The Last Weekend of Trout Season

Oregon's General Trout Season ends on November 1st. Danimal and I wanted to close out the season in epic fashion, so we decided to go to Three Creeks Lake, a very scenic body of water located at the 6500' elevation above the town of Sisters and just below Tam McArthur Rim. The weather report for Saturday wasn't very promising, so we assembled the warmest clothing we each had and expected difficult fishing conditions.

What we didn't expect is how much snow would already be at that elevation. In fact, the road into the lake was snow-covered for the last couple of miles, and there was at least four inches of snow on the ground at the lake. Fortunately for us, the weather was much better than we expected it to be -- it was very cold out, but we had clear skies and little wind.

Launching the boat was no problem even though the primitive ramp (right) was snow-covered. The problem was that, once we got out on the lake, the fish simply refused to bite our trolled frog flatfish and Rooster Tail spinner.

No motors are allowed on Three Creeks Lake -- not even electric trolling motors -- so Danimal rowed us around to various points on the lake, but nothing was hitting our lures. I was concerned that perhaps the water was too cold and the fish were lethargic as a result.

I had promised Danimal that we'd catch a lot of fish, and that wasn't happening. About ninety minutes after we started fishing, a guy who was camped at the lake rowed out in his boat and started trolling. He told us that he started getting into fish the day before when the sun hit the water.

So we continued to troll. Dan broke out a little propane heater he had brought along, and I would shake off the occasional ice that formed on the rod tips as we waited for the sun to come over the ridge line and hit the lake's surface. Once that happened, we continued trolling, but only got one very light strike on the flatfish. So we gave up trolling, set the anchor, and started bottom fishing with bait.

It took awhile, but the fish finally started to respond. I picked up a rainbow on powerbait, then landed a couple more. Dan switched over from his worm/marshmallow combo to powerbait, and he started landing fish as well. The bite was steady from then on, but a lot of the bites were fairly soft and we missed many fish. But we did manage to finally catch our limit, with Danimal landing the largest trout of the trip -- a 13-inch rainbow.

Needless to say, it was a great way to end the season. Hopefully, in a few weeks, Three Creeks Lake will be under three feet of snow, but it was fun to make one last trip to this great place before the snows really start to fly.