Fall fishing in Oregon tends to be either weeks of dry or so wet everything is a slippery mud mess. Today’s fishing trip was one of the later. And I’m sure the slowly lowering water in Hills Creek reservoir was not any help. In the Willamette valley most of the reservoirs are used for winter flood control. I have seen pictures from my grandparents of the yearly flooding in the valley every year before the dam’s were built in the 1950’s and 1960’s. All the houses at the time were built up on higher ridges and that were just barely above the floods. Even with the dam’s in place there is still a chance of flooding year to year.

Today’s trip started out as mostly a mushroom hunting trip since the chanterelles are up. But since we stopped at the reservoir we decided that a few casts would be nice since the rain was holding off some. The forecast was for up to half an inch of rain so we both wore solid rain gear from head to toe. Before we even were able to cast out there were multiple fish jumping out of the water. Just from seeing that we had high hopes of catching something.

Our hopes were realized very quickly. In less then 30 minutes we had caught five fish between us. Blue fox and my generic jointed jerkbait were the ticket for catching them. One planted spring Chinook (only about 10″) and four nice hatchery rainbow trout. Most were a nice 12″ size but one was close to 16″. I am curious to see how well the holdover survival rate for them is going to be this year. Earlier I caught a very large 20″ hatchery rainbow in the same area. This is by far the largest trout I have ever caught in Hills creek. I keep hearing of larger landlocked Chinook or the rare Bull trout that are caught in the reservoir but I have not yet been able to catch one. Both tend to live down deep and the only way to get them is with a downrigger. I do have one that I adapted to use from my kayak but that is something that I really need to practice to be good at it.

My last fish of the trip was the largest one of the day at close to 16″ and also one that nearly made me slide into the lake. Once I got the trout out of the water the line to the lure broke and I dropped the fish. The mud there is slippery enough I nearly slid into the water trying to get it. Luckily a stump stopped me before I hit the water. Otherwise I would have slid into water that was easily over my head in depth.

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best lures of the day to catch fish:

• Jerkbait close to what I was using sadly there is no marks on it on who it is made by
• Jeremy’s favorite panther martin
• and my normal Mepps aglia size zero. This works everywhere in Oregon for nearly everything. Both the silver and brass colors are equally effective.
• For any other fishing areas near this please check out the fishing in Oregon book. I am slowly picking places and trying to fish them all.

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