Blazer Shane's Blog

Lost Creek Reservoir

blazer_shane — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 01:12:28 +0000

Back in June we had some some nice weather and my Brother Louis and my niece Tahleena were heading to Lost Creek Reservoir for some Bass fishing. So of course I went along too. We got their in the evening around 4-5. Louis has a nice bass tracker boat, and after we put the boat in he took us to his favorite little cove. I tied a 3″ Yum Dinger bass worm on wacky style. Not long after I got the first small mouth bass of the day, not big, little under a pound probably. Still fun to catch! I got one more from the same cove on the wacky rigged dinger. I was using my Shimano Symetre spinning reel with my bass worms, it was really nice to finally get some use on my reel after John from The Reel Tech took it apart and cleaned it recently. Make sure to keep on an eye on where you sit your fishing reels, especially if they’re expensive. In February I had caught a nice Steelhead and the excitement came over me and i didnt pay attention to where i set my reel. I set it right on the beach at the river. Not long after I noticed a grinding while reeling, not a good feeling on a reel you spent $100 dollars for. Reel Tech did a great job with my reel and I recommend him to anyone.

The bass and my niece are both smiling.

It was a good evening of fishing. We each caught around 5-7 small mouth bass. It took Tahleena a little bit to hook one. But after some smack talk by me and Louis about not catching one, she started bringing them to the boat! I caught the weirdest looking small mouth. Two tone with claw marks. Pretty interesting.

Thanks for reading! And I plan on bringing more reports to the light of day! Tight lines!

Spring King

blazer_shane — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 01:13:18 +0000

June 6th I went fishing with the famous Charlie Brown of FishingTheRogue.com We had a new passenger on this day Ryder. Ryder was a very cool dude who had done some salmon fishing before so it made it a lil easier to not have to explain how to do some of the stuff were doing. Ryder is related to one of Charlies buddies and was trading him a fishing trip in turn for some help on finding some Morels. Morels are very delicious and some times hard to find kinda like Spring Salmon! This day started off pretty well. We were in the first hole anchored up and using a mix of wrapped plugs and eggs on a diver. No more then an hour into fishing I felt one single bite and immediately afterwards set the hook like Kevin Van Dam. Afterwards the line went slack and for a few seconds I thought that I missed the hook set, but then while reeling in the salmon surfaced and let me know i had done good! About five minutes earlier a guide had pulled right up next to us and was fishing our same hole. When fighting the fish it decided it wanted to leave the hole and go down to the next, so we had to go after it. The guide told us that’s the best way to leave a hole, with a fish on! We got down to Chief Hole a good spot for bankies, and we were able to land and net the fish in a short amount of time, let the bank guys get back to fishin. Found out it was a keeper and made the rest of the day go by real nicely! Got some awesome dinners out of that one! On our way down the river Ryder spotted some Oyster Mushrooms growing on a tree near the river. Charlie is a mushroom lover and pulled the boat over right away and climbed up the tree to cut the shrooms! I ended up getting the only Salmon of the day, but we all got some mushrooms! Thanks for the sweet fishin trip Charlie! Visit him at his website or on facebook FishingTheRogue.com Good times to be had!

Thanks for reading and tight lines!

Camping at Medco Pond

blazer_shane — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:50:59 +0000

Friday the 3rd day of June I headed up to Medco Pond to camp and fish. The next day, Saturday was free camping day at state parks in Oregon. So my plan Friday evening was to stop by Joseph H. Stewart State Park at Lost Creek Reservoir, and try to reserve a free spot for the next day. Apparently they weren’t taking reservations for the free camping day unless you were staying the night before. I asked what time to come back the next day and left for Medco Pond. Got to the old logging pond late in the evening and found a nice little spot not far from the pond to set up my tent and construct my pontoon boat. By the time I got my toon together it was dark, and the stars very bright. I wanted to have my boat put together the night before so I could be on the water really early. But I slept in. Being outdoors is a better environment to sleep I don’t know why lol. By the time I got on the water there were already some people fishing, from shore, and other small boats. Also an Osprey was fishing all morning, I could watch him from my tent hitting the water was very cool.

Ospreys gotta be my favorite bird, always putting on a show. At this Pond a big Bald Eagle lived nearby too, you would see him chase after the osprey sometimes after a meal I assume. I started out fishing the half of the pond that is covered in weeds. You don’t see anyone fishing this side usually because of the thickness of the weeds. But I know fish are in there. Early in the morning most of the time the Osprey dove into the water it was on the weeded side. And id imagine huge bass are sitting in there and loving it. I didn’t fish the weeds for long and had to get out into water that didn’t have near as much weeds. I got out there and put away my bass jigs and worms for most of the time. I brought my Ultra Lite spinning rod and tied on a couple flys. Almost all the fish came on the green wolly bugger, but a few hit the dry fly i was using too. I caught tons of trout, but they were all under 8″. Still put up a fight on my little 4ft UL rod. I started out trolling while rowing forwards, mostly because iv always rowed forward while in my pontoon. This makes it kind of difficult when you get a fish on while trolling, your facing forward and the fishing is behind you. So I quickly learned to troll while rowing backwards. This made it a lot easier when i got a fish on, usually they stayed on.

Fishing here was an absolute blast! The tip of my rod was always bouncing from fishing hitting the flys, a lot of the time they didn’t stick to the hook. But watching my rod tip go crazy was really fun, almost as fun as running plugs for steelhead in a drift boat. If i hadn’t got a little bite on my flys in more then a few minutes i knew i had some weeds on my line and it was time to reel in and check. It was constant fish action! Got a few little Crappies which are sweet looking and fight hard! Also caught a few tiny bass. One I thought was gonna be bigger because he took for the cover of the weeds after swiping my fly! People on the banks were mostly catching bluegills but i seen some catch an occasional trout. One bass boat was out and he didnt have anything good to report, said he couldn’t believe it was June because we were both wearing sweaters. Other boats out there were doing good catching the trout from what i seen. Its a great place out and away from the city and anything. No cell service. Free Camping. Not many people. Great place!!!!

I ended up staying here Saturday night. Didnt feel like packing everything and going to a campground that isnt close to the lake, how it is at Stewart State Park. Medco was very fun. Didnt have to deal with water skiers or other types of speed boats. The bird watching was great. The peacefulness of this place is what really made me want to stay here instead of the big recreational Lost Creek Lake. I give this place two thumbs up if your looking to have a good time! Tight Lines my friends!

I did it!

blazer_shane — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 22:51:14 +0000

So after the last trip Charlie was giving me crap about back bouncing, and how i havent hooked a salmon yet doing it myself. Iv landed a big one he hooked into back bouncing not long ago, but doing something on your own is alot different. It takes a little bit to understand how to back bounce, i had it down for awhile now, i just think the fish werent biting mine for what ever reason lol. Well that all changed on May 31st. Charlie called me the day before and said he wanted to do some fishing, and i was more then ready! We didnt go as early as we usually do, which i didnt mind the more sleep. Got to the boat ramp around 730am and started to fish for the elusive spring chinook! On the drive to the river I knew it could be a cold wet day or it could be a nice sunny day out. It looked like it had rained on all night, and there were still some nasty clouds in the sky but part of the sky was trying to clear up. It ended up being a great day fishing and weather wise, we only got rained on for a tiny part of the day. Half way through our float we hadnt had a fish to the boat but it was looking good as we got to the Pump Hole. Charlie gave me some new eggs to put on and not long after I felt something a little fishy and set the hook. After setting the hook the reel made that crazy sound, guess i almost birds nest it. Luckily it didnt and i reeled in and engaged the drag on the level wind abu garcia reel. And the fight was on! During the fight I looked over toward Charlie and said ” Told you i could do it” haha. I fought this silver beast for a few minutes and Charlie was able to net it. After netting it we discovered it was a wild salmon and had to be released. Charlie got in the water and released it for me but right before we got a quick picture. Thanks to the Salmon for making my day! And thanks to Charlie Brown for having me come along fishing with him! Book a trip now for a chance at a fish like this one! FishingTheRogue.com

Slammin The Salmon

blazer_shane — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 21:12:00 +0000

I got back from Rafting Guide School on Tuesday the 21st of May. The next day I planned to go salmon fishing with Phil. My alarm went off before 3am and I was super wore out and tired still, and it was raining hard. So I unfortunately had to cancel on Phil, I felt really bad because he didn’t want to go by himself. It’s really hard to fish for salmon in a boat by yourself. So the next day Thursday the 23rd we arranged to go again now that i was rested up, but this time we brought a special guest to sit up front with me, Charlie Brown! We all met at the Shady Cove boat ramp super earlier and headed up to the hatchery after we loaded up Phil’s boat with our gear. It was a slow morning, but being slow isnt uncommon when fishing for salmon. We were about half way through our float when Charlie decided to try different eggs that he had brought. Not long after he hooked into this awesome salmon back bouncing roe.

Charlie was using one of his older rods which is only six foot six inches. Buts its rated for 18lb line, it probably was meant to be bass rod. But on this day he landed this hawg of a hatchery chinook salmon on it. This fish wore Phil out on the oars, we fought it for a third of a mile going down stream. Was quite the spectacle. When Charlie was finally able to get it close enough to the boat, I netted the beast. Then we found out it was a hatchery fish, so it made it a even sweeter catch! After netting it, Phil brought the boat to shore so we could bleed and photo the fish. We got out and a bankie come over and wanted to see our catch and we got him to take a photo with the three of us and the fish!

Now that’s a big keeper!!! And it tasted wonderful! Thanks for the fillet buddy. From then on the day went soooo much smoother like it alway does once we get a fish to the boat! Later in the day we were anchored up in a spot talking. When Charlie said something like “It would be nice if we were able to get more then one Salmon a day” Each time we’ve got a salmon this year it has only been one a day, nothing to complain about but two is always better! Well id say not even an hour later we were back bouncing in the last hole of the day before the take out. And wouldnt you know Charlie Brown hooked into another Salmon! This time he handed it off to Phil and and they switched posistions, so Phil could fight one! It wasnt a big one but it was another keeper! And we finally got our two salmon day! Thanks to Phil of YGA on Youtube. And Charlie Brown of FishingTheRogue.com for having me come along for another great day of fishing!

Tight lines, and be safe!

Day 3

blazer_shane — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:18:34 +0000

May 17th: The third day started out with me picking up Phil from his house well before sun rise. We were meeting Charlie at the take out to go Spring Chinook Salmon fishin for my third day in a row. When we arrived to the boat ramp i said something along the lines of ” oh damn, we got beat to the boat ramp” Luckily it was Brady and he’s our friend and he was waiting for clients so we were first anyways! We made it down to the first hole even before we could start fishing, legal fishing time is one hour before sun rise. So we waited a few minutes then put our lines in the water when it was legal time. Not long after Brady made his way to the hole with his late arriving clients. Then soon after we were greeted in the hole with a couple bank anglers. But all of that was fine becasue soon after the bankies got down there Charlie hooked into a real feisty Jack Salmon. Eggs were the goto bait once again. It was a nice keeper fish and Charlie got to reel one in for him self for a change!

That’s a Jack Salmon. Jacks are Salmon but are under 24inches. You can keep 5 Jacks a day, that’s the only difference with their bigger counterparts. The limit for full size Salmon is two, which is ALOT of meat. But on this day we only got the one jack. It was some what slow but the weather was super nice! On a side note. When we got done fishing I talked to Charlies rafting boss about the Rafting Guide School that was happening a couple days later. He confirmed that I was going and i had and absolute blast for five days. So thanks again Charlie!!!! Book a trip with Charlie to go fishing on the beautiful Rogue River, or book a rafting trip with the bussiness I did Guide School for, it is summer after all! FishingTheRogue.com and for some Rafting fun goto Rogue Klamath River Adventures. Thanks for reading and be safe out on the water!

Not a Fishing Report?

blazer_shane — Mon, 30 May 2011 04:37:37 +0000

If you’ve read my blog at all before you can probably tell the way my posts are formatted. I like to write about my fishing experiences, show photos, and quick reports. Some times it involves fish other times it doesn’t, i am doing a fishing blog, not a catching blog. So with all that said. This post wont be about my amazingly awesome fishing adventures, it’ll be about other cool and great stuff

First thing id like to let y’all know about is a cool online business selling very affordable fishing flies. They have tons of flies, they’re local to Oregon, they have free shipping, usually flies are only .50 cents each. But right now they’re doing a memorial day sale until the 4th of June, Flies are only .45 cents a piece and shipping is still free! Iv made more then a few orders from them and shipping is always here in a good time. Iv only caught one fish with the flies but iv only used them a couple times. They definitely look very fishy and im sure ill be catching a lot of trout with them later in the year. So I recommend StreamFlies.com for some good affordable fishin flys!

Secondly Id like to shout out to a local business from the Rogue Valley, but don’t worry they are also online, The Reel Tech. John Strenk of The Reel Tech is the best out there in the servicing and repairing of reels in my opinion. I know what its like to have a high end reel that you expect to perform wonderfully but something happens and the reel doesn’t preform at the best of its ability’s. Salmon fishing wears and tears on reels, my friend Charlie Brown of FishingTheRogue.com can attest to this. He had his two back bouncing reel serviced with John and now the Abu Garcia Reels work great. And we’ve landed some really nice salmon since the works been done on them. Get a hold of John of The Reel Tech for your Reel needs, I’m super glad i took my my Shimano Symetre to him. PS. He gets the work done on them in a very timely manner, a big plus!

Thirdly I want to thank my friend and fishing partner Phil Trip. We haven’t been friends for a long time, but I’m glad we met and became such good fishing pals. Iv had lots and lots of good fishing memories with this guy, and most of our fish are on video and pictures, which is sweet! So do your self a favor and go over to his youtube video channel and watch this guy and his friends catch some amazing fish!! Thanks for all the boat trips we’ve done Phil, its always a good time!

Fourthly. Is the rafting stuff I briefly mentioned a couple posts back. My friend and fishing buddie Charlie Brown. As you probably know hes a fishing guide, he’s also a white water rafting guide for Rogue Klamath River Adventures. Three or four weeks back Charlie invited me to come along with all the guides that were doing a trip for fun on the Scott River in California. This trip was a blast and was only the second time that I had done white water rafting. So I got to talking with the owner of the company, and we worked out a deal where he let me attend his rafting guide school in return id do work for him at his property. Great trade on my end. I had an absolutely awesome time, learned a bunch and met great folks. Hopefully this will be something I can do for more then just fun in the future!

And another thing! Fishing Forums. A lot of my readers come from them, a link in my signature gets them here. Oregon Fishing Forum was the first one I joined. It was before I even started blogging, I mostly lurked but i did an occasional trout report. Not long after joining OFF i began blogging about my fishing trips. I mostly did it so i could post my pictures of the trips so people not from my area could see Oregon. I then over the years would join the occasional fishing forum, some i would be a regular for a bit then id drift away and stick with OFF. Now I mainly only post at OFF and give short post’s and reports on Ifish. Ifish is a bigger community and with that comes with a lot of varying opinions which is a great thing and also a not so great thing some times. But iv read a lot of great stuff on there and i continue to be a member. There’s a couple other places i post at just not very frequently, one is Small Stream Salmon Fishing and the other is North West Outdoors. Both are good forums and have things the other two don’t have. It’s a lot to take in but if your a Pacific Northwest fisherman id suggest checking out some of these forums and maybe even joining some.

Well there we have it! Ill be getting back to the fishing reports so stay tuned for the good stuff. FISH PORN!!!!!

Lunker Salmon

blazer_shane — Sun, 29 May 2011 21:06:36 +0000

The next day Charlie and my self hit the Rogue River even earlier then the day before. But this time we weren’t rewarded for our early efforts like the day before. We did have a couple nice take downs on the plug rods but neither one stuck. But the weather made the fishing much more enjoyable, no rain. We seen some salmon caught, one was by Pavati Boat Rep. Steve, who is also one of Charlies friends. Steve is a very cool guy i got to meet at the boat ramp when we were done fishing. We seen him get his clients into a real nice salmon, it was a real show. It took our boat longer then we expected to get into a salmon but the one we did get into this day was a dandy! It was around 11am and we were anchored up in the pump hole. We had one rod out with a wrapped plug, and Charlie was back bouncing roe with the other rod. And this was the moment that changed my mind about that technique. He set the hook like you would see a pro bass fisherman do on TV but this wasn’t no bass. Charlie handed me the rod not long after he hooked into it and pulled anchor and got on the sticks. I fought it in the same hole for quite some time, the fish wanted to stay on the bottom. It was pretty cool to feel it finally leave the bottom but when it did the fight wasn’t even near the end. I have no idea how long i fought it for, you kinda lose sense of time when your fighting a huge fish, but id say around 6-7 minutes. It took a couple runs when it came near the boat but about the third time i brought it near Charlie was able to net it. And when it was netted the line snapped! Kinda crazy. I thought i lost it at first but Charlie said it was in the net! It was a big ole wild Chinook Salmon so we had to let it go, but after we got a couple pictures! It was the only fish of the day but it made the whole day very worth it! Book a trip with Charlie Brown of FishingTheRogue.com to catch awesome fish like this!

The biggest fish iv ever caught!

Phil’s First Rogue River Springer!

blazer_shane — Sat, 28 May 2011 22:20:27 +0000

Iv been super busy lately. Also my laptops keyboard has been on the fritz. So my fishing reports have been put on the back burner. The coolest reason iv been so busy lately was the rafting guide school I took part in recently. It was 4-5 days of learning, camping, rafting on new waters, and meeting some great folks. So before i went on that adventure, i went Salmon Fishing three days in a row on the Rogue River. This report is the first day of the three, May 17th.

The day started out bright and early. Me and Phil got to the boat ramp a little after legal fishing time because we could hear the bankies on the hatchery wall catching fish and slinging lead. We were some what intimidated to launch the boat because we heard a couple splashes near us that we swore were them tossing stuff. We eventually decided to brave the bankies and when we got past the big line of them we both let out a breath of relief. From then we thought we would be in the clear to get to our spot and anchor up and fish by our self’s in peace. That changed when we floated down towards the spot and we seen headlights up on top of the cliff above the first spot to fish. We got down there just as the bankie managed to descend the cliff so we had to share the hole. We sat there with two plugs out and proceeded to watch the guy fishing on the bank rip the hole up. Its kinda weird watching a guy try to snag fish that are jumping right in front of him every two minutes. At one point he pretended he had a shot gun and said he’d rather shoot one haha. So me and Phil were waiting there for a take down to occur, when the inevitable happened. He crossed one of our plug lines. So he reeled in one of our plugs and tried to untangle the mess, while this was happening we looked over to the other rod and seen a fish was on it! Phil grabbed the other rod and proceeded to muscle in this hawg. He had 75lb Braid for the main line and 25lb mono for the leader, so this fish was landed in record time! Before I knew it the fish was near the boat and Phil was handing me the rod so he could net it, guess he didnt want me to lose it lol. The net job is very important with big fish like Salmon and Steelhead we’ve been catching lately, one little mishap and you can kiss that fish good bye with out ever laying a finger on it. So we got it in the boat and started high fiving each other we looked at each other in amazement, like “did that just happen” ? It was an awesome fishing moment that happened so quickly its hard for me to write it all down. I don’t think we had been there for more then an hour but we had a big fish in the ice chest! Other then that, the day was kinda lousy, mainly because of the weather. Id been perfectly happy if Phil only wanted to fish for 3-4 hours, but we stayed out there for well over 11. And it rained 85 percent of the time. I definitely would of hinted to Phil that i was ready to go, but in those times i just sucked it up. Mostly because i know he doesn’t get to get out to the river much with school and having a kid. So he spends more time out there then most, and i don’t want to lose my seat on his boat by complaining lol. Well thanks for reading and look forward to many more reports/stories. Tight Lines and Be Safe! PS. This fish was the only bite we had for the whole day. Salmon fishin is tough!!!

19lbs of awesome meat

Rogue River May 6th

blazer_shane — Mon, 16 May 2011 23:05:42 +0000

Another old report… I know i know. Ill try to get on top of writing them the day of the trip. But an old report is better then no report, so enjoy! Today i fished with a couple cool guys who happen to both be guides. Charlie Brown from FishingTheRogue.com and Brady Rogers of Bradys Guide Service (ill get his website address soon). We all met up at Sportsmans really early almost two hours before sun rise. Brady and Charlie are good friends and you could tell by the way the jokes were flying around. Fishing was slow this day. But on the bright side I learned how to back bounce for Salmon. And it was also the first time Brady had taken his boat out with his new motor. The whole new motor thing became hairy a few times, mostly because Brady was learning how to run it. We only went into the trees a couple times and almost sank. Quite an adventure! But we made it out of all the sketchy situations unscathed. Like i said it was a slow day. We didnt get into any real fish until hours into the float. We dont count the smolts/trouts. My rod got the first steelhead of the day near Rogue Elk Park. Turned out to be a spawned out hatchery steelhead that we released so it could come back as a bigger fish in the future.

Then it died off again for another hour or two. Charlie got a nice little steelhead late into the day. Or it could of been a native trout. Who knows, i dont. Both of our fish came on plugs. Was a great day fishing with friends. A slow day of fishing wasnt that bad because we all had some great laughs. I did film a small clip of Charlies fish so ill throw that up on here and call this report good!

Thanks for reading and tight lines