Got out for a long 3 day weekend canoe camping at a very popular Mt Hood Lake this weekend.
We put in at one of the main campgrounds, loaded our shitty, indestructible Coleman canoe and paddle clear across to the dispersed sites on the other side of the lake.
It's first come first serve over there and it's always a crap shoot if you get a good site, but we've never been let down before. And this time was no exception, we got the super private (as in no sites anywhere near) with a good mostly sandy beach. We usually camp and fish here a couple times a year but this was the first this summer (and a little later than usual).
And boy, let me tell you the water was WARM. As in once the sun down and the air temps dropped, you couldn't tell if the water was warmer than the air or vice versa.
We didn't do a ton of fishing and what we did was just trolling buggers off the canoe. This is one of the two places I actually keep fish at (they stock the shit out of it), and my kid loves them. It was a little slower than normal, we only landed one and about a dozen came unbuttoned. The majority of those came off my kids rod, because when her reel starts singing, she gets a bit too excited and reels in backwards. We're working on it
.
One thing happened yesterday evening that really pissed me off.
So we were sitting at camp cooking dinner and we see a boat maybe 200+ yards away anchored up and just slaying stockers on bait. They were close enough to see what they were doing but not too close to where we could hear them. No big deal, this is a heavily stocked lake and in theory their boat could take a limit of 15 fish. I decided I wanted to give the bugger one last pass at catching a fish for dinner and did a loop behind the boat a ways and back and around to camp (I kept a wide berth as to not blow them up). But as I pull around, down wind of them, I start noticing a fair amount of dead, belly up fish (probably 12+). I then looked up and see they are actually catching and releasing. Also noticed they would real a fish in, get it to the boat, let it flop around while they finished their conversation, THEN reel it in, and just throw it back. Did I mention the water was WARM? These assholes, were either unintentional killing these fish by releasing fish in 70*+ water or were waiting for the "big" one and tossing back the small ones killing them at the same time. While I get this isn't some holy grounds like the D or Metolius but it was just hideous behavior in my eyes. While I wanted to say something, I reminded myself of Travis's story on Redwood Creek as well as that video up in Canada and I opted to just fume in my boat by myself, while later telling my kid what they were doing and how shitty it was. The only good ending to it was that we got a pretty good show by the local ospreys dive bombing and scooping up all the floaters after the jackasses left.
One thing that we did got to experience that was pretty cool was an EPIC Hex hatch. I didn't get to fish it because we were just on a sunset family cruise but holy shit it was cool for everyone on the canoe. So many bugs were coming off and the fish were absolutely losing their minds.
We put in at one of the main campgrounds, loaded our shitty, indestructible Coleman canoe and paddle clear across to the dispersed sites on the other side of the lake.
It's first come first serve over there and it's always a crap shoot if you get a good site, but we've never been let down before. And this time was no exception, we got the super private (as in no sites anywhere near) with a good mostly sandy beach. We usually camp and fish here a couple times a year but this was the first this summer (and a little later than usual).
And boy, let me tell you the water was WARM. As in once the sun down and the air temps dropped, you couldn't tell if the water was warmer than the air or vice versa.
We didn't do a ton of fishing and what we did was just trolling buggers off the canoe. This is one of the two places I actually keep fish at (they stock the shit out of it), and my kid loves them. It was a little slower than normal, we only landed one and about a dozen came unbuttoned. The majority of those came off my kids rod, because when her reel starts singing, she gets a bit too excited and reels in backwards. We're working on it
.One thing happened yesterday evening that really pissed me off.
So we were sitting at camp cooking dinner and we see a boat maybe 200+ yards away anchored up and just slaying stockers on bait. They were close enough to see what they were doing but not too close to where we could hear them. No big deal, this is a heavily stocked lake and in theory their boat could take a limit of 15 fish. I decided I wanted to give the bugger one last pass at catching a fish for dinner and did a loop behind the boat a ways and back and around to camp (I kept a wide berth as to not blow them up). But as I pull around, down wind of them, I start noticing a fair amount of dead, belly up fish (probably 12+). I then looked up and see they are actually catching and releasing. Also noticed they would real a fish in, get it to the boat, let it flop around while they finished their conversation, THEN reel it in, and just throw it back. Did I mention the water was WARM? These assholes, were either unintentional killing these fish by releasing fish in 70*+ water or were waiting for the "big" one and tossing back the small ones killing them at the same time. While I get this isn't some holy grounds like the D or Metolius but it was just hideous behavior in my eyes. While I wanted to say something, I reminded myself of Travis's story on Redwood Creek as well as that video up in Canada and I opted to just fume in my boat by myself, while later telling my kid what they were doing and how shitty it was. The only good ending to it was that we got a pretty good show by the local ospreys dive bombing and scooping up all the floaters after the jackasses left.
One thing that we did got to experience that was pretty cool was an EPIC Hex hatch. I didn't get to fish it because we were just on a sunset family cruise but holy shit it was cool for everyone on the canoe. So many bugs were coming off and the fish were absolutely losing their minds.
