Pine Forest Complex. 7/2/09 - 7/5/09

The plans to camp and fish at Blue Lakes and Onion Valley Reservoir -- in the Pine Forest complex -- were a complete success with much of the Lord's beauty being observed and loads of fish being left with sore mouths. The story as condensed by my waning memory:

Gearing up:
Being that I don't really have any stillwater experience with the fly rod I sat down and did a little bit of tying. I ended up tying a smattering of flies, including a bunch for the truckee, but new names like "sheep creek special," "damsel nymph," and "Stayner Ducktail" are now a part of my arsenal:

Yeah it's a bit ugly I know... but it worked!:

Having read in Dave Stanley's "Fly Fishing Nevada" that foam body zonkers make for a great night pattern--along with the fact that there are tiger trout in all 3 bodies of water up there-- I thought it would be a good time to try and tie the skate rat. I didn't follow the pattern but instead just spun on a bunch of deer hair and trimmed it-- turns out spinning deer hair isn't as scary as I thought... though it does make a helluva mess of your tying bench. The finished product (I figured two would be plenty):

I also broke down and bought into the uv curing epoxy trend.... which, it turns out is near impossible to take a decent picture of. The night before we left I discovered that I'm missing an entire box of flies that I tied for pyramid lake-- greatly reducing my stock. I stayed up until the butt-crack-o'-dawn tying leeches, damsels, buggers, scuds, blob flies, and midges. I also bought a sink tip and figured I was as ready as I was ever going to be.

The Journey:
I can tell you it's a helluva drive up there and most of the time you have a hard time believing you're anywhere near a high-mountain glacial trout lake. You pass through my home town, Winnemucca, drive towards Oregon and take a left. That's when you're presented with a view of a road as endless as the sky (as modeled marvelously by my gorgeous wife):


Not to worry-- after just a little while the road will soon make a right hand turn. And then it will look the same.

Pretty soon you're seeing mirages in the heat waves and the three people that pass you give you stolid looks that say "what are you doing here" which is what you are thinking as well. Then you stop a half dozen times and make a mess of your map until you realize your turn is marked well by a road sign, if you had just held out for it. Then begins an arduous trek through the mountains and after you're sure your truck can't handle any more abuse, the desert starts dwindling into wonderful groves of aspen, wildflowers and small, seasonal streams that almost convince you you're the first person to discover these oases. By this point you're thinking "this lake has got to be around the next bend," but after every bend you see this:

Assuring you that you're not even close.

In the end we finally made it to onion valley reservoir-- a welcome sight indeed! Then there was just one last short trek up a road to the blue lakes trail head-- it turned out to be a bit rough in some areas and I even had to get out and scout out a particularly difficult spot. Even after mentally marking out a planned route through the ruts and boulders, my tire ended up falling off the steep side of a rock and "Wham!" we slammed down with that not-so-good-feeling of steel on rock. After picking my teeth up off the floor I investigated the damage and found I had slammed down hard on the frame behind the tire (luckily) and then skipped off the rock before I was high centered. I certainly left a bit of hardened steel on the rock... but no worries-- onward ho! We found a camp site and a surprising number of vehicles at the trail head and were soon happily settled in and made an evening hike into the lake.

Blue Lakes:
Despite the surprising number of people camping on the lake (surprising since you have to pack everything in about 1/2 a mile) I was stunned by the beauty of the place and felt my blood start to pump when I noticed the surface of the lake was spotted with rings made by rising trout. It was time to give it a shot before dark settled in:


I got the spinning rod set up with a lure for Andrea and gave it a few casts for her ("hold on dear, just one more...") -- each cast was rewarded with little taps and following trout. We fished an hour or so and caught maybe 7 or 8 fish on spinners and I missed take after take after take on an indicator-midge setup. As it turns out, our camera had limited life left at this point (a malfunctioning battery and a dust-infected display) and I didn't stop to take any pictures of the little 10" rainbows that we were catching.

Eventually Andrea drug me off of the lake and we hiked back to camp with high spirits-- we were finally out of the car and camping! The sunset was a grand display silhouetting the juniper and aspen reminding Andrea and I both, oddly enough, of the hazy sunsets we've seen in west Africa. We chowed some grub and then turned in, with high hopes for the next day.

Alas those hopes were shortlived, as we awoke around midnight to the loud roar of a diesel running up and down the road spinning circles and peeling out and generally just making a lot of noise. Then they stopped in the driveway to our little camp in the trees--not 20 feet away-- and started unloading. WTF?! They were clearly completely drunk and proceeded to build a bonfire and rip off tree branches loudly, talking about girls, beer, guns, and killing peoples' annoying pets. So I sat in bed and fumed knowing I'd be a fool to confront a bunch of armed, drunk rednecks this far out of cell range... needless to say it was probably around 4 am before they quieted down and Andrea and I fell asleep with visions of vigilante justice dancing around in our heads. Now, don't get me wrong, I've participated in my fair share of redneck idiocy and had a lot of fun doing it-- but when you are driving drunk on dangerous roads and being that inconsiderate towards other people-- you deserve to be called an ignorant douchebag.

Anyways... enough ranting -- the point is that we didn't get up early and get to the lake for a full day of swimming and fishing. Instead we slept until our tent turned into a 2-man-person-cooker and then investigated our options. As it turns out there were plenty of open campsites, which are apparently only visible to the non-drunk sort of campers. Instead of a foolish confrontation we packed up camp, drove down the road, and unpacked camp again. We were soon happily set up in a beautiful spot and on our way to the lake to catch the midday bite (that's a joke).

camp-- numero dos (and looking the other way below):

We spent the day on the lake reeling in fish after fish -- mostly in the 7"-12" range. The water was crystal clear and though we were only catching the small ones you could see an occasional bruiser swim by. Frustratingly you could get these big guys to occasionally chase a streamer or nymph only to have them stop at the last second and turn around-- A conundrum I never solved over the whole trip. Regardless I was mostly happy to reel in little rainbows, brookies, and tiger trout and after many hours I finally got the hang of catching them with the fly rod. The key seemed to be a hard, short strip-- then a long pause-- a couple more strips-- repeat. The hard part was the hook set with the feisty quick hits taking place on the pause so a close attention to the line/leader junction was a must and a quick strip or rod set would do the job. A variety of flies seemed to do the job just fine-- the retrieve seemed more crucial than anything-- but the winning flies in my book were brown and black woolly buggers, sheep creek specials, marabou-tailed damsel nymphs and an olive beadhead bird's nest.

As I said earlier the camera was on the fritz so once a few photos were snapped we put the camera away and simply enjoyed the stupid trout with their feisty takes and ridiculous acrobatics. And speaking of fritz-- I even managed to fool a few with a sparkly purple blob fly:

first tiger trout for the books! Quite beautiful:

Once again the day ended with a beautiful sunset and my brother, his girlfriend and my parents ended up meeting us up there. And apparently my Mom was the only one with the guts to go talk to those guys I had problems with earlier-- as it turns out my were setting up their camp and were annoyed by the constant revving of a diesel engine and loud music-- I hadn't even shared my story of bad luck with them yet! Surprisingly they quieted down and we had a great time eating bratwursts, corn and a bunch of other camping junk food.

The next morning my Dad wanted to see blue lake so we returned and continued the small-fish trout-fest. However, my brother Randy ended up actually landing some nice fish (fortunately I didn't place any bets) landing a 17"er, 18"er and a bigger fish probably in the 20" range-- all caught on a lure with a spinning rig-- keeping me humble on the fly rod. The 'rents headed home in the early afternoon along with my brother and his lady and-- after a bath and a refreshing swim in blue lake-- we headed down to Onion reservoir with more bratwursts and a small grill.

Onion Valley Reservoir:
The beauty of onion reservoir was getting to park right on the water-- we set up camp chairs and Andrea started cooking while I threw some half-hearted casts in some shallow warm water. There didn't seem to be a single fish rising so after dinner Andrea and I hiked around the lake taking in the scenery and even managing some photos while the sun got lower and lower in the sky (turn camera on, take one picture, camera dies, open and close battery compartment-- repeat for each shot). The aspen and wildflowers were amazing (all photos taken by Brian & Andrea Johnson):


On the way back I waded through a small inlet stream and was amazed at how cold the water was. I immediately started thinking that there might be a cold current attracting some trout to the inlet-- despite it's shallowness-- and made a quick cast with a spinning rod before we left. Whammo! On the first cast I landed a 12" rainbow-- so I made another cast -- Whammo! Another fish! This time a nice 16" rainbow jumped out of the water and threw the hook-- I promptly got in the water with my fly rod and started nailing fish with a black woolly bugger. In fact, the woolly bugger worked so well that I didn't waste any time trying too many different flies. It turned out to be a spectacular evening of fishing with my poor wife, who didn't feel like fishing, reading in the car while I was sort of freaking out at how awesome the fishing was. There wasn't a soul in sight around the reservoir and here I was standing in knee deep water stripping a bugger as fast as I could -- almost as if I was bassin'-- and catching more 12"-16" rainbows than I could keep track of. I was fishing just under the surface with a 7ft leader and floating line, stripping the unweighted bugger immediately after the cast landed and some of these fish would make a visible wake on the water in the waning light before taking my fly.


It was mad action until it got dark and then it just slowed a little bit-- the moon was full and these werefish were still a bitin'. Then I finally changed flies-- caught a few more on cutter's goblin fly and then decided it was time to try the skate rat. There was nothing but grass around me and I was casting like a fool making some of the longest casts of my life with that nice light skate rat and stripping it with all sorts of retrieves. No dice. I'll be sure to try mouse-flies again for night trout-- but the darkness finally got to me and all sorts of strange creatures were making noises in the grass and water, including some water snakes making unmistakable s-shaped wakes on the calm surface of the water. Did I mention I was wet wading? I packed up and headed out, giddy because of the great fishing and we returned to camp tired-- a great end to a great trip.

On Home:

On the last day I had hoped to get in some early morning fishing before we had to leave, but I couldn't drag myself out of bed and Andrea and I enjoyed a lazy morning before we threw our gear back in the truck and started driving. Next time I definitely want to fish Knott Creek reservoir but we were out of time this trip. On the way home we got to see some antelope and some wild burros and stopped in the puny town of Denio for a "Denio-Burger"-- hands down the best damn burger of your life, if you ever get the chance.

All in all this is one of the coolest spots I've been to-- so don't abuse it if you go there! And sorry for the late update-- I wanted to do the update some justice but I'll actually be quite impressed if anyone makes it this far through my hasty ramblings! I'm definitely in the stillwater game now however and I'll be gearing up for a trip to Bridgeport CA at the end of the month for another epic fishing trip.

Cheers.