Clearing and Dropping

The river levels have been dropping slowly throughout the week, though the river is still on the high side. The good news is that the brown tinge is gone and the river is looking a lot more clear. I am waking up this morning to another beautiful day - unfortunately, I have been stuck at home with a nasty cold for the past ten days. I can see the river from the house, so at least I have seen the color improve! 

I have been chatting with friends who have been on the river in the past few days, and they gave reported that fishing has been good. Due to the high water, the fish have been pushed into the shallows a bit. Before stepping into the water, it is wise to search that water with a fly to see if there isn’t a nice 15 inch trout nestled next to the bank. They can hide in pain sight, so it is often the more observant, slow, methodical angler who notices that shadow lurking 3 inches off the bank. Take your time, dissect each piece of water carefully, and think a little outside the box. 

Trout have begun spawning now, so it is time to be aware of where your feet are stepping. Large areas of small rock and fine gravel are not common on the Deschutes, but where they are is where the fish will be digging redds and laying eggs. I write this to appeal to the sportsman/sportswoman in each of you, to the conservationist, to the person who gives a damn about whether the wild fish have a right to reproduce without harassment. PLEASE, do not target spawning fish. Leave the spawning areas alone for the benefit of our future generations of wild fish. The upper river is closed right now because people have not been able to control themselves in the past and have been found standing right on top of spawning redds swinging eggs past the faces of large trout. This is not sporting and is also, in the case of wild steelhead that may still be in the river, illegal to harass a federally protected threatened species. Just don’t do it. If you see someone else fishing spawning redds, please educate them. When you fish over these fish and in these areas, you are not only disturbing the process, but your boots are crushing the eggs that have been laid. 

The March Brown hatch is our first big mayfly hatch of the year, but the name is misleading because we typically see the bulk of that hatch in April. For now, the BWOs will have to keep you busy in the mid-day. Small size 18-20 olive-bodied emerges are your best bet for fooling the sippers. But first, you have to find the sippers. Hatches take place on the river every day, but the hatch locations can be quite isolated. You need to learn to read the water to understand where the trout will be in anticipation of certain hatches. For mayflies, it is important that you locate yourself in calm water downstream of a rapid or heavy riffle. The mayflies use the turbulent water to break through the surface tension while hatching, and the smart trout know that they will be helpless little sailboats in the calm stretches below a rapid. Rapids and turbulence also create foam bubbles on the water - and foam is home for both trout and insects. 

March is a great month out here because we start to see the hillsides slowly wake from their winter dullness. The brown slowly changes to a tinge of green as new grasses push through the desert floor. By late April, the canyon will look like the rolling hills of Ireland - until the first hot sunny days turn everything golden brown. 

As a birder, a bedridden one at the moment, I have been birding by ear all week. The first thrilling signal of spring was the sudden explosion of red wing blackbird calls echoing in the canyon. Even if you care not one iota about birds, you surely know this sound if you have spent a day on the Deschutes. It is a rattling trill that is difficult to describe but burned in the brain after a day on the water. They make other clicking and clacking and chit sounds too, but it is that morning trill that really lets you know that you are on the Deschutes. 

A flock of red-winged blackbirds on top of a juniper tree with Mt. Hood behind them

A lot of anglers I know are avid birders - especially guides. Guides have endless hours on the water and often look for little side hobbies to keep them entertained while clients are fishing. This mostly happened for me while guiding steelhead. My clients knew how to cast, how to fish, what flies to use, where to wade, etc. My job was to get them down the river safely, to select the prime runs at the prime angle of light to give them the best opportunity to encounter steelhead, but once they got started I had time on my hands to discover the canyon. I found as many agates, churt, and pieces of petrified wood as I can ever use in a lifetime. Rock hounding was fun, but birding offered a lot more variety and many exciting surprises. Plus, birds are quite a bit more animated than rocks!

Red-winged blackbird outside my window this morning.

My first years of guiding steelhead, the nightly debriefs with John and Dec (Dec Hogan was part of our guide team at the time) always included a summary of the interesting birds or bird activity that we saw that day. We were not often on the same float, as we would rotate through different “beats” during the week. If Dec saw a Green Heron (quite rare) at a spot one day, the guide on that float the next day would be prepared for the encounter. This constant hunt for something special added spice to our 17 hour-long guide days. We had certain birds so familiar to us all - individual birds - that we named them. The Great Blue Heron that lived on Cedar Island and seemed to have had a traumatic brain injury was a friendly fellow with no fear of people. Our name for him was not politically correct, it rhymed with Ricardo, but we enjoyed standing within feet of this fellow, both of us wading, and having a chance to study and admire him.  His lack of wariness was his demise later in the year - as evidenced by his absence and a pile of feathers on the island. 

One of my fly fishing heros, whom I would have loved to meet, was (unbeknownst to me until quite recently, despite having read most of his books) an angler AND a birder. Roderick Haig-Brown, a Brit who emigrated to British Columbia and wrote the most beautiful prose ever put to paper on the subject of fly fishing and steelhead, came to Portland in December of 1961 to give a talk to the Fly Fisher’s Club of Oregon. I recently was gifted a book called, The Creel, published by the club, in which they have the transcript of Haig-Brown’s talk to the FFCO. It was like finding a treasure when I found this passage which I am thrilled to share with you today (hang on to your hats, it is long):

”…it is important to remember that the fly fisherman’s sport is in many things besides the catching of fish. We pride ourselves in knowing something of our fish, how they live and behave, what water conditions they need for living and breeding, how and when and where they feed. The insect lives of lakes and streams has always been a special part of a fly fisherman’s study. It is satisfying to be able to recognize and name waterside trees and shrubs, to trace with a knowing eye the passage of the previous winter’s floods, watch the building up of a gravel bar from season to season or the scouring of a new pool.

Waterside birds can make a large contribution to a day on a stream or lake. I think we should be able to recognize most of them without difficulty and I am always astonished because so many fishermen cannot. Heron, water ouzel, merganser, spotted sandpiper, osprey, kingfisher, and many others are all part of going fishing and it is a great pity not to know them.

A good part of the pleasure in going fishing is in understanding these things, watching them and recording them in the mind, being able to name them and hold them for yourselves as valued things. Identifying and knowing something about them gives you a special claim on your own world of the water’s edge, and helps to make you a part of it instead of a mere intruder. This, to me, is a very important thing. It gives a sense of identification with the whole natural world which I think most of us are looking for. As nearly as I can find any one reason for why we go out to hunt and fish it is in this search for a sense of identification with the natural world. No one finds it more completely or more rewardingly than the fly fisherman. Yet in searching for it we have no need to damage or reduce anything of this precious environment. If we understand our part, we can pass through that world with as little trace of ourselves and our passing as the Indian left when he passed before us.”

The river is always alive with more than just the bugs and the fish, though the bugs and the fish are the main draw for the fly angler. There are flocks of friendly Bushtits, laughing Canyon Wrens, the chilling jungle sounds of the Northern Flicker, the melodic spring song of the Lazuli Bunting, the majestic Golden Eagles hunting Chukar on the rimrock, the echos of the Chukar clucking off the canyon walls, the Song Sparrows jumping from alder to alder enticing the ladies, the Bewick’s Wren, under the cutest little white eyebrows whistles loudly from the rocks, the Yellow Breasted Chat shatters the morning air whilst keeping completely hidden, the CAW CAW of the Crow follows you for miles on the river (as does the scolding Crow), the Belted Kingfisher laughs its way from branch to branch flashing slaty-blue feathers as he goes, the silent soaring Swallows with violet green heads and bodies signal the mayfly emergence, the Merganser moms with a string of tiny babies trying to keep up, the Canada Geese pluck stoneflies from the sedges, the Western Tanager (like a Christmas ornament) offers a brilliant flash of red, yellow, and black on the top of a Juniper,  while the orange and black Bullock’s Oriole weaves a bag out of riverside debris (even old monofilament) and hangs it from a branch over the river, our fly-catching woodpecker, named after Meriweather Lewis, never misses the feast of salmon flies, nor does the California Gull drawn upstream from the Columbia. Ospreys should be here any day now, returning from their tropical retreats, as should the turkey vultures, ready to descend on their roosting tree next to Gabor’s house. I could ramble on and on….but the discoveries are yours to make and will be unique to your experience.

A photo of a Luzuli Bunting that I took on the Deschutes

When I started fly fishing, I didn’t really have a clue about all the bug hatches and bug activity that takes place every day on all the waters around me. Rivers and lakes have their own unique hatches, and there are magical things occurring right under our noses each day - all we have to do is open our eyes and pay attention. When I learned that bugs were important to fish, I started really paying attention and found that they were all around me, all the time, on all of the waters that I was exploring. The birds are the same, all around us all the time. Open your eyes, open your ears, grab a bird book, grab an insect identification book, grab a tree identification book, or download some app into your phone  and start the learning journey. Keep learning and you keep growing.