Late October - Things to Know

As we cruise into the back half of October and the weather is finally crisp and fall-like, I can hardly believe that another steelhead season is under our belts. This one was a pretty good one, and a lot of you caught your first summer steelhead, or caught your first steelhead on a floating line, or (better yet) caught your first steelhead on a skater! The steelhead we have seen this season are certainly on the larger side of average, indicating that the ocean conditions were favorable with good food supply and decent survivability. 

The numbers of fish were better than a lot of anglers have seen returning to the Deschutes, and that was something to be excited about. However, and this is a big however, the numbers we saw this year were actually paltry when compared to a 50 year average. We have to be cautious about the shifting baseline - meaning that we are comparing this year's numbers of steelhead to a ten-year average, and we are celebrating that the numbers are a bit above average for what we have seen over the last ten years. Frankly, the last ten years were the worst on record, and we should be fighting for more protections for the remaining steelhead that we have. 

Just to put things in perspective, We had some tough years back in John's first guide season on the Deschutes - they even closed the river to steelhead fishing in 1978 because the numbers counted at Bonneville were only 104,000 steelhead passed. Things slowly bounced back a bit for the next three years and started really ramping up in 1983. From my first year of guiding (1999) to about 2015 the numbers were 2 times better than what we are seeing this year, sometimes 3 times better, and 2001 was insane. In that year we had over 782,000 steelhead pass over Bonneville dam. That is over 4 times the number of steelhead we are seeing this year. 

The thing to take away from the data is that steelhead numbers cycle. It is possible for steelhead to rebound from a year as poor as 1978 or as poor as 2021 - both years were so bad that the department of fish and wildlife shut down the steelhead fishing on the Deschutes. This year, the numbers are just 79,000 fish above the shut-down numbers. It can get better. It should get better. 

The most disappointing thing that I saw this season was the action by ODFW to open up the cold water sanctuary at the mouth to allow fishing in mid-September. Before the steelhead could even get a good whiff of their natal spawning waters, they are bombarded with a barrage of lures, plugs, and flies in a narrow stretch near the mouth of the river both in the Columbia and in the Deschutes. I feel that this area should remain closed year-round to give the steelhead a chance to get into the river and spread out. Make it a fair chase rather than the slaughter it is the instant the steelhead poke their heads into the Deschutes. 

The steelhead fishing over the past couple of weeks has been spotty for most people. A few people are working hard to get a fish a day, sometimes two, and many people are getting blanked despite putting in a lot of angling hours. Steelhead anglers who fish for them every year no matter the fishing report and no matter the return size are used to these dry spells, but the newer anglers who have somewhat inflated expectations (caused by the over-hyped fishing reports and posts on social media) are questioning everything.  "Am I using the "right" fly? Do I need to put on a sink tip? Are they in only one section of river? Should I change to a different way of fishing? Why have I not caught some after fishing for 6 hours? Are there steelhead in this river???" Things like that. 

If you want to catch steelhead, you will have to put in the hours. Period. Even if you put in the hours, you are likely to get blanked. You have to brace yourself and be prepared for that. Celebrate any grab, any boil, any hook-up (no matter how brief) and keep in mind that there are days when they are happy and grabby and days when they just aren't going to touch a fly. The big turn-off triggers for steelhead are weather changes, poor water conditions, and drastic changes in the water flow.

As for weather - a huge cold front moving through will certainly put fish off the bite. Cold down-river winds and a dropping barometer tend to cause lock jaw - it will be difficult to hook steelhead if you are faced with such a day, but not impossible. There is always that odd steelhead that might buck the trend, or the weather window could calm for five or ten minutes - just as your fly swings past a steelhead.  

Poor water conditions - like a muddy river caused by the White River blowing out the Lower Deschutes - make it very hard to hook steelhead. We have observed that steelhead on the Deschutes are more sensitive to muddy water than steelhead that were born and raised in more volatile rivers with frequent high water events. Deschutes steelhead just tend to shut down when the water is really off-color. 

Bumps in the water flows have a hugely negative impact on steelhead and their willingness to grab stuff. October 15 is the day that the irrigation shuts off in the upper basin. When this happens (and it happens every single year) the water levels ratchet up and up and up. In the past three days the water has gone from a steady flow around 3900 CFS to 4700 CFS, bumping up each day. Unlike winter rivers, where bumps in flow get the steelhead to move into the river, these bumps in flow seem to cause steelhead to go off the bite on the Deschutes because they are unable to settle into a comfortable holding lie with all the changing water levels. John and I took the week off this week to spend time with my family because this water bump needs time to settle out a bit before the good fishing will return. It could be today or tomorrow that things will start to level out. 

While swinging your fly, it is easy to get distracted by the trout rising and feeding all around you. They are bulking up for the winter - feeding voraciously on any bug that they can find both above and below the surface, so trout fishing is very good right now. Smaller caddis are working - sizes 16 and 18 - as well as a variety of nymphs. We have heavy midge hatches, but they are miniscule - too tiny to imitate unless you can tie a fly on a size 40 hook. Even a size 22 hook is too large for the midges we currently see on the river. 

Here are the answers to this week's FAQ on the phone:

1. It feels cold, so should I start fishing a sink tip now? 

It is up to you, of course, but I don't lose faith in the floating line until water temperatures get below 44 degrees. The steelhead are very eager towards surface presentations when water is above that temperature and there is no need to dredge in order to hook steelhead. Some people think that getting as deep as possible all the time is the only way to hook steelhead, but I would take a look at the success rates of the long-time steelhead guides on the Deschutes - and realize that most are still fishing floating lines and small hair wings or muddlers or skaters in prime fishing light. The reason to fish a sink tip is that water is cold enough that steelhead cannot expend the energy to move 6 feet to grab a fly. The water is not that cold yet.

2. Where are the steelhead right now?

They are spread out throughout the entire river at this point. Steelhead are constantly moving around in the river and do not travel in one large pack. There is a steady flow of fish coming into the river throughout the months of August and September. In October that flow diminishes slowly over the weeks and by November the flow is down to a trickle. The trickle still means that new fish are coming, but we don't get very many new fish after October.

3. How late in the year will the fishing remain good?

The Deschutes does NOT have a winter run or a spring run, nor does any river east of the Deschutes. This means that steelhead will be in the river until they spawn in the spring, but they are losing weight and losing condition day after day and hooking a playing them much past the month of December is really bad for the wild fish that we need to protect in order to see good returns in the future.

If you are fishing for steelhead on the Deschutes, or Grande Ronde, or Clearwater, or John Day, or Salmon, or Imnaha, or Methow, or Umatilla in late February or even into March, you are fishing over old, dark, weak, summer fish on their last legs of survival before the spawn. You are very likely having a negative impact on the survival of wild steelhead because you are stressing out the fish that have survived long enough to make it to the spawning beds. If you truly call yourself a steelhead angler, you will make the journey to the coastal rivers or to the rivers around Portland to find true steelhead in the months of January, February, March, and April. 

4. What is the best fly right now for steelhead fishing?

The best fly is the one that you have confidence in. Experienced anglers on the Deschutes will be fishing a variety of colors of hair wing patterns in sizes 3 through 9. They will be fishing muddlers. They will sometimes fish skaters. The most important thing is that you have a fly on that isn't too large and, most importantly, that you have the utmost confidence in fishing. 

5. Is the river busy?

The river has been busy and weekends are certainly more busy than weekdays. Is there a place to fish? Yep, you should always be able to find plenty of places to fish. Will your favorite spot be available? It is hard to say. This is why every angler who comes out here should have more than one or two favorite spots to fish. Learn the river, learn the runs, and move frequently.

6. Are there any guides available to take me out on the river?

If you haven't booked a guide at least two or three months in advance, you are going to get stuck with a very inexperienced guide. If you are okay paying a guide $700 to learn the river on your dime, then you have more money than sense, but so be it. Guides who are new to the river or who were not guiding the river before 2017 are unlikely to have a great sense of where steelhead will be holding because returns have been so low since 2017. Be aware that a lot of guide services love to exaggerate their experience level or number of years of guiding. for example, there are three guides in the operation and each have been guiding for a few years. The common advertising tag line goes something like, "Over twenty years of combined (or they omit the word combined) experience on the Deschutes." In reality, their "experience" on the Deschutes may have been as a rafting guide or as a camp host/bagger but they have only formerly been a fishing guide for a year or two. Interview carefully, book your guide 8-9 months in advance, get a recommendation from a fellow angler, and always realize that a guide is not a GOD - just because you pay for the guide service doesn't mean that you will automatically hook and land a steelhead.

That's a wrap on the Q&A session.

Speaking of wraps, John is wrapping up his last week of guiding in the coming week. This is the wrap on his 47th year of guiding. We are not sure if he will be doing a 48th year on the river - the second hip replacement will be the determining factor. He has certainly put in a lot of time on the water and has introduced a lot of people to the joys of steelhead fishing. He has also named most of the runs on the river. If he does retire, you can expect to see him out there in his retirement fishing the runs that he discovered and named. After 47 years of watching people fish and teaching people to fish, it is finally his turn to wet a fly.