Posted on

Camping and Fishing during covid-19 in Oregon

by Elaine and John Cook

Desperate to go on a summer trip, which we have done for decades , we decided we could possibly make it happen safely. Our plan included stocking our camper van with enough food, water, clothing, supplies and fishing gear for both trout and bass fishing to sustain us for 14 days. We would only go to forest service campgrounds that widely space campsites, where outhouses are only one use at a time, enter no buildings, no gas station bath rooms, no grocery stores, no fly shops, all to keep us in the out of doors. We packed a pot-a-pottie (never needed to use), had a pee jar, stayed in one private campground where you had to be self contained, which meant people didn’t use the bathroom, went to gas stations that had outside ice available and paid the person pumping our gas for the ice and had them place it by the car. Note: Oregon always pumps your gas. We open the window 2 inches to pay them. Also there is no potable water available in Oregon campgrounds this year. We packed lots of alcohol disinfectant in a pump jar which we used liberally. And of course lots of masks. Reservations were made ahead of time so no contact with camp hosts and the one private RV place tapes paper work to their door if you arrive after 5pm. All in all, things worked well. As it turns out, we had enough for 3 weeks. The fishing was not great but we learned a lot about the area. Davis Lake and Hosmer Lake have BIG fish and we challenged ourselves by only using dry flies to catch them. It was a great deal of fun and John is really getting into this float tube thing. A storm came in and dropped the high daily temp 30 degrees. See photo. The wind howled and affected the fishing for about 3 days.  If you are interested in more information, don’t hesitate to call us.