First Mt. Hood Trip of the Summer: June 13, 2015

Summer has officially arrived! Well, not officially, but the hellish continual nightmare of stress and social anxiety called "our free public education" has taken a welcome break. I immediately took advantage of all the free time the ending of school has granted me and hightailed it to the mountains to do some fishing. The first place I headed to was the Oak Grove Fork, a long time favorite haunt and one of the best fishing rivers in the area. Several years ago, it was the place of my first fish, and I have caught hundreds since. I hadn't been here since last October, and I was excited to see the water.

The water should normally be up to that white band midway up the rock wall.

Or lack thereof. I honestly couldn't believe my eyes when I first arrived at the river. I expected the water levels to be at around average at this time of year, perhaps even a little on the high side. Instead, I was met with water levels are so astoundingly low that I had to double check to make sure I was at the right river. The section of the stream close to the Timothy Lake dam, normally a productive spot on the river, was a weak, fishless trickle. I was starting to get worried, especially since the coming summer months would lead to the river only getting lower and lower. It had been a bad snow year, and I hadn't realized the consequences of this until now. I feared that the river, despite its flow from Timothy Lake, would dry up and cease to be a suitable habitat for trout.

However, I still found fish. The section of the river near the hydroelectric plant produced decent numbers of fish, especially in the deeper pools and areas around cover. Although I assume that the water temperature in the river would stay relatively the same due to the outflow from Timothy Lake, the shallow water didn't provide as much cover as normal and I found the cutthroats concentrated around structure. Although a few were hitting dries, I found that it was one of those days where I didn't feel like flicking "feather dusters" to the few cooperative trout out of the bunch. I did most of my fishing with my ultralight spinning rod. I find that a small strike indicator and a bead head nymph provides enough casting weight, and there are numerous advantages to using a shorter spinning rod.

The single most productive area on the river today was the section flowing directly from the hydroelectric plant itself. The man made structure provides an influx of cold, deep water that the trout congregate around, and some of my biggest fish in the river have been caught here. Of course, "biggest" here is always relative. A fourteen inch cutthroat seems like a monster here, and I don't think I've even caught one that big. The average size is about six to eight inches long.

I continued fishing up and down the river. The action was slow, as fish weren't eager to rise to dries and much of the water was too shallow for nymphing. So much of the river is extremely high gradient and inhospitable for fish, concentrating large numbers of trout into the numerous deep pools and tailouts throughout the stream. It's almost guaranteed to hook a trout when you drift a small nymph through pools like this, but today there weren't many due to the water levels being as abysmal as they were. 

Eventually it started to get extremely hot and I needed to get out of my waders. Needing something to do in the remaining few hours of the day, I headed over to nearby Frog Lake. Frog Lake admittedly isn't the nicest lake in the area. A shallow, muddy lake that dries up during the summer into a mucky puddle, it isn't exactly the prettiest gem of the Mt. Hood area. The fishing isn't great either, but there are a few rainbows scattered throughout the lake. However, Frog Lake will forever stand as one of my favorite places from my early childhood. Before I even touched a rod, this was far and away my favorite lake in the world. I would catch frogs and snakes along the banks, paddle my little yellow kayak back and forth across the water, and explore the rocky cove along the far end of the lake for crayfish, minnows, and other small critters. I hadn't been here in awhile (my last visit resulted in me needing a trip to the emergency room), but everything seemed very familiar. I hopped in the very same little yellow kayak (named the "Spitfire") and headed off to the cove to collect some crayfish for dinner.

Crayfishing is another popular pastime here, and has been one of my favorites since before I had ever started fishing. Nearly any lake in the Mt. Hood area will have a healthy crayfish population, and these miniature lobsters are extremely good to eat. I mean extremely good. I'm surprised they haven't gone extinct by now, given the hundreds of trappers I see at Timothy Lake. In the heat of the summer, the bottom of the lake will be carpeted with dozens of cylindrical crayfish traps. Although I trap as well, I find that a much quicker and more productive method of harvesting crayfish is to do it by hand. It's also more fun, as your time is spent chasing and grabbing the surprisingly fast little crustaceans instead of waiting for a trap to fill up. In about an hour, I had collected about two dozen medium-sized crayfish, enough for two people. 

Since I had collected enough crayfish, I grabbed my rod and headed out on the lake to do some fishing. As I said before, Frog Lake isn't a fishing destination. Although I've seen some trout of jaw-dropping sizes lazily swim by me while kayaking, most of the rainbows are small and in the 8-10" range. However, size isn't a problem with me and I began trolling a small frog flatfish around the lake. The frog flatfish is one of my all-time favorite trolling lures, and I let it out a good distance from the boat.

I’m not an expert on trolling. I mean, I’ve spent many hours dragging lures back and forth across the many lakes in the area, and caught lots of trout along the way. I’m not one of those trolling “masters,” however. The guys who have their entire process down to a science, the guys who count the number of times their rod rhythmically wiggles each second, the guys who yell at whoever’s rowing if the trolling speed gets a little too fast, etc. Okay, the last one might apply to me, but I don’t pay that much attention to everything else. I just find a speed that produces the action I like best and start covering water. That was exactly what I did at Frog Lake and I was rewarded with a few trout. They were of average size, but it’s always nice to catch fish when trolling. The erratic action of the frog flatfish always seems to lead to the most explosive strikes from even the smallest fish. 

Now would be a good time for forced perspective.

The whole time I was fishing, there was this strange little kid who was swimming around the lake. He couldn’t have been older than ten, and the whole time he was shouting whatever crossed his mind at the top of his lungs. Since sound carries super well across water, everyone at the lake (no matter where they were) could hear his incessant monologue. This ranged from him smearing lake muck on his face and shouting “I have a mud hat!” to harassing any boaters unfortunate enough to get within his line of sight. Much to my chagrin, I was one of those unfortunate boaters. While trolling along the rocky cove area, I came a little too close to him and he noticed.

"Hey!" he shouted after spitting a stream of water in my direction.

I nodded a greeting and started paddling a little faster in the other direction.

"I'm gonna sink you!" he shouted while swimming towards me.

Well, that intensified quickly, I thought. I began quickening my paddling.

"Hey, I said I'm gonna sink you!" he shouted again. At this point I realized I was being chased around the lake by a ten year old. 

Suddenly, he dove under the surface and I couldn't see him in the murky water. Fearing that I would be flipped into the filthy, grimy lake by a prepubescent fourth grader, I decided it was high time to reel in my line and get back to the safety of the shoreline as fast as I could. As I glanced back to make sure the little bastard wasn't on my tail, I looked at the view of Mt. Hood that Frog Lake provided. I thought of the coming summer, and the ones of years past. I thought of the time I caught my very first fish here, and about the fish I had just caught minutes ago. I thought of the adventures I'd had with friends and family that I hardly talk to anymore. How different things were. And I thought about what I'd think years from now about me in my little yellow kayak paddling around Frog Lake in the summer of 2015, and how different things would be then.

And then I realized that the kid had been under my boat the whole time. 

That water is FREEZING.

Until the next capsizing,

Kamran Walsh