Reports for Odell Lake 2002

August 1, 2002

This pretty much is a report of how others did. The reason I say this is that we were not "serious" anglers on this trip. The reason is that we used a 19' boat without a trolling motor. Therefore, we were relegated to wind drifting. We of course had to pass up the morning fishing, as there was no wind to speak of. We did manage a few hookups in our afternoon drifts, but never landed a Koke. I talked to a lot of anglers. Many were skunked, and the most successful anglers caught about 7 fish. This morning (Aug 1st) most of the boats left the lake before 10am. I don't know the reason, but it may have been because of the east wind blowing smoke in from the fires?

This report submitted by HydroStan

July 15, 2002

I picked up my 14 year old fishing friend at 4:30 in the morning and we heading off to Crescent lake in search of rumored big fish ranging from 18 to 22 inches. We found fish but no big ones. Started off by Symax beach with little luck. We moved to what I think was the by Boy Scout camp where a group of boats were fishing. We found some fish in 80-90 feet of water. Soon we were into them and had no trouble getting our 5 fish that were 12 to 13 inches. We were using either a red/glow or orange/glow Apexes behind the nickel sling blades at 70 feet. Even though we lost more fish (about 25%, which is my worst this year) we still were done with limits by 9:30. With the day still young we headed over to Odell for a try. It took a while to get it dialed in but finally got it going. We started out straight across from Princess creek and semi wind drifted to the South/West Side of the lake with just one fish and a few missed bites. At about 12 we moved to the middle of the lake and started to wind drift for real. This whole time I was playing musical lures trying to find the right combination. It was not long after putting a green Apex on my young friends pole it started to get fish on a regular basis at 70 feet. That being my only green Apex and other colors not working earlier I figured green was the color. I tied on a green diamond blade spinner behind a Vance's dodger with green prism tape and started to catch some fish. The Apex was out fishing the spinner so I thought it might be the dodger color and switched to a Vance's dodger with uncolored prism tape and my bite frequency increased. For the last drift I tried a purple Apex and it fished as well as the green. We again lost about 25% of the fish hooked but ended the day with 20 fish that were similar is size to the Crescent fish. We headed home at 4:00 with 30 fish and a converted young fisherman to Kokanee fishing.

This report submitted by Brian

July 1, 2002

Arrived Monday, July 1, 2002 greeting a spectacular blue sky and calm lake at 7:00 A.M. We observed several fish rising for flies just East of Odell Creek outlet. My fishfinder located most fish within 10 to 30 feet of water. The fishing is very slow with few boats on the lake. We hooked a couple of fish trolling wedding rings just off Princess Creek.

Beautiful sunny days in the Central Oregon Cascades. Unfortunately the fishing seems to have slowed down, unlike the fishing pressure. There were probably no fewer than 20 boats at either the west end or at princess creek anytime this weekend. We mostly jigged until we broke an anchor line in the high winds Saturday. Our catch for 2 adults and 2 children fishing intermittently all day Friday and Saturday with a couple hours Sunday morning was around 10 nice Kokanee averaging 12 inches. We had the most luck with bright orange jigs at either 60 or 90 feet.

The best I heard anyone else doing was 17 Kokanee for 2 people. I don't know long that took, but if there luck was anything like ours, it was allday.

I fished Friday, Saturday and Sunday 5/31 to 6/2. Almost everyone was jigging. I just can't stay still that long. We trolled one rod for macks and the other for kokes. For 6 fisherman we came up with about 40 fish. Good size, nice fight all in about 50 to 60 feet with downriggers. We saw two macks caught about 32 to 35 inches.

Not to advertise but I used something called a Shuttle Hawk. It is a diving plane that fits on your down rigger wire and takes your rig to the bottom. It is fantastic for those who don't have electric downriggers. I got mine at Baxter's in Eugene but I also saw them in the store at Shelter Cove on Odell.

The only bad thing was I got my downrigger ball caught on an old anchor line, ( no boats around) and lost the whole thing. I have those Cannon mini trolls that clamp on the side of the boat, it just exploded.

Fished with two friends over Memorial weekend for Kokanee at Odell. The weather was great and the fishing was better. My two friends fished 4 days and I 3. We caught limits every day. That's 275 fish we had to clean. One evening the three of us went out right in front of Shelter cove and in 1.5 hours landed 53 fish. The fish are still at the surface so we jigged the top 10 feet. Most of the fish were around 12 inches, a little smaller than
what I have been hearing.

The first day I tried trolling and had limited results fishing deep. I caught one at 80 feet with a diamond blade spinner behind a dodger and one at 40 with a green Apex. Most of the fish I caught trolling were with a chartreuse Scorpion spinner behind a copper/orange sling blade fished with no weight just under the surface. At one point I trolled past a boat caught a fish and the wind blew me back by them. I would set up and troll past again and hook another fish. This happened 4 times and I could tell they were wondering what I was using.

Myself and a couple friends headed up to Odell on Wed 5-22 for the first time this year. We had some reports from friends that the Kokes had started to school up and the bite was on.

After a short snowball fight, we got on the water about 6:00 am, And started jigging along with 5 or 6 other boats. It was extremely cold, and had snowed about 2 or 3 inches the night before. And continued to snow off and on all day. We fished for about two hours before getting our first fish in the boat. They were all nice fish, about 13 inches, and a couple up to 15 . As far as gear, color didn't seem to matter. I had on a green buzz bomb and my other buddies had red and yellow. When the fish moved in , we all got fish.

The cold finally drove us off the lake at about 12:00 and we had 11 nice fish to come home with, not a great day, but any day on the lake, beats a day at work....

It was a very slow day, and saw no other fish caught, we talked with two or three boaters on the way in, and they had nothing to report, so I felt pretty good with the ones we brought aboard.

Talk about wind. If the fishing were as good as the wind we would have been heading home in 1 hour. Fishing sucked for us. 5 hours 4 fish and all smaller than what I have heard about (14 inch ave.). Talked to one old guy
who in three days with his two sons caught around 120 fish jigging. It was too windy to troll, even wind drift so we jigged. Caught them with a pink pearl buzz bomb casting out and working the surface. One boat was putting
the 15 it around to shame. I wish I knew what their secret was. Also started out the morning by getting my arm wet to the shoulder because someone forgot to put the drain plug in. Another 5 minutes and it would have been ugly. As John Ward told me there are two kinds of boat owners: the ones who have forgotten to put the drain plug in, and the ones who are going to forget. I now have graduated to the former.

Note: the boat launch at the campground by the resort is still snow in and the down is not in the water yet; probably by this weekend though.

Odell Lake 16th thru the 19th of May. Got to Odell in the morning, set up camp and went fishing right away, there where some boats just west of Princess Creek, went to investigate, most people were casting to jumping fish, so I did the same, this can be a great way to fish. Did real good, got 20 fish for the day. It was a little slower on Friday, no jumpers, did some vertical jigging around Gull Point, did ok, I did get 1 mack 30", but released it and picked up a white fish there also. A boat close to use did really well, they where using a Blaze Hex Jig tipped with corn. I threatened to cut there anchor line, they just laughed. Went back there Sat. morning and did fair, another boat near use was doing good too! I was getting fish but not like them. Sat. afternoon the jumpers where out again, this time east of Trapper Creek. With a west wind I just ran up a little and wind drifted down casting jigs. Sunday went out early, 6:30, it was an east wind this time, just went ou! t in the middle of the lake in front of Princess Creek and wind drifted. Was casting and did OK, finished out my 50 limit and was off the lake at 8:30. By the time I packed up camp the lake was all white caps and a lot of people where leaving. The fish were 11 1/2" to 13 1/2" with most around 12" to 12 1/2". It was a good time to experiment with some jigs I made up this spring. I would rate the fishing good to excellent.

Chris and I fished Odell Lake for the first time beginning on Friday, the same day Guy wrote about in the 5-17 report. We also heard that the fishing had been good on Thursday which may have related to the lake being calmer that afternoon and evening. We caught 6 on Friday, 18 on Saturday, and 19 on Sunday. As first-time fishermen at Odell the wind and waves were the strong first impression, but also that it is a great fishing lake, a great Kokanee fishery. We hadn't jigged before and it took some time to learn to make it work. Almost everyone was using an orange Buzz Bomb, with corn on the hooks. It seemed to us that fishing there this time of the year is more of a surface thing than a depth thing. Our jigging was done on rapid retrieval after casting, with the lure getting no deeper than about 10 feet. We were also much more successful trolling spinners and wedding rings with no weight, so they stayed nearer the surface. The fish met the 12-13" average that was stated in the ODFW's Weekly Fishing report, and the fish were in excellent condition. The 13"ers probably weighed about a pound apiece.

Well it is that time of year again and we made our yearly trip to Diamond lake, but we again went over to Odell to try the kokanee fishing for a day. We got there early Friday morning, and jigged and trolled until about 12:30. The fishing was slow. We got 8 kokes into the boat. People we talked to, said that it was good the day before, but had slowed. It seems like that was the same story last year.

Hope to make another trip to Odell in the next two weeks.

This report submitted by Guy