Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day from the banks of the Deschutes River - time to freshen up the ol' fishing report. As we get into the warmer months, my fishing reports will become more frequent because there are a lot of changing conditions and new and exciting hatches on which to report. 

John and I and our web designer, Derek Brown, went on a little fishing trip yesterday - it was a beautiful spring day full of sunshine and happy trout. John just wanted an excuse to drive the jet boat around, and I badly needed some river time. We launched the boat at around 11:00 PM and pulled off the water around 4:15. Fishing only the prime hours of the day, Derek and I managed to hook and land about 70 trout between the two of us, which kept our "net man" John very busy. He was running back and forth between us scooping up trout and encouraging the angler who wasn't already fighting a fish to hurry up and hook one. 

We went with high hopes of hitting the Blue Wing Olive hatch or possibly seeing the first few March Brown mayflies - but the March Browns are not yet here and the BWO hatch was fairly light and short-lived. We saw a smattering of skwala stones, some size 12-14 brown caddis, and some quite large baetis, but we stayed with our Euro-nymphing program and decided to rack up some numbers. 

I switched out my Euro-nymphs several times to find the magic, and settled in on a red midge pattern with a silver bead as my tag fly followed by Amy's Blue Magic Fly as the point fly. The Blue Magic flies are not yet commercially available, but they will be soon. Tying instructions for the Magic Blue fly are on our Deschutes Angler YouTube channel. Speaking of our channel, we have posted several instructional videos on Euro-nymphing techniques and they are proving to be very helpful to people. 

What's even better than just watching a YouTube how to video? How about getting instruction from the professional anglers who star in these videos? Evan Unti, our head guide, is teaching Euro-clinics all through the year. He will be joined in most of the clinics by one of our other guides, Ben Stephenson. Ben will not be here for the March 20 clinic this weekend because he is driving to Montana to teach Euro-techniques to a bunch of guides over there. There is one spot left on the 20th - so give us a ring if you want to get in on that day-float with Evan. Click here for more information about those full-day clinics: Euro Clinics 

In addition to the clinics, we are running a few Euro-Camps this year. The camp is a two-day trip on the river with a lot of fishing, instruction sprinkled throughout, and an in-depth dive into all things Euro-fishing. Evan will show you how to use the Euro rod to its full potential - which goes way beyond just nymph fishing. Jigging streamers, fishing dry-droppers, and even using the rod to precision cast bushy stonefly dries under the trees. If you want to work towards "ninja-status" with your Euro rod, the Euro Camp is a great place to get started.Click here for more information about our Euro Camps.

We wish you all the luck of the Irish out there on the river! Happy St. Patrick's Day.