Seep Lakes scouting report 9/23 - 24/2022

Starman77

Life of the Party
Forum Supporter
This past Friday and Saturday I scouted 5 of the seep lakes to see what I could find. The water temperatures at these 5 lakes were consistently in the 65 to 66 degree range. One of the lakes was shockingly low, like someone had pulled the plug. The shallow end where in the past I've had good shallow water fishing now looks like this:

20220924_095601.jpg

I didn't find any fish in this lake or in 3 of the other lakes I tried (the water level was at normal levels in 4 out of 5 lakes). I'm assuming that they totally or mostly summer-killed. However, one of the lakes turned out to have fish, mostly in the 15 to 17 inch range, as you can see from my chart:

Fish Size Distribution 2022-09-23.jpg

Here's a typical fish from that lake:

IMGP5773.JPG

I hooked about half the fish on leech patterns and the other half on a baitfish pattern, so what do you think I found in the one fish I retained? The stomach was packed like a sausage with daphnia and nothing else. So much for "matching the hatch."

I can't explain why this one lake produced fish and the others didn't. That's just the way it is with the seep lakes, as you never know what you'll find in them. The lakes cycle up and down, so they could be great one year and terrible the next.

No other fishermen were seen at any of these lakes, just one hiker, so if you like solitude, you might want to check out some of these seep lakes.

I seem to be seeing more new non-native invasive plants these days, like this Austrian Peaweed:

20220924_093752 Austrian Peaweed.jpg

Or this Tamarisk bush:

20220924_142033_02 Tamarisk.jpg

The Purple Loosestrife is another invasive, non-native, but it has been here so long and is so widespread now, it is like a native, and at least it adds color to the shorelines of the lakes:

20220923_161118 Purple Loosestrife.jpg

Rex
 

dep

Steelhead
nice job getting out Rex. as I mentioned, time to put away the salt gear and start fishing the lakes again,
 

Coomba

Smolt
Rex, do you know if the north end of Seep Lakes road was open? In the past the owner of the property closed and locked the gate up there because of "fire danger". I access the Seeps from the north end normally and this individual has been closing the road with locked gate in the fall. Can't believe this isn't a public road.
 

Northern

Seeking SMB
Forum Supporter
Rex, do you know if the north end of Seep Lakes road was open? In the past the owner of the property closed and locked the gate up there because of "fire danger". I access the Seeps from the north end normally and this individual has been closing the road with locked gate in the fall. Can't believe this isn't a public road.
I know you weren't asking me, but last Thu I entered that road from the north and was launching on a lake an hour or so later when a guy passing in a pickup stopped and said something about the road north being closed. Wasn't sure what he meant, since I'd just come that way, but maybe he'd just closed it behind me? Left going south, so...?
 

Starman77

Life of the Party
Forum Supporter
Rex, do you know if the north end of Seep Lakes road was open? In the past the owner of the property closed and locked the gate up there because of "fire danger". I access the Seeps from the north end normally and this individual has been closing the road with locked gate in the fall. Can't believe this isn't a public road.
A week ago it was locked at the north end for "extreme fire danger." The south end was open. I don't know about this past week, as I didn't go in via the north end.
 
Top