs in the pre-dawn.
When the lake is calm you can see the volcanic vents leaving little trails of bubbles on the surface.
Both the springwater along the beach and the bubbles in the lake are full of sulfur dioxide. When there is no wind the whole SE end of the lake smells like SO2. Once I was fishing here on a calm morning shortly after H. Chavez of Venezuela was speaking at the UN, and made his famous quip that he could tell that G. Bush had just spoken here, cuz the smell of sulfur was still in the air. I passed a guy in a float tube and he said that it smells like G. Bush was just here.
The warm springwater probably revs up the metabolism of the trout in winter, so they grow faster? And the general productivity of the lake is probably fertilized by nutrients injected from the hot vents. In any case, there are lots of big brown trout here. I catch an 18” brownie trolling a rap directly thru the sulfur bubbles.
In the afternoon it is sunny and the fish go deep. I have heard you can jig for them, so I try a couple spoons and settle on one, then measure off roughly as I drop the lure until I get down to 35 ft, and start jigging. Soon enough I catch a nice brownie – first time I have ever caught one this deep, or tried to.
It is such a nice day I head into shore and decide to climb up the volcanic cone that separates Paulina and East Lakes. It is steep, and slippery where there are pine needles. Takes me about 45 minutes of panting and staggering, often pulling myself up by grabbing trees. There is a lot of steep, exposed soil. In the following pic you can see volcanic dust (brown), larger chunks of pumice (white), and one big black chunk of obsidian. Many of the dirt slopes are covered in shattered, razor-sharp slivers of obsidian the size of knife blades. You have to be careful where you put your hands when you slip.
I finally make it to the top. Whew! The pumice beach at the campground is clearly visible on the right, and the pontoon is directly below me.
I head back down and try jigging again, but get no bites. So I try trolling. The pontoon is rigged with 2 rod holders, and is a killer rig when trolling with the silent electric motor.
There are blue Stellar’s Jays around the campsite as well as gray jays, aka camprobbers. And chipmunks. All begging for scraps. The gray jays eat right out of your hand.
The evening bite is particularly slack tonite. Few fish rising, and I only catch one. Frustrated, I look back at the cinder cone I just climbed and wonder why the fishing is so bad this year.
I decide to pull up stakes and head down to Wickiup before dawn tomorrow.
But when I get there the big lake is even higher than before, at least 6 ft higher than usual for this time of year. Usually there is a small hardcore of big trout hunters here, but today I am alone. There are a few fish swirling, but nothing biting in these radically different conditions.
Hilite of the morn is watching a heron pick up a half dead, spawned out kokanee, or which there are hundreds floating around.
These kokanee are what the big browns are gulping down. No wonder they don’t want to bother with my tiny 5” long plugs.
The heron kept playing with the fish, holding it this way and that, until I lost interest.
A few minutes later, after I had gone back to fishing, the heron said “What the hell!”, and gulped the kokanee down whole.
I got no trace of a bite, and decided to head S, so that I can fish Miller Lake – another high cascade brown trout factory – in the afternoon. Along the Cascade Lake Hwy you come to Davis Lake. Odell Creek used to flow across a nearly flat pasture of pumice and sage until a recent eruption spewed a giant blob of lava across it. The lava flow forms a natural dam that impounds a shallow lake 3 miles long and 2 miles wide. Davis Lake. Used to be the premier fly fishery in Oregon for big wild RB trout, until some jackass (illegally) let tui chubs loose in the lake. The chubs swarmed, and then somebody (illegally) released largemouth bass into Davis Lake. The bass ate the chubs, and for a while the lake was loaded with 4-6 lb LMs, which could only be fished with a flyrod. The trout are still there, but struggling with all the competition. Fish & Wildlife Dept, in a misguided (my opinion) attempt to placate the trout fishermen, had been sponsoring catchatons to remove the larger bass and transport them to other traditional bass lakes. But the bass reproduce fast, and cannot be eradicated in this way, so the result is that Davis Lake ends up with more bass in it than ever – zillions of small ones instead of thousands of big ones. And it is the smaller bass that compete most with the trout.
The Hwy passes right around the edge of this lava flow. As you can see, it is not hard to tell where the lava stopped, and these big ponderosa pines are glad it stopped where it did.
I park beside the lava, and get out to look around.
Then climb up on top for a look into a desolate wasteland.
Only a couple trees have been able to gain a foothold in the huge pile of crusted slag.
The lava is made of boulders that are loosely jumbled at the “angle of repose”. They wiggle and clink together sounding like china when you climb around. Must be careful not to start a landslide that could be the end of me, or even my car.
In 2002, the year I moved to Oregon, at the end of years of drought cycle, the same year that the gigantic Biscuit Fire burned out a half million acres, another jackass had a campfire get away at the campsite at the S end of Davis Lake. The fire took off and burned around almost all of the lake, and then raced right up to the top of the mountain before firefighters could put it out.
I first came to Davis Lake a few years later, when the fire was fresh and you could catch LMs like this on a flyrod.
Davis
A thick layer of manzanita bush is growing where the pine forest used to be. Eventually it will grow back to forest again.
I head on S down Hwy 97 to Chemult, have breakfast, and then head W up 13 miles of teeth-chattering washboard gravel to Miller Lake. I have been here a few times before, and today is the same as always. A cold wicked wind is blowing from W, down off the icy slopes of Mt Thielsen. It is too rough to fish much, and I get no bites, and kill my pontoon battery fighting against the wind. Most interesting thing is a weird looking pontoon/canoe gizmo tied to shore at a campsite. Never seen anything like this before.
At dark I race to load up and head off to Ashland, where I am planning to arrive at my sister’s place tonite. Backing out of the boat launch I accidently do something I could not repeat in 100 attempts if I tried. There are posts beside the gravel road, and a small log beside them to keep you from hitting the posts. But I roll backwards in the dark right ap onto the log, and then as the car rolls over the other side the rear fender drops right on top of a post. The right rear wheel is hung in midair, and the car is high-centered on the log, plus sitting on top of the post. Check this out:
Needless to say, it was a difficult hour’s worth of scramble to get back on the road, when all the technology I had available was a flashlite, machete, and the tiny scissors jack that comes with the car.
I am planning to return thru the Deschutes for more brown trout fishing on my way back N. In Ashland I get to visit friends and also visit Bear Creek, where I used to be chair of the Bear Creek Watershed Council. The big Chinook salmon are coming up from the Rogue R, and I stop to take a pic. The fish is under the red line. You can clearly see its tail, and its body is splotchy with while spots cuz it is getting ready to spawn and die. Great to see the big fish returning to a very urban habitat.
On Sunday nite I go over to a friend’s to have a beer and watch the world series game. On the way down the switchbacks of his driveway I roll over a rock hidden in the grass. Next morning I notice a trickle of fluid under the place where my Volvo was parked. My car is old, but it never leaks a drop of anything EVER. I check it and it looks like power steering fluid. This is the end of the Oregon trip and the end of brown trout fishing for Basstravaganza2011. I top up to Volvox with power steering fluid and blast back up I 5, getting to the Tsawassen ferry at 10:30 PM – 15 minutes before the last sailing. Soon I am asleep back home in Nanaimo.
