Oregon High Desert Fishing spring 2006

May 16-20

Antelope Flat Reservoir

 

Loaded and ready to go!

the spillway has water running out of it! This is less common than a leap year!

another picture of the spillway

Even more dramatic signs of a very wet winter in eastern Oregon, there is actually a fern growing in the shade of this rock!

 

Yellow Jacket Lake

 

Look at my Yellow Dialed Seiko! .. oh ya and look at those nice fish!

skipped the "campground" the paybox was still gone sowe could have stayed there for free but this "hunting camp" offered a nice view of the lake and had a nice fire pit so we opted to stay here.

Richard, Pete the fishing dog, and some nice fish from Yellow Jacket

shhh! don't tell anyone but... we take a picture of each of us with the same fish chain to make it look like we are catching more fish hehe! In this picture you can clearly see that I caught more fish than Richard did hehe.

There's no such thing as monsters

No the bugs can't get in the tent.

 

Chickahominy Reservoir

 

Rocket the Race Boat!

The two boats in the distance were at Yellow Jacket Lake while we were there too.

 

Antelope Flat reservoir is the lesser known cousin to Chickahominy Reservoir, they share very similar ecologies and produce very large Rainbow trout (over 20 inches) in good years. Chickahominy is one of Oregon's "poster" fisheries which means it's managed by several government agencies and miraculously you can still drive in and fish there. This also means that Chickahominy gets lots of attention from ODFW and Antelope Flat doesn't. In dry years Antelope Flat can draw down farther than Chickahominy but Antelope Flat is much more scenic and "out of the way" up in the top of the Maury Mountains compared to Chickahominy down on the desert floor amid the stark sagebrush.

In Recent years Chickahominy has been drained and sanitized to remove destructive junk fish like goldfish which inbred fisherman use as live bait. This spring marks the first year since the refilling that the fishing has been decent! We caught six in under two hours, five of them were over 16 inches! Sadly in recent years similarly inbred fisherman have introduced catfish to Antelope Flat and another nearby pond. The result is a catastrophic decline in the trout fishery as the catfish population has grown and out competed the trout for food resources. It is unlikely that ODFW will take any steps to restore the  Antelope Flat fishery since the Reservoir is managed as a "irrigation" reservoir.

Yellow Jacket Lake is a reservoir that we had considered a "kiddy pond" usually only yielding small stocked trout. This turns out to be a misconception on our part as we spent two days here and caught enough over twelve inches (including several over fifteen inches) to permanently add Yellow Jacket Lake to our spring fishing tour!

I have to say we had a really good couple of days between Yellow Jacket and Chickahominy Reservoir. We returned home with our legal in possession limit and caught and released at least that many again. It's really satisfying to be "that damn boat catching all the fish" on the lake and I have to admit it's been a couple of years since we've had a trip like that!