Come to the Sunny Side!

Next week will be the last week that our store will be open for the 2025 season. We close on Sunday the 21st and will be closed through the year until January 2. This gives us and our staff a well-deserved break and time to spend with family, friends, and fish. 

During our closure, I will stop into the shop every few days to check orders and to fulfill orders. If I am in the shop the open sign may be on during that time, but we will not be keeping regular hours. Enjoy your holiday season!

If you are looking to get out of the rain this weekend and into the sunshine, head this way! Maupin is going to be sunny and 60 degrees on Saturday. The river is in good shape above the White River and people are catching both trout and steelhead in the 50 degree water. With water temperatures like these, you can still swing up a steelhead on a floating line and a skater - though most people will be fishing wet flies at this stage.

Like a lot of the campers that walk into our store in the summer, the White River is dirty and high. There is enough chocolate-brown water in that one tributary to blow out the entire Deschutes River below the confluence of the two rivers - which is roughly 4.5 miles downstream of the town of Maupin. All of the water around and upstream of Maupin should be fishing well this weekend.

The White River entering the Deschutes about 4 miles downstream of Maupin

White River mud mixing with clean Deschutes water - blowing out the lower river

The tinge of color that we saw in the river above Maupin early this weekend has cleared up and the Deschutes is now flowing at an average level for this time of year - coming out of the dam near Madras at 4600 CFS - just slightly below the normal flows for this time of year.

In terms of hatches - the Blue Winged Olives will be hatching strongly on Sunday - because the weather is supposed to be cloudy/rainy on Sunday. On Saturday, with mostly sunshine in the forecast, we might see a few large caddis (size 12 or 14) and a zillion midges (size 99) but probably not much in the way of mayflies. Mayflies prefer the cloudy days. 

The next couple of weeks will be my last to chase steelhead on the Deschutes. We do not have a winter run of steelhead coming into the Deschutes, so the best bet to find fresh steelhead from this point forward would be to hit some of the coastal rivers or the rivers near Portland like the Sandy and the Clackamas. The coastal rivers, particularly the north coast, are very high right now and unfishable. They should start to come back into shape over the next week or so. 

If you need to do any holiday shopping, we have a shop full of goodies that any angler would love. We have ample parking here in the downtown corridor of Maupin. The parking lot adjacent to the shop just got two new charging stations - so you can recharge your EV while you shop.

EV Charging Station for two vehicles - next to the public restroom behind our shop

The beauty of Maupin is that we have a safe little community where nobody will mess with your car while you are parked here and shopping at Deschutes Angler. Heck, you can even leave your car unlocked and running in Maupin without fear of anything, including the vehicle, getting stolen. I promise that you won’t have to step over any unhoused people or their excrement on the way into our fly shop. 

For some of the rules and regulations that are changing on January 1, check out my fishing report from December 5. I wrote out all of the important rule changes for the Deschutes River - including an important closure that took place on October 31 of the Warm Springs (West) side of the river. Many anglers purchase a season pass to fish the Warm Springs side of the river between Dry Creek and Trout Creek (a section that starts a bit below the put-in at Warm Springs on the West Bank of the river) and they enjoy fishing those waters throughout the summer and fall. 

Last week, there was a big post on Instagram from a fly shop about how great a day they had fishing on the Warm Springs side in late November. The owner of the fly shop was fishing with the guides who work out of the fly shop and he tagged their location as “Warm Springs Indian Reservation” and posted pictures of himself (the owner) holding trout on the West side of the river. The post was up for about a week and was the buzz of some of the other fly shops in the area - shop employees, guides, and anglers around central Oregon were pretty appalled. When our shop finally called these guys out for posting photos of themselves fishing closed waters, the post was removed from social media within minutes. 

I think the big lesson to take away from that incident is that you are responsible for knowing the rules and regulations of the river that you are fishing - and that you cannot always trust the information that you might get from the posts you see on social media or even from some of the people at fly shops. When it comes to the fishing regulations, you need to do your own research. Get yourself a printed regulation book from ODFW - we will have them available at Deschutes Angler in 2026 even though we do not sell fishing licenses. The rules change from year to year and can even change within the calendar year. The fishing regulations are available online through www.myodfw.com but a printed copy is often easier to read, and understand. Keep a copy in your fishing rig and refer to it before you step into the river. If you are fishing in special areas that require their own permit, like the Warm Springs tribal waters, be sure that you understand all of the special regulations that pertain to fishing those areas. 

All Oregon fishing licenses expire on December 31 - don’t forget to renew your fishing license before hitting the water in the new year. That date also marks the closure of the upper 30 miles of the Deschutes from the Northern boundary of the Warm Springs Tribal Land to the Pelton/Round Butte Dam. Areas that close to fishing on January 1 include but are not limited to: Warm Springs, Mecca Flats, Trout Creek, and South Junction. You can still camp and float these sections, but fishing is closed until April 22, 2026.

We hope to see you this weekend on the river or in the fly shop. This beautiful weather can’t last forever…..