Dan,
At first glance at the title,
you may be thinking to yourself “Trophy Trout Fishing in The Caribbean Sea? You
must be joking.” Well, for the most part, yes. However, I was in the Caribbean and I did fish and I did try for trout. Sea trout,
that is!
As you well know,
I was married on July 12th to my girlfriend of 3-1/2 years, Anna Seeley.
It was truly one of the greatest days of my life and am so grateful that I have such a wonderful and beautiful woman
to spend the rest of my life with. For our honeymoon, we decided to go to Jamaica for 8 days and then come back to Oregon
and go “camping” at a lake.
We arrived in Jamaica to balmy conditions of 85 degrees, partly
cloudy, and 80% humidity. Just a hair different than our mild summer conditions
with the Northern Pacific marine air whisking over the coast range and into the Willamette Valley. A 1-1/2 bus ride and 6 Red Stripes later (yep, no open container laws in Jamaica), we arrived at our resort in Sans Souci.
I won’t go into detail, but it was absolutely gorgeous with white sand beaches, beautiful aqua-marine sea, and
abundant luscious tropical plant-life. It was paradise.
First order of
business while we were there was to get a cocktail. One of Anna’s criteria when we were originally searching for honeymoon destinations was there had to be
a swim-up bar at the pool. This resort had such a bar. We put on our swim suits and headed off to the pool for our first taste of a Jamaican alcoholic concoction. The bartenders did not disappoint, to say the least.
We met some couples from
all over the United States. Cincinnati, Ohio; Orlando,
Florida; and Lafayette, Louisiana. In speaking with these couples, the topic of “fishing” came up. After a 30 minute discussion and a couple cocktails later, all the guys decided we were going to hire the
charter out of the resort to go deep sea fishing. We met with the captain and
after reviewing his gear, boat, and a bit of bartering, we came to a deal and we were set to set off the next morning.
6:00 AM came
very early the next morning as I had not adjusted to the time zone differential yet (it still felt like 3 AM to me). We met down on the beach by the captain’s “boat”, and we were off. To give you an idea of this boat, imagine a 20’ long canoe with a 25 hp outboard. For outriggers, the captain had widdled down tree branches from a banyan tree and
stuck them into make-shift rod holders. Talk about going the local route and
getting a real fishing experience. I noticed he had a small pistol on board and
I asked him, “So, you think we’re going to have to use that?” He
replied “Ya’ mon! If we git into uh Mah-leen, we gunna need it!”
“A Marlin?” I
thought to myself. “If we catch a marlin, it’s going turn this canoe
into matchsticks!”
Onward, we trolled
about ½ mile off the shoreline heading due east. We saw school after school of
flying fish as they’d break the surface at the boat’s bow. They would
glide so gracefully and as quickly as they appeared, they vanished back into the sea.
Suddenly, my rod on the outrigger had released and line was melting off the reel complimented with a high-pitched zinging. “FISH ON!” I yelled. I grabbed
the rod and it was pinned in the holder. I couldn’t even budge it. Finally, after the fish made about a 300 yard run, I pulled the rod out and passed
it to the guy from Cincinnati.
He’d never fished before and we all agreed that the first fish was his.
After about a 15 minute battle, he landed a gorgeous 30 lb Wahoo (a.k.a. Ono, if you’re from the Pacific).
The remainder of the trip
was not nearly as eventful as the first 30 minutes. We kept seeing flying fish
after flying fish, a sea turtle, and a couple dolphins in the distance. We did
get one more fish off the outrigger, a small, 24” barracuda. There
are some gnarly teeth on those suckers. As a tip, we gave the captain the fish
for him to either sell at the local market or take back to his family to eat for the next few days. We had a blast.
Fast forward a week, Anna
and I arrived back home safely in Oregon. Like I stated earlier, we wanted to go “camp” somewhere at a lake in Oregon. I bounced the idea off of Anna to go
to Crescent Lake,
Odell, East, Paulina, Cultus, Wickiup, etc. She said she wanted to go some place
we’d never been before. And me, being the trophy trout enthusiast that
I am, I wanted to go to a place where brown trout reside. After doing some careful
research, I decided that we should try Lemolo Lake
in Southern Oregon. This lake offered several
other activities than just fishing, so she agreed that this is where we’d spend the remainder of our honeymoon.
We arrived late in the evening
to pick up the keys for our cabin. I spoke with the resort owner, Scott Lamb,
and asked about the fishing. He said that a lot of stocker rainbows were being
caught and some people were catching browns. We both found that we had the same
passion for trophy trout. We discussed a few of his favorite spots on the
lake and I told him I’d be out bright and early to go give it a test run! I
took a quick walk with my two golden retrievers and noticed that the lake looked a bit off color as if there was an algae
bloom in effect. “Great, this will be fun!” I facetiously thought
to myself.
The next morning,
I awoke to a gorgeous sunrise as the sun beams were hitting the slopes of Mt.
Theilsen in the distance. “What
a GORGEOUS lake!” I thought to myself. It was a crisp morning so I was
chilled for awhile, even when donning my heavy TTH hooded sweatshirt. No matter
what time of year it is, it always gets cold in the morning in the high Cascades. The
lake was dead calm; with the only noises breaking the silence coming from my 2-stroke outboard and the occasional cry of a
bald eagle or osprey.
I was marking a few fish
here and there, but nothing to write home about. Suddenly, while trolling the
Lake Creek arm of the lake, my rod got slammed. I quickly grabbed the rod out
of the holder, set the hook. A couple of headshakes later, the fish was off. Dangit! I got back after it and 30 minutes
later, while I was trolling up the N. Umpqua, my artificial offering was aggressively taken
by a wary brown. “YES!” After a short-lived fight, I landed my first
Lemolo Lake
brown trout coming in at 18”. Nothing huge, but I was still excited as
I’d never fished the lake before and it’s always nice to get the skunk off.
I continued on for a couple more hours with nothing. I did go down by
the dam and noticed a few larger arcs scattered every-so-often, but not what I would normally like to see. My downrigger rod then got slammed as my trusty Lyman lure had fooled yet another brown. The rod was throbbing hard as I pulled it from the release.
As I reeled up the slack in my line, I felt tension for a second. Then
nothing. Dangit that felt good. I
decided to call it a morning and go have breakfast.
The rest of the trip, I didn’t
fish anymore. I was having too much fun with Anna and our dogs. We went on some gorgeous hikes to Crater Lake, Lemolo Falls, Watson Falls,
and various other trails along the North Umpqua. We
are truly blessed in this wonderful state to have so many recreational options that nature has to offer.
Lemolo Lake Resort
is a wonderful place to stay. It is perfectly located in an amazing setting with
a backdrop of the Cascades to the East and complemented with the North Rim of Crater Lake to the South. The shoreline is perfect for taking kids and pets to go and swim, or just layout and soak up some beautiful
Oregon sunshine. The
lake was inviting in that it was fairly calm most of the time, perfect for your water sports enthusiasts. I also noticed several signs indicating there were several snowmobile trails around. In speaking with the resort owner, there are over 300 miles of snowmobile and cross country skiing trails
available. Talk about a place to go for all seasons.
In regards to trophy trout
fishing for browns, it was not as good as I was hoping. I do know that there
is the likelihood of busting a trout of over 5 lbs out of this lake. However,
in speaking with Scott Lamb, there was an unforeseen obstacle that has been thrown at his fishery. Many of you may remember when ODFW decided to kill off Diamond
Lake due to the enormous population of tui chubs that were present in
the lake. When ODFW drew Diamond
Lake down 8 feet to help concentrate the chubs, they had to do it by
lowering down the lake’s weirs at the outfall of Lake Creek. However, when
ODFW did this, they did not put screens up to capture any tui chubs that may have gotten caught in the current. Subsequently, it’s estimated that HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS
of chubs were swept downstream in the Lake Creek arm, which just so happens to dump into Lemolo Lake.
Here is a great article in the Roseburg News Review regarding the whole issue. I
won’t go into anymore detail except that ODFW really dropped the ball on this, in my humble opinion. Unfortunately, Lemolo Lake
has to suffer the consequences for ODFW’s mistakes.
Thanks again to Scott Lamb
for the wonderful accommodations. It’s a great place to go to get away
from it all with a peaceful atmosphere and they have a terrific restaurant if you’re ever hungry. Check out their website at www.lemololakeresort.com.
