We got a lot of fish in the cooler - but we had to work our tails off for them.

Having said that, they lied before we left home. The bloom was NOT over, fishing had NOT picked up and the water temp varied from 64.8 to 70. The 70 came from down by Silent Creek in 5' of water and heavy, heavy bloom. Temp confirmed by a fly fisherman who was about 75 feet from me and camped next to me at T View. The fishing was the poorest I've seen at the lake in over 40 years! For the first week, you were lucky to see the lake bottom in 1 foot of water. I had to wade and poke with a stick to check out my channel and approach path to the shoreline "dock". The prop wake made split pea soup look like water! I mentioned several times that it couldn't be any thicker even if we were boating in a dairy farm settling pond. It started to clear up about 5 days ago but there is still a lot of algae floating in the lake. In all my years of fishing and playing at Dia Lk, including 12 summers of almost "living" there, I have never seen a bloom so bad or fishing so poor. Quite a few people were asking us what we were doing to catch so many fish..............and I didn't think we were catching that much at all.

First day was threatening on weather. Second day (09-05) mother nature shot at us with .32 to .35 caliber hail for about an hour. On the 12th a lighting storm just missed us to the SE, but it hit Crater Lake and started two fires. Other than that, and the last day, the weather was unseasonably warm and dry.

Yesterday as we were packing out, the sky was solid overcast and it opened up and it started raining pretty hard in spurts. Rumor was that it was snowing at Crater Lake. The wind chill at Dia Lk must have been down to 35 or 40.

Saw the pic of the 12 pounder over at the bait shop. Posted on the post by the bait rack. Something funny there, but more on that later. I'll get some pics posted later.

 

Good evening all, just in from work. Very nice cool and cllear day here.

 

Evening Allen. Only one more day........

 

Good evening Oregon. Went to town this morning and picked up the car I left at the body shop to repair the minor deer impact damage. Did an excellent job on it.

Meanwhile, out at the farm, skunks are getting even more proliferous. Dad shot 4 while I was gone on the trip and says there are still several more. One chased mother back into the house a couple of days ago so she is on the war path! Still can't figure out why they are so proliferous this year. Anyway there is that problem to get taken care of.

Heard back from the tractor shop on the leaking rear wheel seal on the one tractor. Only 2 grand to repair. Apparently a bolt broke off at the end of the axle and pretty much tore up everything inside the housing. To add to the problem, the tires were incorrectly mounted. Apparently the people dad bought the tractor from had them mounted too far out, contributing to the problem and our tractor shop will take care of that while they are fixing the rest.

They are having sewer back up problems. Dad doesn't know if a line is blocked or the septic tank needs to be pumped out. Ran a 125' snake out, but didn't seem to hit any blockages.

And then there is my mother-in-law. Haven't got the full report back from Diana yet, but it is sounding like it is going to be a doozy.

I think I am going to go back to the mountains and become a hermit! No phones, location unknown. If you want to get in touch with me, just leave a note on the Beaver Marsh bulletin board and maybe, just maybe I'll go check the board once a year.



Working on getting some pics done up from the Diamond Lake trip. Somewhere between leaving home, going to Diamond Lake and then going on a tours and hikes of the Sherwood Forest, Three Lakes (or more properly 3 Mud Puddles), Dog Prairie, Skookum, Garwood Butte, Bear Creek and Crater Lake, I managed to rack up 833 pictures! It'll take a bit to sort them out and upload a few.




Of interest to Dave - there are at least two big logs floating in Diamond Lake. The last I saw of one, it was about half way between the Cheese Hole and the Deep Hole. Sticks out of the water about 3 or 4 feet so is visible. There is another one that was floating just under the surface and not visible. Unfortunately, we found it with the outdrive and skeg. It was up toward the Rock Pile in about 20' of water and headed toward the Lake Creek outlet shallows. I'm not sure I understand why the resort or the USFS doesn't hook onto them and pull them out.
USFS has "retired" Leslie from camp host at T View. They have also been in there cutting down a bunch of the lodge poles that were infested with the pine beetle along with a number of trees with core rot. All sorts of 16 to 20" logs laying around so I didn't have to fire up my chain saw once. Just drug the logs to camp and split them.
T View currently has no camp host. The company doing the outhouse service is doing a terrible job so if you go up there, take TP with you. Out of 14 days I think we had TP in the outhouse only about 5 of those days.
USFS is also talking about closing it on Oct. 15 unless it snows before then. They are closing Broken Arrow this week unless someone changes their mind.

 

Since when are there logs floating or attached to the bottom in Diamond lake?
The algae looks REAL bad for this late in the year, did it effect the meat/taste of the fish?
What was the biggest fish you boated?
What was the "funny" about the 12lb er pic at the resort?

Oh, yeah...........Welcome back!

 

In all of my years of going to Diamond Lake, I have never seen a bloom so bad - even in July or August. The resort is blaming all of the reports of decreasing bloom, temps and improved fishing on the USFS. The reports I saw were on the Resorts web site so that eliminates the USFS as the source. I also noted a distinct lack of mention or notice on the Douglas County Health Dept.'s web site. They used to always post about the blooms at Diamond Lake. This time all I found from them were posters on the boards at the lake and boat launches.

We fished deep for the most part and so far haven't run across any mud or bad taste. All were bight pink and firm.

Any time we are in a bloom condition, we make sure the fish are cleaned and hosed down in a clean source water, any fat or light colored meat is trimmed away and the skin is not eaten. I don't eat the skin normally anyway.

A couple of the fish we caught the first couple of days were full of snails. After that, they were empty until just a couple of days ago and they started showing up with a lot of midges in them, although there was not a lot of boiling or jumping going on. The last 3 or 4 days when I was coming in after dark and lit off the 3 million cp spot light, there were so many midges that it actually looked foggy.

Biggest was 24" and the honor (to my horror) goes to my wife. She beat me by 1/2 inch and 3/4 of a pound. She is not saying much about it though since I was catching (at last count of the log book) 4 fish to her 1. She is still complaining about how lousy the fishing was though.

Most averaged in the 15 to 17 range. Picked up some nice ones one evening on the North end of the Cheese Hole and then after that everything was 7 to 10" so we moved out of there and didn't go back.

The "back" story on the 12# was that it was caught by a "non" fisher. He was at the lake for an undisclosed reason and got bored so he got ahold of a pole and threw a worm out and caught this fish. The picture does not show the person who caught it. The pic shows the fish laying across the lap of 3 youngsters. A number of us "fisherman" were talking in camp one night and just thought it odd that if you catch a lake record trout, you don't have your pic taken with it, instead you pose the fish with 3 kids who had nothing to do with it.

Edit - forgot the logs.

Didn't talk to anyone but was P.O.'d to find and see those logs floating in the lake and no officials marking them or doing anything with them. They appear to be snags or wind falls. The one was being used as a bird perch. The other was submerged. After we hit it by the rock pile just North of T View, we talked to some people in camp who had hit it just the day before right off of the C loop of the T view campground. They put a good sized dent in a pontoon on their pontoon boat. As popular and well visited as that lake is, I would think removal of hazards to navigation would be a priority to a resort who banks on it. A number of years back over the 4th of July, we hit a submerged snag floating just under the surface and tore up a prop. USFS or the resort, not sure who, along with the Marine Patrol were out there the next day and got it out of the water.

Kayaker's were plentiful, annoying and at times seemed to be deliberately getting in the way. The mosquitoes were almost non existent, but the kayaker's made up for them.

 

That sounds kinda funny allright..........maybe he found it dying and scooped it up?

24" is a nice trout anywhere!

If the weather doesn't close in, I will make a trip up there in early/mid Oct.

 

G' Morning Left coasters

 

Good morning Charlie and all that follow.

 

Morning guys. Well, today is the day....... I get to spend the whole day listening to morons. Won't be back on till after 1600 tonight. LLC is ready to take this place back, and I sure hope they do........

 

Good luck Don, hope things go right for the LLC and you.

 

So do I allen, so do I.........................

 

Good morning Oregon and everyone everywhere else.

 

Morning Jim. I can't believe the "bloom" in your pictures...... I've never seen anything like it in the lakes around here...

 

Morning Jim, they are nice pictures,