Crane Prairie - Davis Lake fishing trip

I traveled over to Central Oregon this past weekend with the game plan of fishing Crane Prairie while using Davis Lake as my secondary plan. Crane Prairie proved to be unsuccessful for their famous Cranebows. I fished for a total of 7 hours w/ZERO success. I tried trolling ford fenders with a corn tipped wedding ring for approximately 3 hours. After that proved to be fruitless I tried fly fishing chrironimds, damsel nymphs and woolely buggers only receiving the same results. I spoke with multiple boaters and even a couple of other kayakers. I only found one group who had gotten into any fish. Apparently the only success they could muster would come on the live bugs they pulled off of the standing timber in the Quinn River Channel. The numbers were small but they were all nicely sized.
Once the wind picked up I decided I'd head over to Davis Lake and try my hand at fly fishing for some largemouth bass  (I'm a Bass guy at heart anyway). Wind was still blowing hard so I waited it out till 8 p.m. before braving still strong winds. It took me about 30 minutes before I was into my first fish of my trip. I fished for another hour and landed one more before tiring of the wind and oncoming darkness.
After a cold 35 degree night I was on the water by 7 a.m. and fishing the weedlines connecting on a nice 2lb largemouth. I continued to have the same aount of succes landing a fishat the rate of about one an hour. the biggest I caught was around 4 and a half pounds and lost one as big if not bigger . The weather was absolutely beautiful and perfect water. Overall the trip was a blast and I loved the experience.

Great Report Yokut!  I'll bet those bass were a blast on fly gear.
I still have yet to drag my yak over the big hill.  Maybe this year...

-Spot-

Nice report. Some quality bass there. Looks like you had a blast!

I am headed to central Oregon this weekend, and after seeing your report I may have to bring my yak.

Did you have any issues keeping the bass hooked on barbless flies?  I'm heading down there for vacation next week.  I'm not sure if I want to debarb all my flies and wondering if I should just skip Davis.

yeah it can be tough but if you keep the tension on you can have a good catch rate. I was fortunate to lose only one but UNFORTUNATELY it was BIG. It jumped twice and threw the hook on the second jump.  not a doubt in my mind that it was at least a 5lbs largemouth. Oh well, it's still fun to talk about "the big one that got away"!