Busy May

May has been really busy with the last meeting of the Indianhead Fly Fishers before the summer break. I have been doing a lot of work getting ready for the Smithsonian traveling exhibit hosted by Fruitland.
And I have been working in as much time as possible looking for morels. Sometimes I have threatened to retire from retirement in order to get some relaxing time.


Karen and Bob looking over the 100 morels we found on Saturday. We were suppose to be fishing on Oxbow Reservoir for smallmouth bass, but as we sat in Buckey's in Cambridge eating breakfast we decided it was too cold for fishing. I suggested a morel hunt. Karen and Bob had never done a morel hunt and were game. Bob found the first two. They decided it was a real good day and took 67 morels home.




We found some oyster mushrooms on Saturday and then again on Wednesday. I just ate the last find tonight.




Debbie and Jim and I collected 137 morels this past Sunday.




One hundred mushrooms.




Mushroom hunter taking a hiatus to Italy at the highth of the morel season. Tsk! Tsk!




First time I have seen a tree frog. Reta gave a scream when she almost stepped on it and it jumped to this hole for cover.







Some morels. We brought home 100 morels or 3 pounds and 12 ounces.




We found several of these in a patch of 54 morels in an area about 10 feet by 15 feet. Quite a find since we had been walking for hours up and down some steep hillsides finding only groups of from one to about five or so.




Here is a picture of a boy catching a seven inch trout that would have been planted last year.




The fish are brought from Bend, OR. Most of the fingerling were dumped into the Owyhee River--about 30,000. The rest--about 7,000 were put into a net impoundment at Bully Cr. Res to be held overnight until, Ray, Al Sillonis of the Indianhead Fly Fishers in Weiser, ID and me showed up to dip them out and into a tank mounted on the pickup. We started this job at 8 in the morning and ended at 6 pm. It was a long day on some really rough roads that sometimes were only a faintest of traces across the desert. Since it had rained in the past few days, we were concerned about being able to make this trip in what can become Eastern Oregon gumbo, but we did find.

Here is Ray making notes on the condition of the reservoir. The water temperature was 61.




Here you see the first lake we stocked. Most of these lakes except for Littlefield can be fly fished from the shore and cover all the water. Pretty small.




This typical of the desert reservoirs that I helped Ray Perkins, Eastern Oregon Fish Biologist, stock on Friday. We stocked seven with 7,000 rainbow fingerlings. Only one of the seven can be found on a BLM map. These are very remote, but some people find them and the fishing can be spectacular.




Lots of these clumps of sweet pea.






The Eastern Oregon desert has been well watered by Mother Nature this spring so there are a profusion of wild flowers for our viewing pleasure. I was somewhat surprised to see an occaisional Indian Paint brush in bloom. We were at about 4200 feet in elevation. We saw lots of lupine, phlox and clumps of sweeet pea. I was surprise not to see arrowleaf balsamroot which is in bloom throughout the desert of SW Idaho right now.