River Closure - Fires
NO SMOKE (for now) in Maupin
We received an email from the Bureau of Land Management yesterday announcing that a significant portion of the Deschutes River will be closed to boating, fishing, camping, recreating, etc over the weekend. The reason for the closure is that there are significant wildfires burning towards the river. The authorities involved in fighting the fires are concerned about the extreme fire danger warnings in the area. Should the fire situation escalate, they do not want to have to try to evacuate people from the remote camping areas along the river.
Here are the areas that are CLOSED:
The river and all access points to the river as well as all campgrounds along the river between Hwy 26 crossing at Warm Springs (AKA the Warm Springs Boat Launch) and the Locked Gate (7.5 miles upstream of Maupin). The closure will include Mecca Flats Campground, Trout Creek Campground, and South Junction Campground and all other wildlands campgrounds along the river. The road into South Junction is closed to all but landowners.
There are more than a few fires in the area, but the two that are causing the closure are the Ten Mile Fire between Gateway and Trout Creek, and the 586 Fire - which is burning a few miles to the north of the Ten Mile Fire. Fire maps and alerts can be found on the WatchDuty fire app - but, be warned, you are going to get a lot of fire alerts in your phone when you have this app. It has kept me awake many a night. Here is a map from Watch Duty:
IF you had already purchased boater passes for a float today or over the weekend, you can get a full refund for the pass by calling the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) in Prineville. They are not open on weekends, but the refund can be issued next week. This is great news, as refunds for cancellations are not normally issued for any boater passes issued through recreation.gov.
IF you still want to do a float, you can float in the Maupin area from Nena Creek down to Sandy Beach and beyond that from Buck Hollow all the way to the river’s confluence with the Columbia.
The entire Maupin area is open for business! It is barely smokey out here, the sun is shining, and the weather this weekend looks fantastic for enjoying some river-based fun. Today (Friday) is the hottest day - with a forecast high of 93 degrees this afternoon. Saturday cools down to the mid-eighties and gets windy in the afternoon. On Sunday, it will stay in the mid-eighties and the wind calms down significantly. Our high temperatures through next week are only supposed to peak in the low to mid-eighties leading up to next weekend being back into the nineties. Here is a photo I took this morning while driving to work….
Steelhead fishing is open and will remain open at least to the 15th of August. We are counting the number of wild steelhead passing over Bonneville Dam in the month of July to see if the fishery will remain open on August 15 or if it will close due to poor returns of steelhead. To read all about the steelhead closure framework, take a look at last week’s fishing report.
Trout fishing has been excellent - the dry fly fishing in the mornings has been good with dead caddis and throughout the morning with various caddis patterns, which we are happy to show you in the fly shop. The smokier days, which should not be an issue this weekend due to the wind, have created a false cloud cover situation and that has spawned blue winged olive hatches in the mid-day.
I have broken down the caddis hatch in detail in previous fishing reports, so check those out for more information.
We hope you have a great weekend!
