Perfect mayfly days ahead…..

Western March Brown - Rhithrogena morrisoni (family Heptagenidae)

Photo Credit: Rick Hafele

The weather forecast for the weekend is everything we need to create a magical couple of mid-day hours of mayfly fishing. Today through Sunday are forecast to be overcast and rainy, yet warm and fairly calm on Friday and Saturday. Sunday’s forecast calls for more rain, colder weather, and windier conditions (10-20 mph on Sunday). If you enjoy watching golf - the final day of the Masters might be a good way to wrap up the weekend.  

The March Brown mayfly is our first large mayfly to hatch on the Deschutes and, despite their name, they are right on time with an April arrival. As this mayfly emerges from the depths of the Deschutes, it does so without a nymph casing, the wings are out and hanging around the body as the mayfly emerges - giving it a larger profile in the water and making soft hackles (we have them with and without beads) the fly of choice just prior to the hatching time. Typically these mayflies will start to get active around noon and the hatch activity may only span 15-20 minutes on a sunny day. Cloudy and rainy days, however, are the dream days for fishing mayfly hatches because the hatch can easily last up to and possibly even beyond 2 hours.

We have March Brown dry flies to sell to you in the shop, but our fly bins have been hit hard over the last couple of weeks because anglers are reporting not being able to find any of this type of dry fly in the local shops around Bend or Portland. You can fish other styles of dry flies like the purple haze, or parachute adams, but you are then hoping that the trout are eating the silhouette of the fly and will take any color. If you fish the Deschutes often with dry flies, you know that the big trout can be quite particular when it comes to the color of the body. That swirl next to your dry fly was not a trout “missing” the take - that swirl is a flat out NO, a REJECTION of your offering. You were close, but there is an element of the fly or the gear you are using that has raised the alarm for the trout. It could be the fly size, the fly color, the diameter of your leader or tippet, or it could be drag on your fly as it is drifting. One of these things caused the trout to turn away at the very last moment.

This beautiful redside loved Miles Kusch’s fly!

In order to experience this hatch, you must be in the right water type. The hatch will be most intense just below a large rapid or a riffle where a lot of foam is created by the churning of the water and the mayflies have an easier time emerging and breaking free of the water tension. If you have a lot of foam lines and some depth to the water you are on (4-5 feet or more with a rocky bottom)  you should see small regattas of mayflies sailing on the foam lines between noon and 2:00 PM. Mayflies have an upright wing (most of the March Browns have a speckled wing in the dun stage but we have a small population of a very similar mayfly which has a pale dun wing) which looks too large for its frame and the tiny sail of a wing looks like it could tip the fly over. 

If you are not in the water below the rapids or riffles (and there are endless spots like this on the Deschutes to fish) then you are unlikely to experience this hatch. Look for Violet Green Swallows swooping over the river and that will be an area where the March Browns are actively hatching. 

You may also see BWOs, a few Skwala stones, and quite a few caddis. The caddis are a bit on the large side for this river (12-14) and many anglers are finding success fishing a small chubby with a March Brown bead head as a dropper pre-hatch.

Of course, Euro nymph fishing and streamer fishing are other good options for anglers looking to tangle with a redband trout. 

Our fly shop is practically bursting at the seams with inventory - we are getting piles of boxes of new gear daily and getting the stuff on the shelves just as fast as we can check it in. Our hat wall is off the hook, we have tons of flies and more coming in every day, lots of waders, boots, gadgets, indicators, nippers, floatant, and anything else that you might need for the river. 

Remember that the rest of the Deschutes - areas outside of the Maupin area like Warm Springs, Trout Creek, Mecca Flats, and South Junction - remain CLOSED to fishing until April 22. 

Thanks to the very warm winter and spring that we have been experiencing, the Deschutes water temperatures are far warmer than we have seen them in an April that I can recall. From Maupin to Moody (near the mouth) the temps are ranging from 55-57.5 degrees.These are temperatures that we don’t normally see until the end of April. Why is this important? Well, the bug hatches are very influenced by water temperatures. We may start to see salmonflies and golden stones emerging weeks early - as happened the year they put the SWW tower in the reservoir and started dumping top water from the reservoir instead of the cold clean water that had always been released from the bottom of the dam.  The salmonfly hatch used to happen in mid-May and into mid-June. The timing of the hatch abruptly changed when the water releases at the dam changed. Instead of starting in mid-May the hatch started kicking off in full force around May 5. These water temperatures might kick this hatch off by April 20 - which would be a blow to the guiding community with all their salmonfly trips already on the books for mid-May. 

The salmonfly hatch does last for nearly a month, with multiple species of stoneflies (salmonflies, golden stones, and many species of yellow sally stones) showing up week after week throughout the month of May - but we may see the timing shift to a bit earlier start date this year thanks to the warmer water temperatures. We are on the lookout for the very first bugs to crawl their way to the edge of the river and will keep you all posted on the arrival of the big bugs. 

Trout and a few steelhead are still spawning right now. Targeting spawning fish is not only unethical and highly frowned upon, in the case of Federally listed wild steelhead it is actually illegal to disturb them while they are actively spawning. Please stay away from shallow gravelly areas where the eggs are buried - your foot steps can ruin the future of your fishing on this river. If you see other anglers targeting these areas - say something. Most are uneducated and unaware of the harm they are doing. 

We hope to see you in the fly shop this weekend. It looks to be a dandy for fishing.