Craine Praire Fishing

[Damien]

Just curious if anyone has been fishing up at Craine lately. I will be heading up the next week and was just curious how the fishing is for both trout and bass. Any info would be good.

[papa bear]

Crane Prairie has slowed down for trout over the last few years. Insect hatches are way, way down there. Big fish are there, but you may want to locate the creek channels in the bottom of the arms. Fly fishermen have some success there with nymphs and sinking lines. Bait is similar: find the bank of the former stream, drop your stuff to the bottom, then retrieve slowly up at an angle back toward your boat, which is just out of the channel. (shadow shouldn't be moving around on channel bottom). Bass are hitting OK in the "woods."

[rmac57]

A shame that it's not what it used to be. I used to have some spectacular days there. Trolling streamer flys beginning an hour before sundown was a deadly strategy for the big boys.

[papa bear]

Could be worse -- word is those targeting bass are fighting fish in 15-17 inch range consistently. You can also keep all the bluegills and crappie you find.

[cully]

i just go back from cp last nite. I heard their was a bass tourney last weekend and wow how the pros (not) treated the bass. Large dead bass all over the place. Guess their live wells are a bit over rated!
The bass were to be found up against the bank in and around the lava rocks. Live ones i mean.
There was a hatch going on Weds. and it lasted for hours. Mr. Dummy (me) had left his dries in the truck. I saw trout taking them but after i had trolled back to camp to fetch my dries and back out to open water the trout were taking less flies off the surface and i never had a hit. I did hear of trout caught in the 5#range.

[cully]

Speyfly, fine with me too but if your gonna kill it then clean it and eat it or remove it from the water and desose of it. sheesh

[rainbow]

Hi Guys
this is my first post. I'm posting because this is a sore subject for me. Crane Prarie has been ruined by idiots dumping warm-water fish in it. I saw it mentioned that there's no insect activity. Well, that's cause the stunted, over-populated crappie and bluegill eat them all, leaving little for the trout. CP used to be one of the best trout lakes in the country; not anymore. It's a shame. It's the same thing that happened at Diamond Lake, when some idiots used chubs for bait. The chubs escaped and have now destroyed that fishery, too.

[speyfly]

Cool. I like seeing large dead bass all over the place. ODFW should NEVER manage warm water or any exotic fishes in any of our cold water fisheries. Rewarding the ones that illegally ruined the best trophy trout fishery in the lower 48 by limiting harvest and allowing bass touraments was a crime. They should have treated the bass like they do squaw fish.
BOUNTY!!!!

[Damien]

Thanks for all the info. My dad last year did really well over there but you know the case with Craire it's quality not quantity. So has the decline is trout coinsided with the intro of the bass or is it a combination of things. I'm not sure but do they stock Craine or is it a native only. I could see how bass could not only compete for food but feed on smolt trout. I'm just looking forward to going and having a good time with the family and catch some fish. Is there any other lakes in that area that are putting out fish? Also is the are there any wildfires in that area right now? Tight lines.

[Jimmy]

I am going to Crane Prairie next weekend.I have only been fishing Crane for six years and I have a few questions.What lake should I fish other than Crane Prairie to catch a Rainbow or Brook trout over 5 pounds.Do most anglers still fish or troll Crane?With the lake just under 5,000 acres,what is the best place to start fishing? Thanks for any tips.

Jimmy

Fish the mouth of the Quinn River channel with Rainbow glitter powerbait. Use 3 feet of leader to keep it out of the weeds. Trolling is done early in the year and it gets difficult to troll because of the high weed content. Other good locations at Crane include the Cultus channel and off of the point at Rock creek.
The closest lake to try is Wikiiup for Large Browns,Rainbows, and big Kokes.

Good luck!
Fool

[crabbait]

Welcome aboard rainbow. I agree that the bass and other warm water species have ruined what was once a trophy fishery.

I used to take a week off every year just to fish for rainbows the size of cohos. No point any more.

[rebell]

I was at cp last summer catching all kinds of bass when a nice lady on the bank asked me why I kept releasing them. I simply said that I just enjoy cathing them. Then she went off that the bass had single handedly ruined the trout fishery. I asked her if she had any luck on the trout that day. She replied that she had caught several large trout that day and kept a nice limit.
Think about it, a another limit of trout killed, several limits of bass released. Could this be part of the reason the trout suffer and the bass survive? The state spends thousands of dollars on replacing all the trout, salmon and steelhead that all the so called sportsman feel they must take home instead of releasing.
Remember, the trout in cp are not native either, so if your going to get rid of the bass, get rid of the trout.

[Jimmy]

rebell

I must let you know that at a third of the rainbows are wild.The ODFW has been collecting eggs from wild rainbows in the winter and raising them to release in the lake later.Read the news release below.There is nothing wrong with killing a few fish to eat.The problem is the bass should not be released because they were illegally put in the lake.As for your statement " The state spends thousands of dollars on replacing all the trout, salmon and steelhead that all the so called sportsman feel they must take home instead of releasing".Sportsman spend many times that amount for lodging,fuel and equipment.Which helps out the states economy.

ODFW News Release
For Immediate Release

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: October 4, 2000

Dashing Through The Snow, ODFW Biologists Collect Trout Eggs To Improve Fishing In The Upper Deschutes Basin

BEND – Since 1997, staff from the Oregon Department of Fish and have made regular 19-mile-long snowmobile treks into the Cascade Mountains between January and April, braving deep snows and winter weather. But these trips into the winter wilderness are by no means recreational outings.

The effort is part of a long-term project to improve the quality of the rainbow trout stocked in Crane Prairie Reservoir and other waterbodies within the Upper Deschutes Basin. With the improvement in the quality of fish, the quality of the fishing will improve here as well.

"We’re attempting to develop a hatchery program based on broodstock taken from wild Crane Prairie rainbow trout," explains ODFW fish biologist Steve Marx. "The hatchery fish we’ve been using haven’t done well in the wild, mainly due to competition with other fish. We feel that a wild stock will have better survivability."

To accomplish this goal, ODFW staff began trapping rainbow trout as they migrated out of Crane Prairie Reservoir into the upper Deschutes River to spawn beginning in 1997. Crane Prairie rainbows – where five-pounders are not unusual – begin spawning in January and continue through the end of April. To catch these spawners, a trap consisting of a four-by-eight-foot perforated aluminum box with a weir is placed in the river above the reservoir in late December or early January. The rest of the stream is blocked with a fence, forcing fish travelling upriver into the trap.

Throughout that four-month spawning period, the traps are checked two or three times a week. It takes eight to 10 weeks to collect the 200,000 eggs needed for the wild broodstock hatchery program. Fish caught in the trap are removed and place in individual tubes made from PVC pipe. The tubes allow water to flow through, but keep the fish safe from predators. Since the fish generally stop feeding during the spawning run, they suffer no ill effects from this temporary isolation. In fact, the whole effort is far harder on the human participants.

"It’s a pretty involved proposition in the winter," says Fall River Fish Hatchery manager Phil McKee. "You have to contend with the weather and heavy snowpack. It’s pretty challenging to get up there in a snowmobile."

Most of the fish are spawned on the bank near the trap in March, at the peak of the run. The fertilized eggs are carried out by snowmobile tucked safely in netbags nestled on sponges in coolers. The eggs go to the Klamath Fish Hatchery near Chiloquin where they are incubated in isolation until they have been examined and determined to be free of any diseases that might spread to other fish at the hatchery. Once the eggs hatch, the fry are transferred back to central Oregon to be raised for release into Crane Prairie Reservoir, the Deschutes River and several other lakes along the Cascades Highway by June.

ODFW typically plants about 200,000 hatchery-reared rainbow trout each year. With the wild broodstock program in place, fishery managers are now planting 150,000 domestic hatchery rainbows and 50,000 from the wild rainbow stock.

Fish hatched from the wild eggs have taken well to hatchery life, a good sign if the program is to succeed in the long run. "Some wild fish are very difficult to raise in a concrete pond," says McKee. "They don’t feed right, you can’t handle them and they spook easily. But we’ve been able to raise them in the hatchery and put them into Crane Prairie Reservoir."

This year, ODFW will be monitoring the survival rate of the wild-bred fish as well as the success of anglers in catching them. All the fish have had their adipose fins clipped to aid in identifying them from the normal hatchery fish stocked here. The next few years will tell how well the program is going to work.

"Our highest priorities," says Marx "are Crane Prairie Reservoir, the Deschutes River and waterbodies that are connected to the Deschutes. If the program is successful, we can look at expanding into other waterbodies."

Funding for the Crane Prairie Reservoir Broodstock Development Project includes $32,688 from ODFW, $5,200 from Trout Unlimited, $1,600 worth of volunteer labor and a $12,876 grant from the Fish Restoration and Enhancement Program.

The Fish Restoration and Enhancement Program was created by the Oregon Legislature in 1989 and is funded by a surcharge on sport and commercial fishing licenses and commercial poundage fees. The program is overseen by a seven-member citizen board that reviews proposals and recommends funding for fish restoration and enhancement projects throughout the state.

For additional information on the Crane Prairie Reservoir Broodstock Development Project contact Steve Marx at (541) 388-6363.

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