Twenty Years of Reports

A Wickiup Adventure

Twenty-some years ago, a friend reported great fall trips on Oregon’s Wickiup Lake: big, aggressive Browns following spawning Kokanee up the Deschutes Arm. Like so many reports, I filed it under “Sometime Later.” After 40 years of fly fishing, that file is stuffed, fraying, and increasingly unreliable. But it got revitalized over coffee with a fellow member of Clark-Skamania Flyfishers, when I mentioned I was headed to Oregon’s Cascade Lakes to fish Crane Prairie. His favorite lake in the region, come fall? Wickiup. Hmmm. I left a couple of days later, and while setting up camp at Crane Prairie, a fellow fisherman gave me his report: low and slow. To salvage his week, he’d driven ten miles south to Wickiup; and had the receipts, two pictures of big, beautiful Browns the color of butter. Report filed.

I wish I could say I went to Wickiup the next day and slayed them. But that’s not how a new lake, in the mountains, in the fall, works. I got in two 4-hour sessions between cold fronts. Day 1: a cold, clear morning warming into a picture-perfect day. The Kokanee were happy and splashing, the Browns podding underneath. After a run of frustrating drive-byes, I finally put it together; 2 for 4, jumped a 24+” fish, and tied into something massive I couldn’t budge before it parted with my size 18 hook. The front rolled through at 1 PM, and I wind-surfed to shore for coffee and cigars.

It rained all night, and Day 2 had me dressed for steelheading for both warmth and drizzle. Not a single fish dimpled the lake, and no trout was harmed. I checked CalTopo twice to confirm I was still on the same lake. I did land what I’m calling the Oregon record White Fish- released without a picture, but I’m sticking with the story. If it wasn’t the record, it deserved to be.

This is, in the end, a story of fishing success built on the generosity of reports from friends, acquaintances, and the kindness of strangers. The report that sealed the trip it came last: Fishless, I fell in with a couple of float tubers visiting from Colorado. They were into the Browns, and I asked the standard question; “What are you using?” I won’t embarrass them with their very Colorado answer, but it sent me to tie on a #18 red chironomid as a dropper beneath my Baby Rainbow Minnow. Ten minutes later: game on.

I’ll be back next year to file a few reports of my own. Thanks to everyone who shared theirs.