Two reservoirs within striking distance of Prineville offer great fishing for smallmouth bass, crappie, and rainbow trout.
That angry red eye says it all. This fish doesn't like you, nor do the rest of his kind. Looking for a fight? You don't need to go any farther than right here. Two reservoirs in Central Oregon offer good fishing for smallmouth bass, and the top months for smallies are June, July, August, and September. The Central Oregon Bass Club regularly meets for tournaments on Prineville Reservoir. Once, I got a chance to fish in one of those tournaments, and our team had a shot at the trophy if one of us was able to get a big fish in the boat. As luck would have it, I hooked the money fish.
We fished Senko plastics that day, rigged "wacky-style," and bounced our baits off the rock walls and twitched them down deep. We battled the red-eyed brawlers all morning long with an eye on the clock for the weigh-in at 1:30 in the afternoon. Along a steep vertical wall, I cast to a broken fragment of boulder, watched the bait fall out of sight, twitched it once, and felt the 'tick' as a bass sucked it in. This one put a good bend in the rod, and just before I had a visual on it, she threw the hook. So went my dreams of getting the biggest bass of the tournament.
Any soft plastic worm can be rigged wacky. Simply run a worm hook through the middle of the worm such that both ends of the worm wiggle as it falls on its way to the bottom. Twitch it a little bit on the way down to entice a strike on the fall. When it hits bottom, hold the bait in place and impart a twitch through the rod tip and down the line to make the ends of the worm wiggle again.
Prineville Reservoir was created with the completion of the 245-foot Arthur R. Bowman dam in 1961. The Crooked River began to backfill the side canyons and rimrocks. A ranch, its buildings, and roads were claimed by the water. The new earthen structure backed up 150,000 acre-feet of water for a total of 3,136 surface acres and a depth of 130 feet.
As the water filled the arroyos of the Crooked River and engulfed the rocky outcroppings above the channel, a classic smallmouth bass habitat began to take shape. As soon as the water levels stabilized, smallmouth bass were planted and began to colonize the rocky points throughout the lake.
Six boat ramps are sited around the lake to provide access to the water. Powder Cove, at Bowman Dam, offers the closest launch from Bend, accessed from Highway 27. Closer to Prineville, there are launches at County Ramp No. 1, Prineville Reservoir State Park, Prineville Resort, and Jasper Point. Roberts Bay East offers access on the south side of the lake across from Prineville Resort. Smaller crafts can be launched in various places besides the developed and primitive ramps.
Although it takes a boat to cover the most water at Prineville Reservoir, the best fishing is right at the bank. Look for rockslides where smallies stage to pounce on schools of baitfish that stray too close. In the spring, search out the patches of small-diameter gravel close to woody or rocky structures where smallmouth spawn. Offshore, use electronics and polarized glasses to scout submerged spires and underwater humps that will hold fish throughout the year.
Some of the easiest structures to find are the cliffs where smallmouths stack in the post-spawn. Here they move up and down in the water column, vertically along the rock - shallow in low light and deeper at midday.
While smallmouth bass fishing takes center stage in the summer, the trout fishing and the crappie fishing are just as good. Best bets for trout are to troll in deeper water or present baits off the ledges where trout find cool water. Garlic marshmallows (green or pink) and nightcrawlers fished together are a great bait when employed with a sliding sinker. For crappie, try wind-drifting across the upper lake using red and white jigs tipped with Crappie Nibbles.
OCHOCO RESERVOIR
At full pool, Ochoco Reservoir is 3 miles long and about 5 miles wide and is open to fishing year-round. Fishing is excellent for stocked (and wild) rainbow trout, smallmouth bass, and crappie. The average trout catch is 12 to 14 inches, with bigger fish up to 6 pounds. Illegally introduced black crappie and a small number of brown bullhead are found in Ochoco. Rooster Tails, Mepps, and flashers are good choices on Ochoco. Fly fishing is very popular, but bait fishermen make up the highest percentage of fishermen. Trout move into deeper water as the water warms. In June, July, and August, anglers will have better success fishing nearer the dam with flashers and bright lures close to the bottom. Some people jig for trout, crappie, and bass in the deepest areas of the reservoir near the dam.
The trout limit is 5 per day, 8-inch minimum, and of these, no more than 1 over 20 inches.
Because it is an irrigation reservoir, water levels at Ochoco change dramatically over the year, and surface acreages vary from 120 to 1,100 acres. At full pool, Ochoco averages 30 feet in depth with a maximum of 100 feet near the dam. A few lava outcroppings occupy the banks. Because of the lowering water levels, shorelines will usually be composed of exposed silty bottom and muddy flats. Mill Creek and Ochoco Creek form channels in the reservoir.
# # #
For a copy of the Fishing Central Oregon book, send $30 to Gary Lewis Outdoors, PO Box 1364, Bend, OR 97709 To contact Gary Lewis, visit www.GaryLewisOutdoors.com
