Country Time : Things Haven’t Changed Much at Rustic Lake Wohlford, Where Tradition of Catfish Burgers, Tall Tales, Big Fish Lives On

Lake Wohlford opens its nine-month fishing season Friday and trout five pounds and better will be caught. But it won’t be like the good old days.

“When they got a little bit big, we had to go down to the surplus store and buy hundreds of machetes to issue to the people who went fishing,” says Earl Losch, the former owner and operator of Lake Wohlford Resort. “They had to cut them in four pieces to get them in the boat.”

Uh-huh. That’s probably why they weren’t mounted on the walls of the Lake Wohlford Cafe, which displays other trophy catches of trout, catfish and largemouth and smallmouth bass dating to 1944.

Or maybe the cafe cooked them. Don’t blame chef Ken Krongaard. Some people think he’s been there since the lake was formed in 1895, but he didn’t arrive until the ‘70s. Besides, he’s only 83.

The Kuebler family homesteaded the property in the 1880s. In 1895 a flume was completed to bring water from the San Luis Rey River into Bear Valley, and the Kueblers found themselves with a resort on Lake Escondido. Further development of the reservoir system placed the lake downstream from Lake Henshaw, and in 1924 it was renamed to honor A.W. Wohlford, the banker who shaped the policies of the new water company.

Losch came along in 1933, during the Depression, looking for work. He not only got a job but the hand of Charlie Kuebler’s daughter Ava and later took over the place, running it until he sold out to John O’Flynn 15 years ago.

As resorts go, this is not Club Med. But the food is good, the accommodations adequate and O’Flynn has maintained the legends and traditions, including the cafe’s catfish menu, homemade pie and Losch’s tall tales. Losch still lives there as sort of the resident character and historian because, he says, O’Flynn told him, “You know where all the bodies are buried.”

Until more formal law enforcement took over, Losch also was the law around Wohlford--a deputized sheriff.

He also says, “I used to make my own hootch here.”

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Long after Losch is gone, his landmarks will remain: the cafe, the unfinished home site, the well, the airport.

Most folks that drive through Bear Valley on County Road S6 probably are unaware of the airport, up on a hill overlooking the resort. Losch built it in 1954.

Did Wohlford need an airport? Probably not. But Losch had this glider someone gave him to settle a $400 debt, so what else was he to do? He bulldozed the top of the hill into a 1,650-foot airstrip, whose crumbling blacktop runway is still used by a couple of dozen regular visitors.

There is no control tower, but there is a windsock to assist brave pilots who have compared the experience to the thrill of landing on an aircraft carrier.

Losch bought the 127 acres of property from the Kueblers for $10,000 in 1939 and developed his construction skills as a Navy Seabee overseas in World War II.

“Over there, I dreamed up all kinds of things I was going to do with the place,” he says.

When he returned, the first thing he did was build the cafe in 1946. In a week. Losch summoned 57 of his Seabee buddies, who were used to building things in a hurry.

Losch also built 10 adobe cabins and continued to tinker with various projects until, he says, “Finally, there were so many inspectors on my back that I said ‘To hell with it’ and sold it to John O’Flynn in 1977.”

Losch had a home site with a 360-degree view of Bear Valley from a hill opposite the airport, but it never got beyond some rock walls attached to steps that go nowhere. His tall water-drilling rig stands rusting nearby, surrendering to overgrowth.

On the slopes behind the cafe, more than 200 residents have settled into mobile homes, whose wheels turn no more. There’s an old hydraulic grease rack Losch once used to work on tenants’ cars.

Wohlford is rustic, all right. That’s its charm. You can hear the Ricochet band’s country rock live every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night at the Oakvale Resort across the lake.

But the fishing brings most people to Wohlford. The lake records compare with any other for size and variety.

“From Jan. 1 to the end of May, this is a hell of a lake for bass,” O’Flynn says. “March through May, the crappie bite comes on.”

Wohlford, about five miles from Escondido, is at 1,500 feet. It’s only about a mile long and a quarter-mile wide, but is the major water supply for the city and benefits from a sustained level year-round, despite droughts. In the near future, however, it might have more water than anyone wants.

The San Diego County Water Authority is looking for places to store more water in case a major earthquake destroys the aqueduct upstream. One option under consideration is the building of a new dam that would raise Wohlford by 80 feet--and submerge the resorts by 50 or 60 feet.

Escondido opposes the prospect, as do the “Friends of Lake Wohlford.”

That group’s spokeswoman, Debbie Olmstead, says: “It’s been such a wonderful little time warp up here for years. Unfortunately, Lake Wohlford is at the right elevation and location for North County.”

The city, using grant money from the state Department of Boating and Waterways, is still making $276,000 worth of improvements to the marina near the cafe.

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Fishermen are trying to put that out of their minds for now. They enjoy good fishing and boat rentals, with outboard motors, for only $16 a day. The cafe is still serving catfish burgers for lunch and the all-you-can-eat catfish and barbecued ribs combo special for dinner.

For last week’s press and VIP preview, Krongaard and cafe managers Steve and Sandy Agueda outdid themselves, turning out a pre-dawn breakfast not found on any snooty Club Med menu, you can bet: rattlesnake cutlets; “buffalo chips,” which are bite-sized pieces of buffalo meat; venison, smoked duck, frog legs, Cornish game hen and buckwheat hot cakes.

The rattlesnake went with the first seating. One year they served smoked armadillo, but apparently there weren’t enough road kills this year.

After breakfast, the guests assaulted the marina corner of the lake, where 4,600 pounds of trout had been stocked for the opening, with 24,400 pounds to follow through May. The fishing was bountiful . . . although, maybe not the way Losch remembers it.

One lake legend is of a former fighter whose sobriety seldom coincided with his fishing experiences, such as the time he told of being chased off the lake by a giant bass.

Still, it is said, divers inspecting the dam have told of catfish as long as five feet.

“We’ve had a lot of doubters,” Losch admits.

Losch says he once went fishing with a friend named Eric Gissler:

“He was a Swede. He told me one day, ‘I want to know how to fish.’ I said, ‘OK, you come up here and bring a bottle of hootch and four pounds of Velveeta cheese and we’ll got get you a fish.’

“We went out about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, when they start to bite, dropped anchor and sat there. I said, ‘Now, you put a quarter-pound of cheese on your hook, throw it out there and let it drift down to the bottom over in that channel. If it flickers a bit, let it go. We’ll just have a little nip of whiskey.’

“So we had four or five nips, and pretty soon here goes his line. It started down the lake and he said (here Losch goes into a Swedish accent), ‘Well, either the lake is moving or the fish has got my bait.’

“So he picks up the rod and gives it a yerk, and honest to Pete, I thought he was going to fall in the lake. That doggone fish took off and he had an awful time getting it in. About three hours later we hauled in a 64-pound catfish. He couldn’t believe it. That is a true story. I have pictures of it.”

Losch is reminded that the lake record is only 27 pounds. The California state record is 59.4 pounds.

“That was before they started counting,” Losch says.

In the good old days.

Record Catches

Record fish caught at Lake Wohlford with date, type of fish, weight and angler. Feb. 3, 1986: Largemouth bass 19 pounds 3 ounces Steve Beasley (Vista) Jan. 6, 1990: Rainbow trout 12 pounds 12 ounces Gary Williams (Escondido) Aug. 30, 1967: Catfish 27 pounds Al Linares (Valley Center) April 2, 1982: Crappie 3 pounds 8 ounces Delbert Carter (Pico Rivera) May 22, 1983: Bluegill 1 pound 4 ounces Donna Bartels (Woodland Hills)