Lakes of Mt. St. Helens
- Thread starter Paul_
- Start date
Outstanding posts!
Paul,
Great info.
Just curious if you ever fished Spirit Lake pre eruption and if so, how was the fishing?
I regret not fishing it in all my trips down there, but was kind of obsessed by the NF of the Toutle.
SF
Great info.
Just curious if you ever fished Spirit Lake pre eruption and if so, how was the fishing?
I regret not fishing it in all my trips down there, but was kind of obsessed by the NF of the Toutle.
SF
Paul_
Life of the Party
I never fished it pre eruption. I wish I did.
I know several retired bio’s that used to do Coho and Steelhead spawning ground surveys in Spirit Lake tributaries before 1980.
There is some conjecture that Spirit Lake currently has some connectivity (besides the outlet tunnel) to the Toutle.
I used to fish the outlet by the log jam where it began the NF Toutle River. I only recall catching rainbow stockers there. This was part of my formative period of fly fishing. I liked having some current because it would straighten out my wavy curled fly casts. Those 35 cent Muddler Minnows from Ed's Sport Shop really worked! This was just a short ways down from Harry Truman's cabin. I also tried trolling a fly out on the lake but never hooked anything, not that I knew what I was doing. I still have an old photo of my ex-wife, 2 kids, and me canoeing across the lake with Mt St Helens in the background. Quite a keepsake, even if she is the ex.
I'll have to look at some old maps to figure out were we were fishing back then, but we were fishing a stream that flowed into the lake.
I was young and dumb then and always assumed it was the north fork and that it flowed both in and out of the lake. Maybe not?
Anyway, my buddy hooked a large fish up there using trout gear that snapped him off. It looked like the summerruns we used to catch down by Henry Morgan to me when it jumped. Not really sure what it was now.
SF
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Crawbugger
Steelhead
Outstanding.
In 2012 Weyerhauser sold the property containing the Margaret high lakes area. It was locked up tight with no access the last time I was in the area. Not sure if that's still the case though. Really pissed off a lot of people (myself included) when it happened.
