Bump in Flow and Water Temp

August has arrived and with it more heat. Temperatures were in the triple digits yesterday and are forecast to climb up there again today. The river is warming quickly, and temperatures at the mouth of the Deschutes reached 71 degrees yesterday - which does not bode well for steelhead fishing. When the low temperature at the mouth is 65.3 degrees and the high is 71.06 degrees, steelhead are in peril from about 1:00 PM on when the river hits 68 degrees. Obviously, it is not popular for me to say this and a lot of anglers don’t want to hear this, but there should be a hoot owl measure in place in the lower river when afternoon temperatures are over 71 degrees in the river and every steelhead hooked and played by anglers is in serious danger.  

The hoot owl closure is a management tool that responsible fish and wildlife agencies use to protect trout and steelhead in the summer - and we have seen it enacted on the Deschutes before - where fishing is allowed on the river until a set time like 2:00 PM and the river is closed until the following morning when things have cooled off. Jason Seals, the district biologist for ODFW in charge of the Deschutes, is the person to make this call - but I doubt anything will be done to protect wild steelhead. 

We had an odd bump in the water flows this week, after a long stretch of steady flow coming out of the dam near Madras. The bump was significant enough to warrant a little research into the cause. With a little digging, I learned that the water canal that diverts much of the water from the Deschutes near Bend had a collapse through a lava tube that supported the old canal and this, in turn, caused a 40 foot deep sinkhole. The water that normally flows through the main irrigation canal had to be diverted back into the Deschutes River in order to do work to repair the damage. When the Pelton Round Butte dam complex gets a bump into their reservoirs, they have to release water equal to that bump, and this is why the river jumped up over 400 CFS on the 30th of July and another 150 CFS on the 31st, It dropped nearly 400 CFS yesterday and it looks to be dropping a little more today. Water fluctuations like these can really screw up the fishing because the fish get pushed around, their habitats change overnight, and they often get a bit of lockjaw until things stabilize. Stability is back now, so the fish should be back to their old eating habits. 

What’s on the menu for trout these days? Well, I was out on the water yesterday and the day before and saw a variety of things in the air despite our oppressively hot streak, There were caddis - about size 16 in a tan body, aquatic moths about size 16-18 in a powder grey body, and (to my surprise) I saw a few yellow mayflies in the air that looked like chunky PEDs but I wasn’t able to catch one. Standing in the water while wet wading was a nice relief from the heat - which is quite bearable as long as you stay near the river. I was out gathering bugs on Wednesday and teaching a Spey lesson on Thursday, so my exposures to the river were both int he mid-day heat and without a fly rod in hand. I have been chatting with a lot of the guides lately and have been hearing mixed reports from all sections of the river. Overall, the fishing has been a bit challenging this week due to that crazy bump in the water flows. The White River has not been an issue yet, but August is the month that it can become a problem in the lower river so I will keep you posted if I hear that its color is impacting the entire lower Deschutes. I will drive down to look at the White River a few times each week before work, but I will not have any up to the minute reports no matter how often you call the shop for those reports. 

No matter what we tell you the White River is doing on a given day, that river can change in a matter of hours. I have had the water down near Mack's Canyon get muddy right before lunch and clear up completely in a matter of 4-5 hours. We have also had the Deschutes get super muddy and stay that way for the entire month of August because the White River continues to puke week in and week out. There is no way to predict what the White River will do, and that is part of the adventure of fishing. Sometimes you have to make adjustments when you get to the river because conditions change and you need to be ready to change with them. If you happen to be committed to fishing in the mud - either you launched a boat at Mack's Canyon and you have three days in the mud, or you hired a jet boat guide, you should have a few big dark flies with you, some sink tips and a Skagit line. That way, you can fish in the mud and still have a tiny bit of a chance to hook steelhead. 

If your trip is based in the Maupin area, the White River blowing out is a bummer but it isn't the end of your trip. There are many good runs to fish above the confluence of the White and the Deschutes and you better believe that the steelhead will be swimming hard and fast to get the heck out of that mud - they hate it. They will also be swimming for their lives to get the heck out of the 70 degree plus water down near the mouth. 

Back to the discoveries we made while screening the river for aquatic life the other day: In a couple of kick samples we found golden stonefly nymphs (more abundant than salmonfly nymphs), a few different mayfly nymphs, green rock worms and cased caddis, leeches, snails, red worms, and the cutest tiny little crayfish baby - about 2.5 inches long. The insect abundance was not great, but we did find some good bugs. I think that the golden stones were the most healthy and active because they are carnivores who eat other insects. The salmonfly nymphs were few and far between - probably because we could only wade out so deep and the rocks near the river's edge are already coated in Cymbella mexicana, a stalked diatom algae which is not edible to nymphs and which has crowded out all of the edible algae in the years since PGE installed the SWW tower.  This means that the vegetarian bug need to move to deeper water to find food,  which may be the reason we didn’t find very many salmonfly nymphs. 

The crayfish babies are out and about and this is a good time of year to fish small streamer patterns that are olive in color and about 2 inches long. We have some great tungsten bead head bugger-style jigged flies that you can swim on a sink tip off your trout Spey rod, or fish on a single-handed rod, or under a euro nymph rod. 

If you are interested in the Deschutes River and our fight to save the river -feel free to join us at a Deschutes River Alliance event being held in Hood River on Wednesday, August 7.  We will be showing our feature film, The Last 100 Miles.  

If you can’t make it to Hood River, there will be additional screenings on September 11 in The Dalles, September 26 in Maupin, and November 4 in Bend. Click the above link to learn more about this movie and to purchase tickets.

Keep an eye on the water temperatures and stay cool out there! Tight lines!