Deschutes Angler Fishing Report

Greetings from Maupin! It is Friday morning, and we are in the middle of a major thaw after getting about 6-7 inches of snow last night. It is now 40 degrees and sunny and the snow is sliding off the metal roofs in avalanche fashion. Earlier in the week we got quite a good amount of snow, which caused a few rockslides along the river. One rockslide happened way up the road above the locked gate and is blocking the road up there. All along the river there are random rocks falling down the hillside due to the softening up of the hard desert earth, so be very careful as you drive along and don't linger too long parked next to the highest cliffs or in areas where you can see rocks already on the road. 

When the snowfall of the first storm melted, the river rose a little bit but the White River stayed clear despite bumping up. Much of the moisture from the first storm went into the ground. Now that the ground is saturated, the water is running across the landscape and filling up the reservoirs and ponds on the breaks of the Deschutes. Once all the reservoirs are overflowing and the water starts flowing out of them, the cliffs along the Deschutes will have waterfalls flowing out of every small draw and the river is likely to bump up. Reports from the river this morning were that it looked a little bit off color, but it has not even reached what would be an average flow for this time of year. 

If the flows go crazy, we will let you know. 

Tomorrow looks to be partly sunny, a little breezy, but the high temp is going to be 45 degrees and Sunday it is supposed to be almost 50 and cloudy. This is pretty darn nice weather and the fishing should be good. The sunny weather on Saturday is not as promising as the cloudy weather on Sunday, at least for the blue winged olive hatch. However, the trout should be happy all weekend. 

Other than blue winged olives, there are caddis out and about as well as some stoneflies - winter stones - which are mostly flightless. Nymph fishing will probably be your best bet, or fishing a dry-dropper with a long dropper (as long as 3 feet below the dry. 

Come on into the shop to check out the outrageous fly selection that we have for 2021. No other shop can even touch our fly selection - we have over 500 nymph patterns in stock with 288 selections of tungsten bead head Euro nymphs. When the mayflies are hatching, you have 216 mayfly dry patterns from which to choose. Come caddis season, you can fill your fly box selecting from 111 caddis dries. Big bushy stoneflies, used during that short and magical window in May, take up a lot of room in the 78 bins of dry stoneflies/salmonflies that we have.

Are you into the trout Spey game? Need a bunch of streamers and wooly buggers? Come look at the 192 options on display. Headed to the John Day River? Bass poppers are plentiful here, we have 26 bins overflowing with big bass bugs.

In late summer and fall when the steelhead start nosing their way into the Deschutes, you should nose your way into this fly shop to see our 432 options for steelhead flies. Whether you are swinging for steelhead in Oregon, Washington, or British Columbia, we have the flies that will connect you to the fish. If you are planning a saltwater trip, we have you covered on that front too, with 144 bonefish and permit fly patterns, and 113 tarpon, giant trevally, snook, and even a couple of billfish patterns.

Not only do we have what you see on the floor, we have back stock for days. Once in a while we will run out of a pattern that suddenly gained popularity that year, but you better believe that we will order 100 dozen of that pattern next year so that we won't run out. We are a FLY shop, we sell flies. Before we bring a fly into the shop, we test it out on the river to see if it fishes well and fools a lot of fish. If it stops being productive, maybe the fish have seen it too often, we discontinue it and bring in another pattern that will take its place and put fish in your net. 

It wouldn't do us any good to have this many flies if we weren't able to help you here in the shop by recommending the best flies for the river on the day that you arrive. We base our recommendations on the current weather, as well as on our local knowledge about what flies hooked the most trout in the past few days. We live on this river, we have staff members fishing the river daily, we have guided this river since 1978 and have seen it in all moods through all seasons over 43 years, and we are talking to anglers fresh from the river every single day from whom we are able to learn even more about which patterns were hot for them. 

Doesn't it just make sense to buy your flies from the destination shop that sits on the river that you are about to fish? I know that I always go to the destination fly shop when I travel because it would be completely silly for me to think that I know more about what to fish on somebody else's home waters. I defer to the locals who know their river. You should consider doing the same.

If you let us help you, we know that we can positively impact your visit to the Deschutes. Stop on in and let's work together to make your visit to the river the best it can be. We will pass nuggets of knowledge across the counter each time you walk through our doors. Throughout the year, the nuggets will add up just as your counts of trout hooked will go up. We love to help you succeed. That is why we opened this shop 18 years ago and built it from the ground up. Making a loyal customer is far more important to us than simply making a sale. Come on in and check out the big city selection of fly gear with the small town friendly service you have come to expect. 

We are open all day tomorrow from 9-5 and closed on Sunday.