Hike in lakes around Mt Hood

[HeBeGB]

Hi Everybody,
I'm new to the forum (which is super cool btw ) and I have been looking for advice on hike in lakes in the Hood and Jefferson areas. I hit many of the AWESOME Ollalie area lakes eggs listed in the high lakes thread this summer and am looking for some more maybe a little closer to Mt. Hood.

Anybody have any advice/opinions/info on shining lake, middle rock lake or any others in that general area?

 

[Raincatcher]

Welcome to the forum! I know others will chime with suggestions for you,but I suggest you check out the archives. There was a recent thread posted by a member (besides eggs) about a lot of places. Let us know how you do and please don't forget our addiction to fish porn...lol

 

[HeBeGB]

Thanks for the warm welcome. In the short time I've been on board here people have been really cool and generous with me. I have been looking through the archive pretty extensively and must have missed the other thread you mentioned. I must be searching the wrong terms. Can you point me to the one you're reffering to?

Thanks!

 

[troutdude]

Welcome to OFF.

I really like your screen name...very creative!

I'm not familiar w/ lakes up there, so I'll let someone more knowledgeable help you out.

Good luck.

 

[eggs]

Pyrmid and Buck would be my suggestions as I still have some exploring to do with OnTheFly

 

[BobbiDollPDX]

Pamelia is fun if you are into catching and keeping mass quantities of small cutthroat.

 

[HeBeGB]

@troutdude: thanks for the welcome!

@eggs: Any guess on how crowded pyramid and buck get? The short hike is enticing but I'm willing to hoof it for a spell to get a little more solitude if those two are fairly popular. Shining and middle rock are both about 3-3.5 miles in but I haven't really been able to find out much about them aside from what I'm getting from my backpacking guide book which only mentions fishing a little bit.

@BobbiDollPDX: That lake looks amazing! Thanks for the tip. I mostly fish to eat when I'm camping so little cuttys suit me just fine!

 

[eggs]

pyramid will be most likely empty as the road there is pretty bad... and buck is a up spur roads and not well known... if your going on a holiday weekend you might run into people... any other weekend I think you should be fine.. out of all the times to both i have only ran into people 1 time and it was a masssive crowd at buck.. it was a group gathering.

rocks/shining/serene/plaza should all be pretty empty

 

[HeBeGB]

@eggs: Thanks for the advance scouting once again! I'm gonna see if I can trick my friends into hiking in to one of those places over the holiday weekend. Might try pyramid. Do you think we'd be able to make it in a sedan or is it gonna require high clearance or 4 wheel? Our old volvo seems to handle everything but roads with high centers pretty well if we go slow and careful enough... at least so far

 

[eggs]

we got in there with a subaru last year, 4 wheel isn't needed and if your sharp behind the wheel you can avoid the bolders... sometimes it feels like you are driving on a river bed..

the trail is at the end of the road and it is uphill 80% of the way.. but it isn't too far of a hike.. TONS of camping by the lake too

 

[Pita]

I agree with eggs. I've been to Buck twice this year, and it seems it is becoming more popular. Two weekends ago, I drove up to Buck and it was so busy that there were cars parked all along SP210 (probably at least 15-20 of them - this was unusual). I turned around and instead went to Dinger Lake and had the place to myself. There were tons of fish, but that lake is shallow and subject to winterkill, so most of them were small, in the 6-8 inch range. Brookies and bows and some that looked like hybrids. They were fun to catch, and plenty of them, but Dinger wouldn't be the place of choice for large keepers. Anyway, it was quiet, there were fish to be caught and the hike was only about half a mile, but completely cross-country.

Averill Lake, south of Mt. Hood in the Jefferson area is also a really nice, lightly fished spot for sunny summer weekends with larger fish. I'm afraid to post any of the other quiet spots I go to on the web, but PM me if you want to know some of my other favorite hike-ins in that area. Good luck out there!

 

[GMR]

Hi Everybody,
I'm new to the forum (which is super cool btw ) and I have been looking for advice on hike in lakes in the Hood and Jefferson areas. I hit many of the AWESOME Ollalie area lakes eggs listed in the high lakes thread this summer and am looking for some more maybe a little closer to Mt. Hood.

Anybody have any advice/opinions/info on shining lake, middle rock lake or any others in that general area?

Welcome to the forums.
Me and a buddy are going to do a day trip to Rocks on saturday morning.
Then somewhere on sunday yet to be decided.
Never been up there and just exploring and seeing whats around. If you go up that way maybe we will run into eachother.
If not ill post what I see.

 

[HeBeGB]

@GMR
Cool! I got talked in to heading out to try some of the lakes in the Mt Washington area instead this time so we won't run into eachother out there but I'll be glad to hear what it is like. Gonna try to see what's up at three creeks and maybe some of the smaller ones west of suttle I learned about in another thread. Good Luck!

 

[JHawk]

Cool! I got talked in to heading out to try some of the lakes in the Mt Washington area instead this time so we won't run into eachother out there but I'll be glad to hear what it is like. Gonna try to see what's up at three creeks and maybe some of the smaller ones west of suttle I learned about in another thread. Good Luck!

We hit Meadow Lake, Link Lake, and Island Lake about two weeks ago. Ran out of time and didn't get to Hand Lake. All are about 2.5+ hours from PDX; just about far enough to cut down the traffic.

Island Lake is accessible via a short hike (0.5 miles) or a round-about road, but it is tough to fish unless you have a tube/toon, or want to work the north edge with a fly rod. There is virtually no bank access at Island Lake. We didn't catch anything at Island.

Link Lake is real pretty and you can drive right to it. The deeper part seems to be on the north side. Of course, we fished the south side primarily...didn't catch anything.

Meadow Lake is also very pretty. You can drive right to it. I caught one small one on a hair rig with Power Eggs (trying to C&R off a spinning rod). Plenty of bank access along the north and east sides particularly.

I've wanted to try Long Lake, which is on the north side of Hwy 20. You can bushwack through the brush for about 0.5 miles, or take the roads and hike in about 1.0 miles from the north on the trail.

I read in the Fishing in Oregon book that Square Lake gets a lot of traffic since it is so close to Hwy 20. Round Lake is supposed to be fair, but I've never fished it.
Three Creeks has some spectacular scenery, but that last 1/2 mile on that road is a bear.

 

[eggs]

jhawk,

Could you put a little write up on these lakes you went to (3 or 4 sentences each) in the high lakes thread??? It would be nice to add some new info to the thread. I would like to get alittle more info to check them out myself!!

 

[HeBeGB]

Thanks jhawk,
Those lakes were on my list so you just saved me some trouble in terms of figuring out which ones have decent bank access etc... I haven't been out that way before so I'm really excited to see what I can get into. Heading out tomorroww.