Despite my obsession with fishing, I’ve never done much competitive angling.
Until this weekend.
Several years ago, Mike Weaver reached out to me and invited me into the “Klamath Lake 500 Club,” an organization for some of the Basin’s elite trout anglers. The caveat to membership? You have to have captured at least 500 fish in Klamath Lake to join.
Plenty of people have caught 500 redband trout, but this restricts membership to those who’ve caught 500-plus fish over 20 inches from Klamath Lake alone.
Few people compulsively track every fish they’ve caught as I do, but those with decades of fishing behind them and reasonable estimates have more than enough wiggle room.
The club includes a pretty exclusive list of lifelong, dedicated trout anglers, many of whom have known one another for years. Since its inception a few years back, the club has held a catch-and-release tournament to see who can catch the most and largest fish in a weekend during Upper Klamath Lake’s peak fishing window: May. The timing hadn’t worked out in the past, but this year, I was finally able to join the fun.
Tournament, of course, is used very loosely. It’s really just a chance to get together, fish the peak lake fishery and donate money towards habitat improvement projects in the Klamath Basin.
Saturday
Having sold my boat last year to buy a rental property, I am now landlocked. As the only shore fishermen participating, I knew I’d need to catch a break along with a mess of fish to have any shot of winning.
Let me save you some time: I didn’t win.
The guys who did win were fishing from the same boat; one landed the most fish, the other the largest fish. But the competitive angle was played down, as the event was more about fishing, camaraderie and discussing how to spend a few thousand dollars on habitat improvement projects in 2021.
Unfortunately, I had an appointment to order cabinets for that very same rental I’d bought with my boat money on Saturday morning, which meant I wouldn’t have long to fish. Just four hours, actually.
I was able to get onto the water during ideal conditions: warm water, ample cloud cover, and a slight breeze the day after a light rain. Oh, how I wished I could’ve spent eight or 12 hours on the water that day because the fishing was on fire.
Despite being shore-bound, I had 10 hits and landed seven fish in my four hours, the first two coming on the fly rod. I knew my numbers wouldn’t top the charts, but it was as well as I’ve done from shore. I’ve flyfished plenty, but last Saturday marked my first on-the-fly fish in the main body of Klamath Lake.
Had I stopped there, I would’ve been happy.
Yet, I didn’t.
I got seven fish! I’ve had 7-fish days along the lakeshore several times now, but I’ve never been able to eclipse that number. Were I able to fish the full day, I know I would’ve broken my record, but I’m still not sure I would’ve won the day — let alone the tournament.
Interestingly enough, for the few years I had my boat, I was able to land eight fish several times but never break that number.
Regardless, I had plans that evening with my brother, Jake, and our friend Caileigh Smith — Jake’s former roommate — who was on a break from med school.
At The Falls Taphouse, one of our favorite haunts, we ran into one of the other members of the club, the man who would catch the largest fish of the weekend. I knew he was in the tournament. He told me he’d caught more than 10 fish that day. This confirmed what I’d already suspected: I’d lost.
Knowing the conditions the next day would be much worse, I realized I’d lost in that moment, but enjoyed chatting with him about his success as live music played in the background.
Sunday
The next day rolled around with almost no cloud cover, bright sunlight and even hotter temps. I knew it would be a morning bite that would die quickly during the summery day, but I was tired and didn’t feel like waking up at the crack of dawn. I was right.
Instead of fishing the west side of the lake, this time I started on the east side midmorning. I quickly hooked two fish and landed one of them before a long string of nothing that persisted for about an hour.
Running home for a quick lunch, I switched back to the west for the afternoon, managing four more hits but just one single fish.
It hadn’t been as terrible as I was expecting (finishing with six hits in five hours is a decent shore day for most anglers), but comparison bias from the day before made me a bit somber.
Afterwards, Mike hosted us all for a barbeque and fish stories.
I sat there with Mike, his wife Carole and half a dozen others. Some were physically present, and others just passed along their regards and donations for our habitat restoration project.
All told, the club holds 22 members, though many have never responded to his original welcome letter to accept the membership.
Nonetheless, the club (now in its third year) has dumped thousands of dollars’ worth of gravel onto key spawning sites in the Upper Basin. This year’s total entrance fees and donations topped $2000, all of which will be spent on improving targeted redband trout spawning sites within the Basin after coordination with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
So I guess I still haven’t done much competitive angling because win or lose, we all had a great time catching fish and catching up. Hopefully this type of “tournament” more focused on the experience and preserving the experience through conservation will catch on.
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