PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

If you hike to Lakes Julia, Smelling, Chitwood, or Hanson, do not park in the turn around area by the gate with the no parking signs. We have bumped into the local landowner. He is quite aggressive about patrolling the area. Yeah yeah I know, oh this, oh that … well guess what? You’re in his world out there. Be smart and just park along the edge of the road between the turnaround and the first driveway.

Picking up from my Lake Julia report ….

As mentioned, our day at Lake Smelling started early, with us hiking past it.

Well, when we got back down from tormenting ourselves at Lake Julia, we found an amazing place to launch right by the creek entrance. There was an 18 inch log parallel to the lake, buried in the mud on one side with the water up to the top of it on the other - as if it had been built by someone as a launch site. This was a welcome relief after our brutal hike to Julia and back. We rest for a bit, then inflate both rafts, a few snags to maneuver around and we’re both on the lake, Mr. B in one raft, myself and the force of nature in the other.

Lake Smelling might well be an asteroid crater. It’s a tiny six acre lake that in many places is mostly 100+ feet deep, and often 60-70 feet deep only 30 feet off shore. The shallowest part of the lake is the near side when you reach it, with areas only 20-40 feet deep. But most of the lake is 60-100+ feet. My portable depth finder only reads 100 feet and it was off scale most of the lake.

As for the depth finder, HOLY COW, this lake is absolutely swarming with fish. I have never seen anything like it. Fish on the surface, and about 30-40 feet down. Hundreds. I saw up to 12 returns at once on the finder. Mostly at the near side and far (creek entrance) side, but we caught fish all over the place. I think this lake is definitely overpopulated. The fish are mostly small, and their heads are just a little too big for their bodies compared to other lakes. Classic signs of overpopulation. If you were going to comment and ask why I kept 8 inch trout, that’s why. Those six are the combined catch of myself and the force of nature. I tried a variety of spinners, spoons, worm, etc. I mostly had her trolling a little tiny Dick Nite which I found in the Wallace river. Had tons and TONS of hits on that, a castmaster, a roostertail, but only a few hookups. Trolling by oar isn’t exactly great for keeping tension on the line, and the force of nature having socks on her hands to keep warm wasn't helping her set the hook heh. The biggest fish in the pic I caught from the swarm 40 feet down. The fish were a lot prettier when caught than after being packed down the mountain. We would have caught a lot more if I had stuck to the surface, as there were only 2 bites deep, and one hook up. Mr. B caught … who knows how many. He was fishing mostly on the surface, including some fly casting. He caught a small brook trout by the creek entrance, and who knows how many cutts.

In retrospect, we should have ignored Julia and just caught 50-100 cutts each in Smelling in a mad orgy of catching. But we didn’t, so we only had perhaps 90 minutes or two hours at Smelling. As it got dark we packed up and hiked back down the hill, mostly in the dark.

At the end of this day I had substantial chafing, 15+ cuts and scrapes and punctures on my hands, we were all scraped and bruised and beat up and wet and dirty and tired, I ripped my cheap waders with the hole in them from ankle to crotch, Mr. B blew a hole in his pants while trying to get over a huge log, which proceeded to rip his pants from ankle to crotch as the day progressed, and then to add insult to injury, somehow I forgot one of my oar pieces up there, and on the walk down Mr. B somehow lost one of his oars. 5 sets of gear in Lake Julia, a pair of pants, a set of cheap waders, and 2 oars were sacrificed in the making of this adventure. The only person who didn’t lose gear was the force of nature, and she didn’t even really complain about the cold water on the way back down the hill! She is a warrior. As I told Mr. B at the start of the hike, looks can be deceiving. The force of nature will crush you, and then laugh about it.

At least it was sunny!

Little did we know that our suffering and loss of gear had only just begun. This adventure will pick up Sunday with a 3rd post for the weekend.

If you happen to get up to Smelling between now and whenever myself and Mr. B get back, please collect his oar and my oar chunk. And please take an axe or a pruner so you can work on clearing the snags out of a launch area. It is actually fairly dangerous launching into Smelling in a rubber raft given the number of snags.

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