In June our chapter outing was a Timothy Lake.  This year we were happy to return to the North Arm of the lake.  The improvements to the campground were finished, and it changed the old, rustic camp into a very much improved one.  Some additions include drinking water, a new loop road, and more camping sites. 

The camping was excellent and had the usual barbeque dinner hosted by Andy Andrews of TVTU.  This is one of my favorite outings, thanks to the volunteer effort by Andy and Jeff Horton of Clackamas River TU.  I had not fished Timothy in several years and was surpised by the apparent lack of fish in the North Arm of th lake.  We did catch fish, but most of us thought there seemed to be very few of the usual eight inch hatchery rainbows.  I did catch a few fish in the twelve to sixteen inch range, but none of the smaller ones.  After I quit rowing and randomy trolling, I found concentrating on the flooded creek channel to be productive.  A slower retrieve produced faster fishing.  Some of our group fished th main lake and reported large numbers of smaller stocked fish.  Later, I wondered if the change in the fish population in the North Arm was the results of the changes by ODFW in the stocking schedule.  I asked Ben Walczak of ODFW and he said that the decision for the actual location on Timothy for stocking was lfet to the hatchery truck drivers.

Here is his commentary about their activities at Timothy Lake:

"We stock Timothy Lake primarily using rainbow trout from Oak Springs Hatchery, which is located near Maupin.  Stocking starts in early May and is generally finished by Free Fishing Weekend (the end of May).  This year the number of legal size trout stocked was reduced from approximately 22,000 to 14,000.  The reduction was due to converting some legal size fish (3 lb or 8") into 2,500 trophy size fish (1.5-2lbs each) that were also stocked in the lake during that time period.  Most years Timothy Lake will also receive fish that are unallocated from either Roaring River or Alsea Hatcheries, this year an additional 4,000 legal size fish from Alsea were stocked into Timothy on June 22nd.

As part of PGE's settlement agreement during their relicensing they agreed to fund a project to disrupt brook trout spawing, an introduced species.  The thought behind this project was to decrease the brook trout peopulation in the lake reducing competition for the native cutthroat in the lake.  This project has been ongoing for several years now and consists of weirs that are installed in the tributaries during the fall preventing adults brook trout access to suitable spawning habitat.

Timothy Lake aslo has kokanee in it.  For several years these fish were very abundant but small, we have heard numerous reports tthis year that the kokanee are still abudnant but are now a nice catchable size.  We are unsure why this happened but are meeting with PGE, USFS, and other biologists to ry and better understand what is going on in the lake."