Westward we go...soon.

[Devan S.]

[Devan S.]

Pictures don't do pure redbands justice.

[BilletHead]

1 hour ago, Devan S. said:

Pictures don't do pure redbands justice.

               Not pictures don't do them justice. Congrats Devan!  We have caught them in Montana, Nevada, Idaho, and in Oregon. Both great basin and Columbia redbands are covered in those states.   

[Devan S.]

Day 1-flights and drive time.

The plan for day 1 on this trip was mostly travel. Wheels up from Springfield @ 6am makes for an early start from Cassville. Goal was to arrive into Portland and drive north to Washington. 

My Google searching indicated July wasn't the best time for sea run coastals and I had concerns we would struggle to stumble into fish in Puget Sound. It just doesn't fit our way of fishing. I got some tips from a Washington resident off a native Facebook group directing me to a small stream with resident coastals. Like literally gave me GPS coordinates. His information was a slam dunk. We each caught multiple 6-8" coastals. Wheels up and headed south for Northern California.

[Devan S.]

Day 2- California concerns

Day 2 starts with 4 hours if driving.

Warning: If flying across the country to drive 2100 miles isn't for you then look away now.

At the last minute, I found we would be dangerously close to the native range of McCloud river redbands with a bit of detour on the way to Eagle Lake. No major desire to get the California Hertiage Trout Challenge but considering we need 4 species for the Western Native Challenge we had a chance at 2 additional additions along the route.

On the east side of Mt Shasta is mutlple small streams. All headwaters feeding upper McCloud river. Several streams are closed to fishing but there is a stream aptly named for its residents. A small stream with lots of brush but at the campground, there was a short section open with plenty of fish eager to feed.

The best part was this stop was short. Maybe 2 hour drive out of our way. It look us longer to get rigged up than catch fish. We didn't see any other people around and had a couple mule deer visiting us at the campground.

[Devan S.]

Day 2/3 continued- Eagle Lake

Pump the brakes. The train was just getting rolling when it ran off the tracks.

That's a slight exaggeration. I had concerns. Eagle lake is just a big bath tub. It's a one stop shop. No other spot to catch Eagle lake rainbows. Gotta have em.

We brought jigs. Figured long casts for deeper fish. I had planned we would rent a boat at the marina. 2 weeks prior to leaving I learned the marina wasn't renting boats and the trout had moved out to deeper water. 

We fished until dark. Ran into a guide at the boat ramp. He said even boats were having a tough time. Said we should get there at daylight. We did. Fished until 9am Friday with 1 single bite and one fish seen. Just could not get out deep enough. We considered buying pool floats to get out there. Instead we decided to move onto our real targets.

The good news is Eagle lake is close to Reno, NV which is also close to another lake I want to fish.....

Did I mention it's hot out here? Not alot of shade as you can tell.

[Devan S.]

Day 3- Long roads and another Redband

After failing at Eagle lake, we headed North to trek across the Oregon desert to the far Northeast part of Oregon. Along the Oregon/California is a another California redband. Goose lake is dry per Google maps. I can tell you it has water in it now. Lassen Creek was the target at the campground. Thought to head up stream. Ran into some gentleman from Washington doing a redband run trying to bag them all. We took off upstream. Only to run into a nice herd of red angus cows. We just kept lightly pushing them upstream in front of us.

Honestly we did it. They are fish, pretty and checked a box and moving on.

Lots of lonely desert miles between here and the next stop. 

As you may recall sometime back, I asked for places for Oregon Bulls besides the Metolius. Boy did I get a dandy.

[Devan S.]

Day 4-Bears, Bulls, and Burgers

We arrived at our next stop late into the night. Didn't even setup camp. Slept in the car....this stop is way, way, way out in the middle of nowhere. Lots of slow dirt road and elevation drop to get here. Good thing it's dark and we can't see.

We packed up for a full, hot day and head off at daylight. No intent to camp; day hike in, fish, and pack out. Did I mention the 95 degree forecast high?

Rumor has it this place is rattlesnake and bear paradise. No rattlesnakes, although I could easily see it being a snake pit.

We stopped and fished a hole or two going in. Caught some redbands but yet to see a bull. Along the ridge, we spot THE PERFECT HOLE. getting there proved to be a nice bushwack through a berry patch downhill. We had been hoot'n'hollering to spook bears but got complacent. We spooked something big in the patch. We never saw it, assumed it was maybe an elk at the time. Got down and started rigging up to fish. As we're about to cross the river I see the worlds largest groundhog on the other side. @Prifish confirms it is in fact a bear cub. We spook it off. Cross the river to get to THE PERFECT SPOT that's how good it looked

 

[Devan S.]

View from the trail looking at the river. The cub was spotted on river Bank on left side if picture. Right side is the bushwack berry patch.

[Devan S.]

Looking upstream into the hole we fished.

Our first cast at the tail yielded a small bull that pulled off prior to netting.

We moved up to the end of the run into head of the pool abd found them. First cast was a hookup with multiple chasers. 1 good chaser that would ultimately make a mistake on the next cast.

note: these fish were all out of the water less than 5 seconds. We used spinning rods with heavy line and kept them in the net while unhooking. We did everything possible to minimize handling issues while still snapping a picture.

We probably each caught 3-4 bulls here and @Prifish caught a nice redband.

Did I mention it was hot? Things went so well we celebrated with herd bull cheeseburgers at the Wenaha Bar and Grill that were 5 star before deciding our next move.