I'll be working on this page soon. Right now I'm taking professional fishing lessons from Roland, Phil, Bob, Eldon, and Marylin at Nightingales Fishing Camp on Siltkoos Lake in Oregon. I believe I'll attach a map to Nightingale's soon, so if your interested in a great time on the Oregon Pacific Coast with some of the greatest people why not give Anita or Phil a call and make reservations for a weekend or two. If your lucky, you'll get to meet me.
We'll, I'm back with highlights of the Unofficial Perch Tournament and the Official Perch Tournament that took place on August 9th. I'll start with the Unofficial Tournament.
The Unofficial Perch Tournament at Nightingales;
Verle and I arrived at the lake a day early only to find out that we were a week early. Verle is my fishing partner for this event and he's Nancy's dad. Anyway, it wasn't long before the entire camp knew I made a boo boo. We took off Saturday morning to fish anyway and came back to camp around noon for lunch. Well, there was a crowd of people mulling around our slip and once my foot touched the dock the party began. Eldon and Dennis presented me with the Unofficial Perch Tournament First Place trophy. Now this was an honour. Three tall empty Hams beer cans taped together with duck tape and a single can on the top taped to the other three. With precision and accuracy the trophy was inscribed with a black felt pen indicating the name of the tournament and congratulating the winners.
NIGHTINGALE'S OFFICIAL PERCH TOURNAMENT,
August 9th, 1997. Verle and I did well this time. Not only were we recognized for the previous win, but we actually came in third. Had a great pot luck and raffle. Great times with great people. 9-3-97
HELLS CANYON TRIP
We just returned from a trip to eastern Oregon fishing the famous Snake River. Hells Canyon Recreation Area is well known for it's white water, scenery, fishing, hunting and great people. The campground we stayed at is called Woodhead Park. Several years ago this was a great place to stay as it had only 26-28 spots with electricity for hook up. Now, people much smarter than I have taken it upon themselves to improve the area making Brownlee Reservoir much more accessible to a number of users. This now includes the hunter, fisherman, families with lots of kids and skidoos, yelping mutts, obnoxious people with fancy boats having more power than they need and of coarse the local animals. Anyway, we try to get there several times a year although this year we were only able to make the trip once.
We met great people, Dennis, Nancy and Moose. Verle went with Nan and I and we thoroughly enjoyed the company. Fishing was not the greatest, as Idaho Power lowered the depth of the reservoir to unprecedented lows. They've been doing this for several years now trying to, of all things, save the salmon. The fishery has been screwed up as a result and on the backside of things, our government has given the native Indians the right to sell their caught salmon. Now, how does this make sense, you lower the reservoir to give the salmon a chance to get carried over dam spillways so they can spawn elsewhere but you let the Indians sell them. The outcome of this idiotic scheme is disaster, not only for the salmon but for the fish eggs clinging to the rocks made bare to the sun and elements as a result of lowering the water level.
Here's another idiotic consequence of lowering the water levels at Brownlee. Idaho Power put about $7M into Woodhead Park building boat ramps that can't be used and building boat docks that can't be used both as a result of lowering the water 50-100 feet. They wonder why they lost money last year, according to their employees!!!!!!! Woodhead used to cost $3.00/night to stay along with electricity. Now the place looks more like a California recreation area with it's concrete and asphalt and the charge is $10.00 a night. Now what???? I'll tell you what, we probably won't go back, we'll find some other user friendly place.
Before I end this note on Brownlee, I must commend Idaho Power for the appropriate use of staff. For two days, some character with a weed whacker worked on about three camp trailer spots trimming the weeds. And he did just that, all day his weed whacker made racket and the progress made was phenomenal. I've never seen such a waste of manpower. Idaho Power, you've a long way to go in making this visitor reconsider coming back.
The bright part about this trip though, was that I caught the largest fish. One humongous channel cat and one 19.3" crappie. How's that Dennis????????