About Us

The Red Hills Lake Story

My name is Larry Hays, and with my wife Dot we are owners of Red Hills Lake. Occasionally someone will ask how Red Hills Lake came to be, so I thought I would set pen to "The Red Hills Lake Story". Thank you for reading.

The Beginning

In 1972, my wife Dot and I lived in a monetarily challenged area in northeast Portland, Oregon. Around that time, a co-worker at a surplus store where I was employed at minimum wage offered me an opportunity to purchase her home by just taking over her contract. Her name was Martha and I shall forever be indebted to her. She had only been in the house a couple of years and her equity was less than her realtors fee if she was to sell it through a realtor. It was a very large home with five bedrooms, a beautiful fireplace and wood paneling in the living room. It was a craftsman style home, and we loved it. It was way more than we had ever dreamed possible on my meager wages.

The Addition to Our Family

In 1973, a family of five children in our neighborhood lost their mother and father two days before Christmas. They had no immediate relatives who were able to take them. These children had been friends with our own children, so we went to visit them and to check on their welfare. At that time the State of Oregon had plans to split the family up and send them to separate foster families throughout the state. Additionally, their temporary housing was not acceptable and Dot expressed that to the state agency. With consideration to their current housing situation as well as our feeling that placing the children into separate foster homes would only worsen their situation, we offered our home and became certified as foster parents to all five children. They came to live with us in January of 1974 and overnight we went from a family of four to a family of nine. Needless to say, things changed drastically. Approximately a year later we were excited to formally adopted them, making them a permanent part of our family.

Moving to the Farm

Our next door neighbor came to us one afternoon and ask us if we would keep our children indoors that evening because they wanted to have a barbeque in their backyard and she said it wasn't that our children were unruly or anything, but there were so many of them. It was at that moment we realized that we needed to move to the country. We were no longer receiving support from the state for their welfare either, and feeding and clothing them kept me working long hours. Living in the country would give the kids room to run, plus we could grow our own food to save money.

The Lord continued to supply our needs. Due to being a Vietnam veteran as well as an Oregon veteran, we were able to buy our 30 acre farm, which would someday become Red Hills Lake, and we began to homestead.

Our move to the farm was about survival. We brought our parents with us, both Dot's and mine they were retired. They were from the southern states of Arkansas and Missouri originally and had been raised on farms. Their skills in gardening and farming were vital to our success. We acquired chickens, pigs, a milk cow named Mable, ducks, and a goat. Each of the children was responsible for different chores and did everything from slopping the hogs, to milking the cow, to feeding the cattle. I worked off the farm and most the time I was gone before the crack of dawn.We smoked our pork hams and bacon and stored our pork chops in a large freezer. My father-in-law worked the land and we included the whole family in the planting and harvesting of the crops. My mother taught our girls the art of canning our homegrown food, and we stored our abundance of canned goods in an old root cellar. Mable the cow provided delicious milk and butter. We were no longer struggling to feed our family!

The Need for a Lake

In 1977 we decided to plant an acre of strawberries. We tilled the acre, bought the plants and planted them in the spring. For the first month, the strawberry plants did very well, but as summer approached the weather got warmer and the plants were in desperate need of water. Our only sources for water was our small, domestic 4" well and a year round stream. The well ran out of water and the stream was too far away. Sadly, our crop of strawberries plants burned up. We were extremely upset because we had put so much work into them and now they were gone. It was at that time that I made my mind; I would not plant another crop until I could develop an adequate water source, and thus birthed the idea of a lake.

Construction Begins

We hired an engineer from Newberg and ask him to design a dam on the year round stream that we had old, existing water rights which came with the farm. The design and permit phase began in 1978 and two years later in 1980 it was complete and it began to fill. Two willow trees were planted by the water and one still remains today.

Introduction of Trout

Once construction on the lake was done and it had filled, a friend of ours suggested that I plant the lake with trout. I wasn't sure that they would live because the water flow was very minimal during late summer, but we planted trout in 1982 for the first time and they did indeed thrive. In no time there were large trout in there. I remember my father-in-law commenting early in about 1977 that he would never live to see the lake completed. Years later I saw him down at the lakeside on many evenings, wearing his bib overalls, fishing for trout. He loved to fish and I would see him coming up from the lake with a stringer of fish for his dinner. He also loved to eat fish. I was content to see him share in benefits the farm had brought us all, but especially him because he worked continuously on the farm. I felt he had return to his roots and I sensed a deep contentment, a sense of purpose for his life, He was applying skills he dad learned as a young man and had moved away from years ago and now those skills were a major benefit to all our families. I don't ever having so much a single cross word between us. He was truly a gentleman. My mother lived in the old farm house that was falling down and in bad need of repairs; she repaired it by her self. The farm house was near the road and the kids would get off the school bus and go directly to her house because she would bake cookies or something and it would always be there waiting for them. She was always there to let them unload if they had a disagreement with our parenting and then she would help them see thing from a different point of view.

A New Direction

It wasn't long before I found it was much easier to find help to harvest my fish than to harvest our strawberries. We setup a fish hatchery and began to hatch our own trout and raise them in floating cages. When they reached up to 10" we would release them into the lake and put up our "Open for fishing" signs and open the gates to fishermen and families. At that time, several different methods were used including bait, lures, and flies. When their 5 gal bucket was full, they'd bring us their catch and we would clean them and bag them. Fishing was extremely popular, and became a logistical nightmare. We worked seven days per week, 300 days out of the year. Eventually we no longer enjoyed our work and we had no time for life.

From Bait Fishing to Fly Fishing

One day a fly fisherman dropped by just to see how the fishing was going and as he watched the bait fishermen caching 18" trout and filling five gallon buckets with them, he asked me if we would be interested in setting aside one day a week for fly fishing only, no bait fishing allowed. He assured us that people would be willing to pay us to catch and release them, so we decided to give it a try. We sat aside one day and the fly fishermen came. At the end of the season we were convinced this was the direction we wanted to go. I'll never forget the first few guys on the lake; I was excited when they came in after catching 50 to 60 fish each and releasing them. I could not believe my eyes! While they were in their float tubes they even collected a lot of things that were floating on the lake, like pop cans and Styrofoam cups. There was quite a number of each. I like a clean lake, so I was impressed and thankful. When we opened the next year it was strictly for fly fishing, catch and release, barbless hooks, and absolutely no lures or bait fishing. We have stuck with that ever since.