Wickiup Reservoir Reports 1998
July
25, 1998
Fishing was a little slow, but as always the fish were there. Buzz Bombs in lighter colors fished right on the bottom with white corn tipped trebles were the trick. We painted fish at 25 feet, but success (and bigger fish) were found within five feet of the bottom. Trolling wasn't producing as the water was quite high and the fish were on the move.
This report submitted by Ric and
John
June
28, 1998
We (Brad and I) Fished Wickiup and Paulina Great Fishing both spots
Water level had dropped quite a bit since we were there 2 weeks ago at both places. Wickiup appeared to be changing colors but it might have been that its the first time I've seen it FLAT this year......LOL
Am enclosing a couple of pics of our catch.....use whatever u want.....I wish I took better pictures cause it was a mess of awful nice fish .....(They looked better before I cleaned em and cut their heads off) LOL
The Middle row in the pics are a Paulina Lake Limit......and as always are the nicest of the ones we get.......The other 2 rows are a limit of Wickiup Kokes......
Good Fishin To Ya..........Deral
This report submitted by Deral
June
15, 1998
Arrived at Wickiup about midnight Friday to find Gull Point CG full.....we found a spot at Twin lakes RV park but ended up missing brown fishing when we had to wait till the store opened to get our spot paid for.....We finally got organized to get out there about 8 am and we should have just stayed in bed.....WINDY WINDY WINDY...After trying to get an anchor set in my favorite Kokanee hole it became obvious that wasn't going to work... we did manage 2 kokanee before we were sailing away dragging 2 anchors with us..... White caps everywhere and taking water over the front of the boat like crazy....Breakfast sounded like the right option at that point so back to camp we went....while eating breakfast we decided that a quick boat load would get us to Paulina in about an hour and we could wind troll up there so thats just what we did......Had the boat on the trailer by 11am and off we went....Arrived at Paulina to find the wind conditions much better.... Still kinda windy but nothing like Wickiup... To make a long story short we had the boat loaded back on the trailer and headed back down the hill by 2:30 with our 20 fish limit of nice fat 13-15inch kokanee...We caught ours by wind trolling but saw another couple boats doing really well jigging..We used "beer can" blades with worm-egg-corn combo and had a couple of "Triples" while we were fishing..... Arriving back at Wickiup we found the wind blowing every bit as hard as when we left if not even harder.....
Sunday morning found the wind taking a break and Brad and I out early chasing browns, after about an hour and a half with only one take down we decided we better wake up the gals and get out to the kokanee hole while the gettin was good...By the time we got them outta bed and out to the spot it was about 8:30 and the lake was in good shape as of yet.....we dropped the 4 microlites over baited with roe and off we went on a Kokanee catchin spree........it stayed calm for about an hour and then the wind slowly began to build....We were headed towards our 100 fish limit and decided we would fish till we got it or until we blew off our anchor (whatever came first) By 11:00am we were in white caps again which made feeling the subtle nibbles very hard to feel and slowed down our catch rate.....at exactly High Noon the front anchor came loose and that signaled the end of our weekend.....and a very rough ride back into the boat ramp...We ended up with 94 fish ( 6 short of our limit) and by the time we finished cleaning them I was glad we had !!!!! ( short cleaning tables = sore back ) The fish went from 10 to 15 inches with the majority about 12..... Nice fish but Paulina Kokes beat em hands down......
Thats it for this weekend...
This report submitted by Deral
June 7,
1998
Went to Wickiup Res. 6/5/98 to 6/7/98 The fishing was good, a little slower than in May, the fish where from 10" to 14" most of them where Co-Ho. I trolled most of the time, 13' of water was the most productive. I heard that some where getting limits still fishing in the Davis Arm. Made an early departure sunday due to thunderstorms. Over all a good trip.
This report submitted by Gary
May 13,
1998
Went to meet my Dad and Brother at Wickiup on 5/11. Got there around 730pm. Weather wasn't great, but bearable. My Dad and Brother got up there Sunday afternoon. Fishing was terrible (1 Kokanee). Gigantic midge hatch Sunday afternoon. The boat and everything in it was covered with bugs. Regulars there said they had never seen one of that size before.
Rained most of the night on Monday. Went out about 630 with a little snow coming down. After about an hour the snow was really coming down hard. We caught 5 fish by noon. Showing lots of fish on the fish finder. My Brother got pretty regular strikes trolling a Flashlite with white wedding ring tipped with worm and corn. I was using a Ford Fender with the same wedding ring setup and I couldn't get a strike. Probably could have stayed out and caught several more fish, but without a heater we couldn't take the cold any longer. I think I'll wait a few more weeks when the weather will be a bit warmer and try again.
This report submitted by James Middlestadt
May 13,
1998
I fished Wickiup Saturday and Sunday May 9 and 10 with my kids. It was COLD. We even had some snow blow on us and the wind kept up all weekend. We tried trolling for browns Saturday AM and caught a 16 inch nice fat rainbow. We then switched to kokanee trolling and caught 2 with the flasher and Robbie's red spinner with the double hook setup. On Sunday we caught three more kokanee but had to work for them. I ran into Deral out on the lake just after his boat caught a nice brown, but it looked like most people weren't getting too many fish.
The camping is sure nice there at Wickiup, even if it was an off weekend for the fish.
This report submitted by Dan
Meyers
May 11,
1998
On Sunday we tryed to catch some kokes for the smoker by lettin the wind be our trolling guide and ended up with 17 in about 4 hrs fishing....as usual we lost more than we caught and that was made even easier to accomplish because no one wanted to get out from under the top and the heater to grab the poles....
Lake Conditions has water dropping from opening weekend (still very High) and water temp up a bit by my fish finder readings..... The lake conditions as far as the weather went this weekend were horrendous.... Rain...snow...and cold cold wind made trollin for German Browns seem a much wiser choice, since theres much less action and not near as much bait and rigging tackle in the cold....
Going to fish East Lake next weekend so Hoping for a little cooperation from mother nature then......
Good Fishin To Ya.............. Deral
This report submitted by Deral
May 9,
1998
This report submitted by Gary K.
April
28, 1998
Well we never made it to the Kokanee hole at all on Saturday......Seems we instead became one of the luckiest boats in Oregon as within the 1st hour and a half of fishing we boated 3 German Browns and the 3rd one was huge.......I mean really big.......
We spent most of the day looking for somewhere to have it weighed on a certified scales and ended up in Lapine, having the weight certified at 26.29 Lbs after a 6 hour stint in the fish box......As far as we know it is the second biggest German Brown legally caught in the state and the Biggest ever to come out of Wickiup............Yahoo !!!!!!!!!!
The fish was caught by Larry Maracek ,a friend of mine who fishs with me on opening weekend most years and once in a while in the fall for chinook......
Think I will just start callin him "Mr Lucky" as he caught the biggest fish last year on opening weekend too..... Not to mention that the fish was about twice as big as our net would handle......I just knew I had lost it for him when I tried to net him the 1st time and ended up with half a fish in the net and the rapala hooked solidly in the netting.....God must have been with us as we got a 2nd chance at it and while one guy got the net back over its head I pushed as much of the tail and body into it as I could and we finally got him on the deck of my boat.........All this while fishin with 8 lb. main line and 6 lb. leader....
Anyway back to the Kokanee part.....We did see some pretty good Kokanee fishing by others on Saturday and on Sunday when we finally made it to my spot the 6 of us proceeded to put our 150 limit aboard in about 4 or 5 hours worth of fishing....
The size wasn't what I remembered from last year but its still early and most of the fish were in pretty good shape.....the fish ran from 10 to 15 inches with most falling in the 12-13 inch catagory......
Water was very high and water temp was at 48 degrees.....Saw lots of folks jigging for them and many more trolling and looked like everyone was puttin fish in their boats.....
Till the next trip...........Good Fishin To Ya.................Deral
This report submitted by Deral
April 25, 1998
I promised my 13 year old son, Joel, an opening day trip to Wickiup. It took us until 800 PM Friday to "get it together" to be on our way. Our first challenge was hitting a snowstorm on Willamette Pass. The second challenge was having the windshield wipers totally quit. Fortunately it quit snowing by the time we got over the top. We pulled into Wickiup about 1100 PM to "Camp Full". We finally found a wide spot in the road in a 1/2 price campground and managed to get some sleep. In the morning we got in the lineup at the boat ramp. My first clue we were in trouble was the dozens of pickups and empty boat trailers already parked on the highway outside the ramp area entrance. We pulled in to the ramp area and joined the lineup. By the time we got launched the traffic had come to a complete standstill. The rush of boaters trying to launch had blocked the exit so that there was total gridlock for about 20 minutes until some of the more sensible folks had managed to sort things out.
Our next dilemma, you guessed it, was boat trouble. It was so cold that the boat would not shift into forward. It would go in reverse. After a while of horsing around with this, we finally got it into gear and headed for the hotspot several miles away.
We fished south of the dam for the morning and caught two kokanee jigging Nordics with a piece of worm and corn. We picked up one more trolling, but overall the kokanee fishing was pretty slow. I tried bait fishing with salmon roe, but got nowhere with that either. As a time filler we decided to troll with Rapala's for brown trout. We'd never caught a brown trout at Wickiup before so were fairly clueless at what we were doing. 15 minutes later the pole jumped up and down and we had missed a fish. We kept at it over the next several hours and had 5 in the boat, ranging up to 16 inches. Late in the day my son had a hookup and we could tell something pretty special was on the other end. We were using ultra light rods and reels and it was really giving Joel a work out. Fortunately I had just spooled up some "Spiderwire" line that proved to be extra tough, because as we were fighting the fish it made a mad dash for a pocket of nasty looking debris in the water. Joel managed to pull the fish out of the debris and close enough for a net job. The fish was 21 inches long and tipped the scales at 4 pounds!
This report submitted by Dan
Meyers
April
27, 1998
Tried all day Saturday and managed 18 in the boat. The largest was caught trolling on the northwest side of the lake in the AM. The remainder were caught in the PM out of Gull Point boat ramp in about 25-30 feet of water using jigs. My personal favorite is a silver Kastmaster with a red prism on the body. I think the action is a little more inviting than the buzz bombs or Nordics. Now the latest secret...."Herring flies". You know the string of flies they use on the coast to catch herring. Thought we would try a string of these anchored by a Pink Nordic. The kokes really went for the fly just above the nordic. Nice and small, They must fit in koke's mouth just right. MMMM --- good! So how many hooks can you legally have on a single line ? A law abiding person could cut the hooks off the ones that weren't allowed and just use a colored weight - right.
Post mortem on the fish showed a good number of bugs, a lot like mosquito larvae in the fish's stomachs. Saw one nice 20" brown with a 6" koke in it's stomach ---- Ah the food chain in action. Also a 27# brown was brought in to South Twin resort from Wickiup.
Sunday turned off nice calm and sunny. Trolled mid morning for a single 16" that my wife caught...again off Gull Point. Very little action seen around the lake. Scooted to Crane Prairie in hopes of rainbows but instead was treated to some guy submerging his pickup off the ramp at the resort.
PS. I tried your 1/2 oz sinker lures and actually caught some fish !!.
None of them went for the UofO color scheme however.
This
report submitted by Alan Guess