More Magical Weather Ahead

Even on a sunny day, you will see a few BWOs kicking around.

The weather for the coming week looks to be, yet again, unseasonably nice. The sun is rising this moring on a calm day with very few clouds in the sky. The forecast calls for clouds, but not rain, to roll in later today and stay through the weekend. This blanket of clouds will keep the nights from being too icy and will trigger Blue Wing Olive hatches for the anglers during the day. Highs in the next 5 days are touching 60 degrees!

Mayflies, like BWOs, prefer the cloudy days and will always hatch off in greater numbers when clouds cover the sun. So, don’t shy away from cloudy or rainy days on the Deschutes. In my experience, the most epic dry fly days are when the trout have their security blanket of clouds in the sky and feel confident in feeding on the surface. 

As we head into March this week (or, march into March - as the case may be) we are going to begin to see a few more insects starting to make an appearance. There will be some larger caddis beginning to flutter around on the banks in the evenings and they shoudl be here and there on the water sporadically throughout the day. There are tiny midges around - which is why we have been beefing up our selection of tungsten bead zebra midges in the fly shop. March is also the month when we may see a smattering of Skwala stones crawling about. These are larger than the yellow sally stoneflies but not quite as large as the golden stoneflies. You will see the familiar shape of the stonefly but the body color on the Skwala stone has more of an olive color. It can be a lot of fun to fish a dry-dropper in March using a Skwala stone as the dry. 

March Brown Mayflies always enter the mind of an angler as the calendar turns to the third month of the year, but the bugs are nowhere to be found on the Deschutes until we get nearly to April. Maybe they will live up to their moniker this year with the lower water and warmer weather - we could see some of these large, speckled wing mayflies in mid-to-late March. We will keep you posted on sightings. So far - nada.

We were sorry to have been closed last Saturday - but we had an important event to attend in Portland to raise money for the Deschutes River. A wonderful group of people got together at The Redd on Salmon Street in NE Portland and showed how much they care about the Deschutes RIver. We raised money to help the Deschutes River Alliance continue its progress towards getting cooler cleaner water back in the Deschutes. 

The White River got a little color this week due to some low elevation rain/snow a few days ago. I think it will have cleared up by the weekend, but there is always a ton of great water that is clean and clear from the confluence with the White all the way upstream as far as you can fish (above the locked gate).

I know this is a repeat of all the past winter fishing reports but…..nymphing will be productive - tungsten Euro-style nymphs can be fished traditionally with an indicator rig or with a non-indicator specialized Euro-nymphing rod and line. Streamer fishing for trout is also an effective method on some days - strip those sculpins and buggers to get the trout to chase them down. 

A healthy Euro-nymph fly box - ready to search the depths for big trout.

There are trout and steelhead utilizing the shallow gravelly areas of the river for spawning for the next few months. Please respect these wild fish and stay away from their gravelled Redds where they lay their eggs. It is disgusting to see anglers targeting fish while they are at their most vulnerable - so do not hesitate to call out anglers whom you see fishing over spawning fish. This is not cool anywhere - no matter what your bead-pegging guide in Alaska told you. Anglers, you are better than that.

Remember that fishing is still closed for the next 7 weeks on any part of the Deschutes that is adjacent to the Warm Springs Reservation. So, Warm Springs, Mecca, Trout Creek, and South Junction are all closed to angling until the third week of April. Anythign around Maupin is fine to fish and open all year long.