Deschutes is in GREAT Shape

The holidays are over and our Christmas decorations have all come down. The wind and rainstorms in mid-December were not kind to our special light pole decoration in front of the shop - the poor Hardy Cascapedia reel got pretty well destroyed. Taylor and Gabor put in all of the effort in decorating this light pole - which was extremely creative but not good enough to win any of the prizes up for grabs. Oh, well! 

Coming into the weekend - the Deschutes is in fantastic shape with very clear water conditions, lower than average flows for this time of year, and some fairly epic dry fly fishing on the right sort of day. 

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of our friends out there! We are heading into 2026 excited for another great year on the Deschutes working with anglers to help them make the most out of their visits to the big river. Do not forget one important thing when you hit the river for the first time this season: BUY A NEW FISHING LICENSE. Unlike some states, Oregon has all of their fishing and hunting licenses tied to the calendar year. If it is a new year, you must purchase a new license. Licenses are for sale on the ODFW website and APP called MYODFW. You can download your license onto your phone and you will not have to carry the paper copy with you as long as you can pull it up in your phone. 

The roads are dry out here - no snow under 2000 feet in elevation. If you want to avoid some hairy driving, and you are headed this way from Portland, try driving through the Columbia River Gorge. The roads are better in the winter and you won’t run into the Mt. Hood ski traffic. Here is a photo of what the roads out here look like (Mt. Adam’s looked so pretty with a fresh blanket of snow): 

Dry roads and beautiful mountain vistas - Mt. Adams from Hwy 197 

This is going to be a perfect fishing weekend as far as the weather and the water are concerned. After a couple of very windy, cold, and blustery days, we are looking at a very mild weekend with Friday, Saturday, and Sunday all calm and fairly overcast. I know, I know, you all want that sunny weather for camping, but the trout and the wise winter anglers know that clouds bring good things - like rafts of Blue Winged Olive Mayflies. These are fairly tiny little critters that big trout will slurp down by the hundreds, but you must have the right fly on in order to fool the trout. Why? Deschutes Redsides are selective and will have lots of time to inspect your offerings because they are spending the cold winter months in their “leisure water.” What is “leisure water?” It is the water that the bigger trout choose to spend their winter months inhabiting because it allows them to conserve a lot of energy whilst adjacent to a buffet line of food coming past them with regularity. 

On the Deschutes River, the leisure water might be a large backeddy or a slick water section of river which doesn’t have strong currents but which is adjacent to water with strong currents and (more importantly) foam lines. In a backeddy or a slick, the trout can use very little energy to keep their noses pointed into the current (a requirement in order for them to breathe). Trout do not have the abundance of food in the winter months, so they must use their food energy wisely in  order to endure the cold. In the winter months, some of our backeddies on the Deschutes have 20-30 nice trout hanging out in them, each one jockeying for position under the foam lines as they pass through. Each raft of foam (particularly during the time of a mid-day blue winged olive hatch) will be loaded with protein and each trout will be looking for its own patch of foam. Without any fast or splashy moves, the trout will slowly rise in the water column as the foam patch comes closer and just the tip of the snout will skim through the foam line as the trout slurps the bug-filled treat, as you might slurp the foamed milk off the top of your latte.

Blue Winged Olives on the side of my house - TINY!

The blue winged olive hatch typically occurs on cloudy days all winter long. Calm days are better for angler and for trout because the bugs have an easier time staying on the water. Last weekend the hatch lasted for a good two hours in the mid-day, but that is a gift. On some days, the BWO is so short-lived that you barely have time to get re-rigged with a dry fly and the hatch is over. If you are fortunate enough to have multiple trout rods, these are the days that make it worthwhile to have the dry fly rod rigged and ready with the BWO setup. Go ahead and nymph fish all morning, but try to have a game plan for where you want to be starting at 11:00 AM. Position yourself near a backeddy or slow stretch of foamy water - best if you can find either water type just downstream of a rapid or riffle because that is where the mayflies are most successful in hatching out. 

How should you rig up? You need to go SMALL and that means that not only the fly must be small but the tippet that you use must also be small. We are talking 6X here. If you have a nice soft 4 weight trout rods that can cushion that fine tippet - that type of fly rod is the best choice for this hatch. Many anglers have difficulty with the small stuff - not only in rigging it up, but also in SEEING the darn fly once it is on the water. One trick to help you fish tiny flies is to fish a slightly larger dry in conjunction with the tiny stuff. Take a 9 foot 5X leader and tie on a size 12 or 14 parachute Adams or some parachute fly - a hot top (pink or orange) makes this an even more appealing choice. Using 6X nylon tippet, tie a 2-3 foot long section of tippet directly to the bend of the hook of your parachute Adams and tie on your size 18 or 20 BWO pattern. When you cast the brute parachute out there into the backeddy, your eyes will find it right away. Scan in a 2 foot radius and you may see your tiny fly, but if not, keep your eyes scanning - the nose of the trout will quietly and slowly poke through the glassy water to sip your size 18 BWO and, game on!

If you prefer to use a tag instead of tying the BWO to the bend of the brighter fly hook, that system can work too. I prefer the first method, but every angler has a rigging that they prefer over another - so you do you.

Nymph fishing throughout the day will be quite productive, and would be a good choice for anyone who has not fished this river in the winter. More advanced anglers may want to break out their trout Spey rods to target some of the redsides by stripping streamers. There are a lot of methods that will work in the wintertime.

Don’t forget that half of the river closed on January 1. The only sections of the river that are open to fishing are those that you can access from the Maupin roads leading up or down the river from Maupin. You can walk above the locked gate or drive yourself all the way down to Mack’s Canyon - you have over 40 miles of river to explore out of Maupin and it is open all year long. Warm Springs, Mecca Flat, Trout Creek, and South Junction access points all sit on sections of the river that will be closed until the third weekend in April.

I have been messing around with a bunch of new “toys” that I got for Christmas and my birthday over our winter break. I have a lot of learning to do on how to edit some of the content I have been capturing, but there are some fun things coming for those of you who follow us on Instagram or Facebook. I will also be adding to our YouTube channel and getting some of the clips up on our website right here on the fishing report. Stay tuned!

We hope to see you out on the water this weekend! Fishing in Maupin in the winter time is such a treat. Tight lines!