First Crappie of the year...

[Glowgood Jigster]

Finally got out there on a good day with water in the lake. Still real spotty but we're eating crappie for din-din tonite! The wife caught a nice rainbow today, a 16 incher on a chartruse roadrunner with a glow tripletail grub. It did some nice acrobatics for us, and it's going in the smoker!

[slabbandit]

Good lookin' fish! Pretty country!!

[Speck]

Good lookin' fish! Pretty country!!

I agree

[GRIZZ]

Man that looks like my kinda place. What lake is that and how big do the crappies grow there? Nice fish BTW. Crappie and trout out of the same water. Nice. What else swims there?

[joejv4]

Nice catch!!!!

[wrwest]

Wow that looks like a good day of fishing congrats...

[FishnLine]

Those are some good sized trout.

[Glowgood Jigster]

Man that looks like my kinda place. What lake is that and how big do the crappies grow there? Nice fish BTW. Crappie and trout out of the same water. Nice. What else swims there?

This particular lake is Hills Creek Reservoir. There are several similar lakes in the area with pretty much the same kind of fish, but this one is our favorite.
This lake holds black crappie (near as I can tell), bluegill, largemouth bass, landlock chinook salmon, rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, dollyvarden(Bull)trout, bullhead catfish, northern pikeminnow, chub, and no doubt some idiots have dumped smallmouth bass in there too, although I haven't caught one there yet. Along the banks and overhead we have several nesting pairs of osprey, and at least one nest of Bald Eagles. Canada geese and mallard, wood duck, and some other ducks I don't know what to call. I know the pair of ducks, one is almost all white with a red head, and one is almost all red.?
And then there's all the turkey buzzards that nest up in the rocky cliffs around there.
The crappie can get up to 18", but the biggest we've caught were only around 12-13". We'll be targeting the bigger slabs later this season when the lake is completely full and the algae blooms are over with. There's a big algae bloom going already, so hopefully by mid-summer the lake will clear some and I can use my Aqua Vue camera. The LMB get up to 10lbs, and the salmon and trout, I don't know. I know they catch rainbows over 5 lbs every year.
It's a beautiful area, and if anyone from the board is thinking about a vacation over in western Oregon around Eugene and wants to fish, drop me a line and maybe I can show you around the fishin holes I go to. The good thing about crappie fishing, they'll bite about the same thing in Oregon as they will in Alabama. 'Cept you can't fish with minners.

[JET4]

That sounds like a nice place.Nice fish you caught.

[FisherMike]

Great pics and some good eatin too.
Thanks for sharin.