Deschutes Angler Fishing Report

Hello from the Deschutes River!!! 

This is my first fishing report on the new website, so I hope this reaches our regular readers. We had a few hiccups on the website launch this weekend, but we are now feeling good that the new site is up and running and we are waiting for our first order. 

The weekend out here on the Deschutes was one of the windiest that I have seen in a long while - brutal, relentless wind. Despite this challenging weather, we saw a dozen or more brave anglers willing to brave the elements to try their luck on the river. Several anglers who picked up flies from us on Friday were back in the shop on Saturday to reload their boxes with more of the hot patterns we stock here at Deschutes Angler. 

This is a busy time of year for us at Deschutes Angler - it is the month that we see all of our new fly patterns come in. We order somewhere around 8 to 10 thousand dozen flies each season (yes, we bring in close to 100,000 flies every season) and the new patterns all need to have new homes, which requires moving all of the flies around. Our already incredible selection of Euro nymphs has nearly doubled this year - the variety of patterns and bead sizes is astounding. You can see most of the new patterns on the Euro Nymph section of the new site. We have also beefed up our selection of trout Spey flies - things like sculpins, and crayfish patterns to use while swinging. 

Fishing in the winter on the Deschutes can be very productive if you are incorporating the right technique and fishing the most productive winter holding water. Ben had a trip last week, during which the anglers were focusing mainly on Euro-nymphing. They hooked so many fish that they lost count, and even enjoyed a brief window of dry fly fishing with Blue Winged Olives. 

Good water types to target in the winter are slow pools below riffles, backeddies, and long, slow-flowing deep troughs. Trout do not want to spend energy swimming against the current when the water is cold. They prefer to hang out near the bottom of the river where the current is the least strong and where they have large boulders and slabs of basalt to break the current and provide good holding water. Since the mainstay of the trout diet throughout the dark winter months consists mainly of bottom-dwelling nymphs, sculpins, and crayfish, they prefer to hug the bottom where their food is tumbling along.

If you have a Euro-nymphing rod, you can use it for much more than simply Euro-nymphing. Evan fished dry flies the entire duration of the salmonfly hatch using a Euro-nymph rod and a small tungsten dropper nymph. The Euro nymphing rod and custom leader that we use can also be a deadly weapon to use for fishing streamers, sculpins, and crayfish patterns - no need for sink tips and you have perfect precision and control in the action of the fly by twitching it with your rod tip. If you have already embraced the Euro-nymph system, and you want to see how much more you can do using this weaponry, consider joining us on the river for a two-day one night Euro Camp. We have 6 spots in each camp and they are filled on a first-come first-served basis. The dates are: July 16-17 or July 18-19. For more information, look at the front page of our new site. 

We have just created the dates for our one-day Euro schools. In these schools you will have the chance to try Euro-nymphing for the first time, you will have a chance to try out different rods, you will learn how to set up your leader, how to select the right flies, how to tie the special knots needed to build the leader and to tie on your nymphs, and how to make the cast that will have the most drag-free presentation. The school is $250 for the day. Dates are soon to be listed on the front page of the website, but they are: March 6, March 20, April 10, April 24, May 1, June 5, and June 19. Limited to 6 anglers per class - 2 instructors.

The weather is due to take a nasty turn here in the next few days. It looks like the snow is headed this way and we may be getting over a foot of fresh snow in the next week or so. The high on Friday is forecast to be 22 degrees with snow falling on Thursday, Friday, Saturday. The chill in the air was obvious this morning. We will be open on Saturday in case you decide to come out here to do a little fishing. We are still closed on Sundays through March. 

Thanks for checking out the new site. It is a work in progress, but we feel that we are able to offer you a better shopping experience and an excellent educational platform with the new website. 

Tight lines! Amy Hazel and the crew at Deschutes Angler