09/13/2026
Yesterday, Sue and I tried our luck at Olallie Lake and had a really nice day. If you look closely, you can see that most of the trees around the lake were burned in a fire a few years ago. However, a fire cannot remove a mountain and the view of Mount Jefferson was spectacular. We rented a rickety old rowboat that we will not soon forget- at least it didn’t leak! Fishing wasn’t lights out, but it was good. We each caught fish in the 11 to 14 inch range and one of us, I won’t mention who, lost a bigger one. The winning fly was a small black wooly bugger-like fly with orange and chartreuse tail using intermediate line. Woolly worm worked well also. The lake is about 2 1/2 hours from Portland, some of it on unimproved gravel that can be kind of rough, so it’s not the easiest lake to get to. However, I don’t think it gets as much pressure because of that. It looked like there were several spots you could actually cast from the bank. The very clean cold water is a beautiful teal blue. I hadn’t been there in 40 years and it brought back some very fond memories for me, and the destination was well worth the effort. 
