Inversion GONE! Sun’s out!

The cold dark days drive many of us to the tying bench! John Hazel tying a steelhead muddler as part of an auction package for Deschutes River Alliance.

Whew! It has been dark and cloudy out here for the past ten days or so with an inversion hanging over the high desert. The bright sun peeking over the canyon this morning was a welcome surprise! We just aren’t used to living under a blanket of clouds out here in Central Oregon. 

The clouds did give us good blue winged olive mayfly hatches, but you had to be in the right place at the right time to catch the hatch in the mid-day. The key to finding good mayfly fishing on the Deschutes any time of year is to position yourself near likely holding water which is also located BELOW a good riffle or (better yet) a heavy rapid. Mayflies need those big upwellings and surface-breaking waves in order to burst through the surface tension of the river - and that is exactly how they use the rapids, an elevator, of sorts, to the rooftop of their world. Once they are on the surface of the water, the mayflies need their wings to dry before they can fly off. It is in this transitional time of emergence that the mayflies are super vulnerable to the trout.

The trout water in the cold winter months is very different than the trout water of the summer months. Winter trout look for the easy ride, the backeddies and slow runs that do not require a trout to work very hard - they can lie in these slow water places waiting for foamlines drifting overhead to deliver morsels of food all day. If the surface activity is non-existent, then the trout will feed down deep on nymphs, sculpins, and emerging insects.

The sunny days can put off trout after a long stretch of grey, so it might be best today to get your nymphs or streamers down deep in your search for trout.

The river remains closed on both sides of the river anywhere that the Deschutes is adjacent to Warm Springs tribal waters. This means that the Warm Springs to Trout creek section is off limits to  fishing, Mecca Flats is closed to fishing, south Junction is closed to fishing, etc. Anything you access from Maupin is open year-round. If you want to walk above the locked gate to fish, that is open to fishing. 

Be sure that you renew your fishing license! The state police have been checking anglers.

On a final note - I did get most all of the new fly tying materials up on the web. There are blue eared pheasant feathers, jungle cock eyes, striped skunk hair (amazing polar bear substitution), lemon woodduck feathers, barred woodduck, gadwall, golden pheasant crests, golden pheasant full tippet sections, bronze mallard, Finn Raccoon, and mallard pointer feathers. Some products are limited to one per customer - due to how limited they are. We wanted to give everyone a chance to try some of the harder to find materials.