Cool Weekend Ahead

We hit a brief window of cool weather - which is great for the fishing. Both trout and steelhead fishing improve greatly with cooler temperatures and some cloud cover. We are supposed to only have high temperatures of 85 this weekend, but it is going to heat up again over the course of the next week. 

It’s 5:00 AM and I am typing this report up while sitting in the pre-dawn twilight on the banks of the Deschutes. After a really hot weekend last weekend and scorching days on Monday and Tuesday, things have finally cooled down nicely. I am not sure if we will still have a few more summer hot blasts before we finally settle into a cooler fall pattern, but we usually have a few more before it starts to cool off for good. 

We are in the last big month for rafting traffic, and the campsites closest to town are all full of non-angling campers. The fishing traffic has ramped up pretty dramatically in the last few weeks because the word is out that the steelhead are coming up river. The fishing pressure down near the mouth of the Deschutes is quite intense, and it becomes less crazy as you move upstream. 

If you are wondering why I am sitting on the edge of the river as I write this report, it is pretty simple - I am taking Ruby and Taylor fishing before our work day begins. These gals have been bitten pretty hard by the ol’ fishing bug. I am just waiting for the first scream from the river as I type on my laptop….

The trout are pretty much on the same program as the steelhead - you are most likely going to do well in the early mornings and again in the evenings, whenever the hot sun isn’t beating down on the water. When the sun does come out, your flies need to be searching for trout in the places that the trout will be hunkered down for relief. They will either be way down deep in the darkest and coolest sections of the river, or they will be tucked tightly under an over-hanging tree branch that casts a heavy shadow on the water. What are the trout feeding upon? Well, caddis would be my first go-to fly - given the fact that they are currently swarming around the glow of my computer screen. These are fairly large bugs - size 14 and 16 brown or dark green caddis will do the job of fooling these trout. Typically, in the early morning, the trout are still eating dead caddis that layed eggs the night before and died on the water. I am surrounded by live mating caddis right now, which will soon be bouncing up and down over the river as they oviposit. 

The caddis were mating and swarming the Sage bushes all morning.

Trout in the Deschutes have become streamer-eaters in the past ten years as they have had to adjust their diets due to the change in the water quality on the Deschutes. The poorer water quality has resulted in a carpet of invasive weeds along the banks and wherever the rocks have exposure to sunlight (mostly from 1-5 feet off the bank. This carpet of weeds is not digestible by insects, so they have moved to deeper water and the trout have experienced a big downturn in the table fare available to them. Sculpins and crayfish have always populated the Deschutes in good numbers, and the trout are now taking advantage of these new items on their menu. Sculpin patterns and Crayfish patterns are available at our fly shop if you want to give streamer fishing a try. The best way to go about streamer fishing for trout is with a trout Spey and a Skagit-style line. We like the Scientific Anglers Spey Lite integrated line or the Rio Trout Spey line. Use a sink tip to get down and a weighted sculpin, crayfish, or general baitfish imitation. The key is to put a little action on your fly to make it swim quickly down stream or across the current. We hook more fish with some life in the fly than we do while swinging down and across as you would while fishing for steelhead. In fact, it is fairly uncommon to hook trout while swinging flies for steelhead - it happens here and there, but I have been watching the gals swing now for two hours (which is like one person fishing for four hours) and (other than the one small trout that tried to commit suicide on Ruby’s fly or maybe it was trying to make friends with the fly that was just slightly smaller than itself) they are not hooking trout with their rather buggy size 8 steelhead flies. 

Now let’s talk about steelhead fishing, and steelhead fishing etiquette. Every year I write a bit about this, and every year the behavior on the water seems to deteriorate. The golden rule is to do unto others as you would have them do to you….it’s not that hard. Don’t step into a run that someone else is fishing. Period. If you roll up to the river and someone is in your favorite spot before you had a chance to get there, you will need to go to plan B. You will probably get a chance to go back to your favorite spot later in the day, and it is still going to be a good spot. The beauty of steelhead fishing spots is that they refresh quickly. One person can fish through, a second person can fish through, and the third person down might be the one to hook the steelhead out of the run. The steelhead might not have liked the fly selection or the swing speed of the first and second people through, or it might not have even been holding in the run when the first two people came through. In low light, steelhead are moving all the time. It is not uncommon to fish through a run, hook two steelhead, change flies, fish through again, hook three more, and so on… Do not leave fish to find fish. If you are fishing in an area and hooking steelhead, it pays off to stay in that general zone because you know that a push of fish is in the area. Fish the run again, find another good piece of steelhead water within a half mile or so of the run you left and fish that piece of water. As long as a steelhead spot has boulders, water the speed of a fast walk, and it is roughly 3-6 feet deep, it will hold steelhead. Other places also hold steelhead, but this type of water is the very best for swinging flies. If it is really hard to wade and the current is pushing you a bit, then you are very likely in good steelhead water. If you fall in, that’s just the river giving you a hug - KEEP FISHING. It is still warm enough to power through a pool of water inside your waders. 

Let me say this one thing about my nemesis - the WHITE RIVER. Every year I field hundreds of phone calls asking me one question: “Is the White River blown out?” Please check our fishing report before you call the shop. If I hear (from a reliable source) of the White River being blown out, or see it with my own eyes, I will certainly announce it on the fishing report the second I hear the news. I will sometimes drive down to the White River confluence with the Deschutes to check it out first hand, but I can’t do that multiple times per day. Just because the White River is dirty does not mean that it is negatively impacting the Deschutes. There has to be a certain volume of water coming into the Deschutes for there to be an issue with the fishing due to dirty water.

This photo was taken several years ago - this is a dirty White River. Most people would panic upon seeing this mud - but this is not enough volume to blow out the D.

The White River is unpredictable and will change from hour to hour. Often it is dirty, but without enough volume to really impact the Deschutes. Other times, it will make fishing the lower Deschutes really tough because the visibility can be reduced to mere inches. Here’s the crazy thing: the White River can blow out and clear up completely within a few hours. It can also blow out and stay blown out for weeks, making hooking steelhead in the lower river next to impossible. This is why you should always bring a few bigger flies if you are going on a guided trip. You may need a larger profile dark fly to fish the muddy water. 

The reason the White River is so hard to predict is that the blowouts are not caused by rain or hot weather, they are quite random. We believe that what happens to the White Glacier is that an ice dam will form on the glacier and that dam will hold back a lot of the glacial water. When that ice dam breaks, the water that is released is the really dirty opaque water the tends to blow out the lower Deschutes. When or if that dam break is going to happen is completely random and out of our control. The blow outs are very very rarely caused by rain on the mountain, unless it is a torrential downpour. Even with heavy rainfall on the mountain, a dirty White River isn’t usually dirty enough to take out the entire lower river. 

Well, the girls fished their pieces of water very cleanly but without raising a steelhead. It felt fishy this morning, and we fished two great stretches of water before we had to open the fly shop. Sometimes you find them and sometimes you don’t - that’s steelhead fishing. Keep paying your dues and you will eventually encounter a steelhead or two if you are persistent. Keep the faith and keep on swinging!