After a long spring of projects around the house and other issues that kept me from fishing, I made my annual trek to NE Oregon. After having my trailer serviced at the NEO dealer where we purchased it, I continued on to my camping spot. To my surprise, the reservoir was half frozen and the reports for earlier in the week was that it was entirely frozen. Everything was later than normal and the spring wildflowers were not out when I arrived. By the end of the week, they were starting to appear. There was a lot of low-elevation snow not much higher than where I camped and the melt was making the inlet creek muddy. The entire reservoir was more off color than usual. The first few days were tough fishing. Fish were not very active and didn’t like the muddy water on the upper end of the reservoir. With the afternoon “W,” the ice pack moved around the lake and one day I had to plow through slush on my way back to the launch. After a few days the ice was gone but fishing (catching) was still challenging, so I decided to fish as far away from the inlet creek as possible and near the face of the earthen dam that forms the reservoir. The fish were there and the water clearer so they could see the fly. It was game on and for several mornings I landed quite a few. These are hard fighting fish stocked as fry and a number of them got off, particularly when they jumped and somersaulted in the air. Billy’s crayfish pattern was the top fly, but others worked as well. You should see some influence from fly patterns that others have posted. I mostly fished my type 5 sinking line but also spent some time with the bobber. The reservoir rose a couple of feet during the week that I was there and with plenty of snow in the mountains, it should refill and the farmers and ranchers will have lots of water this year, which will be good.
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