Salish pond

I took another picture of the snake a little later, I think it was better than my last one, and certainly the best I could do with my phone, which seems to be permanently set to "wide angle".

As noted in my last post, I rode my bike to Salish ponds today, between Portland and Gresham, to go fishing. I had never been there before, and had read some good things online, so I thought I'd go check it out. The DFW website said that west Salish pond was regularly stocked with rainbow trout, but that it hadn't been stocked for the last two months. I figured there must still be some fish left in it, and if not, I could at least go for some of the warm water species that live there.

I rode 19.13 miles to catch trout, and didn't.

The ponds were a big disappointment. They looked like they might have been rock quarries at one point. Whatever they were, they are now roughly round, featureless, obviously man made pits in the ground that have since been filled with water. The bank is literally the lip of a hole that drops straight down, leaving the lakes without shallows, or other natural features to hold fish. Being there 2 months since the last stocking (and one week before the next one) must have left me fishing the lakes with the least amount of fish in them that they have all year, and the results backed that up. To my credit, no one else on either lake had caught anything the entire time I was there, and there was no sign that any of them had caught anything before that either. The others surrounding the banks were mostly Mexican immigrants, with a few Ukrainians mixed in for good measure. Many of them had small children that spent the day throwing large rocks into the lakes, ensuring the few remaining fish were too spooked to feed. Bank fishing in Portland Metro is for suckers.

Lesson learned.

19.13 miles
965.58 miles cumulative
38.6232 total gallons saved