Looks like a great weekend!

For many anglers this may very well be the last weekend of fishing in the Maupin area. The entire river will open to fishing in four days - on April 22. This means that you will be able to wet a line at Warm Springs, Mecca, Trout Creek, and South Junction access points, all of which have been closed since January 1. Until next Tuesday, however, those areas remain closed to fishing.

Maupin welcomes you with open arms to explore the very best access to the Deschutes, with 40 miles of roads parallel to the river and dozens of campsites situated right on the river’s edge. The nice thing about fishing in this area is that you can cruise into town to resupply on groceries and flies, you can eat dinner in a restaurant and be settling down in your riverside camp ten minutes after finishing your meal. If you need to check email or get on the web - many places in Maupin have super fast WiFi and nearly every cell phone will have service in Maupin or slightly uphill from town. 

I opened up my computer to write this report this morning and was surprised (mildly) to see that the river level bumped up again after it had been dropping pretty much all week.  This is a bit of a bummer, because all we have seen over the past 5 weeks is high water on the Deschutes. It is coming out of the dam near Madras at 6200 CFS - which was a 400 CFS jump overnight last night (Thursday). The water flow will be slightly lower than it was last weekend.  

The temperatures have been in the high sixties and low seventies all week and the hills are as green as the Irish countryside. The warmth has brought out the reptiles, so be aware while walking through the riverside grasses and keep your ears peeled for rattles. Our rule on the river is to stop walking around when a train is rolling through because you need to have your senses as sharp as can be during snake season. If you see any type of snake out and about, you can be sure that all the reptiles will be active. This beautiful little critter was on the river’s edge just a few days ago:

On Wednesday I went out fishing with Taylor, who works in the shop. We floated from Nena to Wapinitia - launching at about 11:30 and finishing up around 5:00. In that time, we fished 4 or 5 spots and hooked fish at every stop. There are a lot of steelhead smolts in the river, and we certainly hooked a bunch of those little guys, but we also hooked some beautiful trout and a couple of Whiteys. I was showing Taylor the Euro nymphing technique - which is nymphing without an indicator using a very fine leader -  and she caught on right away.

We almost felt badly about hooking fish after fish whilst straight across the river from anglers who were hooking nothing. I asked Taylor why she thought that we were catching fish and they were not. She said, “We have better flies on?” I said, flies might be part of the reason, but the real reason was the water type we had chosen given the high water. Our across-the-river anglers were standing in very fast and shallow riffle water while we were in a softer spot. The water where we were standing was deep and one third the speed of the river ripping by only 15 feet away. By sending our nymphs down the lane of slower water adjacent to the really fast water, we found the trout that were seeking an easy place to hang out. 

We saw very few bugs hatching - it was calm and sunny. Bright sunny days are not the greatest days for mayflies to hatch out - so we only saw a handful of blue winged olives and one March brown. We had our dry fly rods ready to go, but the hatches just did not materialize, so we nymphed. We had picked out a selection of flies before leaving the shop - a few old standbys and a handful of new patterns that we had not yet taken for a spin. We only lost one fly to the bottom all day - even though we were hung up often. We changed flies several times in order to test them out and we found a few new flies that we really liked. We can share those with you when you stop into the shop.

Here is the really good news about this weekend - the weather tomorrow is supposed to be cloudy and may even rain a little bit in the mid-day. This may very well be the best weather for mayfly hatches that we have seen in months. You should expect to see tiny blue winged olives and very large March browns. These mayflies will hatch off in turbulent water but will drift into the softer water before they are able to take flight. The key to fishing this hatch is to find that slower water. Back eddies are a great option when the water is high and eddies tend to collect bugs that are hatching, as well as trout that don’t want to expend all of their energy swimming madly into the current. 

The steelhead smolts in the river will keep a lot of anglers happy because smolts are fairly reckless and naive and ready to grab any fly that drifts past. How can you tell if you have landed a smolt? It is quite easy, because they have been marked at the hatchery by having the adipose fin clipped. Here is a photo of a hatchery steelhead smolt:

You can see that this little guy is mostly silver-hued and that his tail is a bit rounded from living in a concrete tank. The big giveaway is the clipped adipose fin that is about an inch and a half from the tail. On a wild trout or steelhead the adipose fin is intact and looks like a little half moon:

You can also see that the trout in this picture has a bit of a pinkish hue rather than being just silver. 

Here is a full photo of this trout - which was not much bigger than a steelhead smolt.

You can clearly see that this wild trout has a body shaped more like a football, its tail has not been rubbed in a concrete tank - making it fuller and more robust, it has a half moon intact adipose fin, and this fish has a lovely color to it. You can also see the orange bead on the fly that it took - yes brightly colored flies are really doing the trick.

Come on into the store and we will help you get out on the water with the best flies. We are loaded to the hilt with the best patterns - we have the largest fly selection for the Deschutes.