The most heavily fished lakes in western Oregon, Tenmile Lakes ensures that every surrounding spiny ray fishing spot is overlooked and underfished. Located about a mile east of Highway 101 about ten miles south of Reedsport, the lakes cover about 2,700 acres and have a combined shoreline of about 43 miles (South Tenmile has about 1,600 acres and North Tenmile has about 1,100 surface acres). Although the lakes offer good fishing for stocked and native rainbow trout and also have some cutthroat trout as well as steelhead and salmon, the best fishing at Tenmile is for largemouth bass which have been landed in excess of ten pounds. Numerous six to nine pound bass are landed each year and Tenmile seems to be the most productive bass lake on the Oregon coast in spite of the intense fishing pressure. Bluegill to more than a pound and crappies to about 13-inches can be caught, but both species have been in a down cycle since 2001. A growing yellow perch population may have something to do with their scarcity. Yellow perch to 14-inches were caught in 2002 and every year since then. Brown bullheads averaging about 12-inches are relatively easy to catch and some of the more serious bullhead anglers make their best catches from the deeper portions of the lake in the late fall and early winter months. Once every several years during the winter months tremendous numbers of crappie, perch and bluegills enter the channel connecting North and South Tenmile Lakes and are easy to catch at that time. P Heley