Smoke on the Water

As you may have seen in my InstaGram posts this week, we are (like most of the state of Oregon) experiencing some very smoky days on the Deschutes. The AQI (air quality index) comes and goes depending on the wind direction and intensity, but the wind has been very calm recently and that has allowed the smoke to settle in. 

As many of you know, the fire on Mt. Hood - called the Grasshopper Fire -  has been burning for a solid two weeks now. It will likely continue burning until we have fall rains or snow - the firefighters are going to contain the fire, but it will not actually be all the way out until the rains come. The cause of this fire is probably a lightning strike. It is far from Maupin and far from the river, so you do not have to worry about fire danger from that fire. 

Randy Stetzer and John Hazel - anticipating a grab…..

John and I went out fishing on Wednesday with John’s best buddy, Randy Stetzer. He and Randy swung flies on Tuesday morning and I was in the boat with them on Wednesday morning for a great float. Though we did not encounter a single steelhead, we covered a lot of great steelhead runs. It felt fantastic to be in the water launching casts and swinging flies for steelhead, but It also felt sad, like sitting in a hospital holding the hand of a loved one who is dying. We know the river is closing to steelhead fishing on August 15 - just one week from today will be our last day to fish our favorite waters for steelhead. After August 14 the river will be closed to steelhead and salmon angling. This is a devastating blow to all who love to fish this river for steelhead: the public, the guides and outfitters, and all the businesses close to the river that will lose significant revenue due to the closure.

As of July 31, we found out that the goal number for the Deschutes to stay open for steelhead was not met. This means that the season will close on August 15. There is potential for the season to reopen by September 15, if we hit a new goal number for July and August combined of at least 23,101 unclipped steelhead over Bonneville. We have roughly three weeks to count fish to see if that goal can be achieved. It is not looking likely. But, I hope I am wrong. 

When the steelhead fishery closes on the 15th - the salmon fishery also closes. The only fishery that remains open on the Deschutes is the trout fishery. So, we can continue to fish for trout. Trout fishing can be downright awesome throughout the fall, and the trout fishery is very lightly pressured in the fall months. I have had epic dry fly trips in September and October on the Deschutes - hooking eager foam line sippers at every stop.

If you want to Spey cast while fishing for trout, the trout Spey rod is a fun way to keep getting your Spey fix while searching for sculpin-eating trout. The casting techniques will be familiar to the Spey die-hards, but the actual fishing techniques will differ greatly because trout are not too interested in most swung flies. The swung flies that will work best for trout are the small caddis pupa and soft hackle patterns tied on size 16 and 18 hooks and fished on 4X or 5X tippets. If you want to be more successful with your trout Spey, and you are fishing a larger fly like a sculpin pattern, the best presentation is to cast that fly upstream, allow the sink tip to take it down a bit as it dead drifts, and then strip it back in short bursts to give it that swimming and fleeing action. 

There are a lot of good hatches happening now. The caddis hatches are strong, the aquatic moths are everywhere, and there have been massive Blue Winged Olive hatches during the mid-day thanks to the smoke-cover tricking the mayflies into thinking it is a cloudy day. Aquatic moths might be mistaken for caddis - they are the same size and color, but the aquatic moths have a moth-like flat wing instead of the tent wing we find on a caddis. Here are two pictures I took on Wednesday:

Aquatic Moth (Above) and Caddis (Below)

If you had a steelhead trip booked with a guide, please consider how devastating this closure is to their business. We know that you want to catch steelhead, but, even in the best of years, a few steelhead encounters a day is the best that you can hope for. Even one steelhead hooked on a two or three-day trip has been something to celebrate in recent years. What do you really love about your steelhead trips? Is it only that few minutes of the trip when you had a steelhead on the line? Or, is it, perhaps, a little bit more than that? 

Well, that last sentence came out of my head and made me think of one thing….The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. 

The Grinch thought that the only thing about Christmas that mattered to the Whos in Whoville was the gifts and the material things. When the Grinch snuck into every house in Whoville and stole the gifts, stole the stockings, the christmas trees, the decorations, and every material item associated with Christmas - even the roast beast - when he stole them all and snuck back up to his cave to watch the Whos cry about Christmas being ruined….he found that he couldn’t take the joy of Christmas away from the Whos because Christmas is not merely about the material items - it is not about the gifts alone.

Having been on MANY steelhead trips in my lifetime, most as a guide and a couple dozen as a guided guest, I can say with certainty that the steelhead (the gift) is not the most important or even the most memorable portion of the trip. The steelhead is the reason that I spent so many hours standing in the river, and the reason I gathered a great group of friends to go to far fung places to stand in the river, but the steelhead is far from the most memorable or meaningful part of the trip. 

Just as the people of Whoville did not allow the Grinch to steal their joy of Christmas, we should not allow ODFW’s poor short and long term management of the Deschutes to steal our joy of being on the river.

If you have already paid for a guided steelhead trip, and you are now thinking of canceling due to the steelhead closure, maybe you should think back to all the good times you had on the river with your fishing buddies. What about those fun nights in camp, enjoying a great meal cooked up by the guide team, sipping scotch by the soft glow of some string lights, telling stories of the old days, and sleeping under the starry sky on a black Deschutes night? Are those times in camp not an important part of your year? 

Good times in camp during a fishing trip!

If you go on that steelhead trip, you will not only be helping out your guide (the guides were literally blind-sided by this closure in the last 38 days and had no time to pivot and come up with an alternative plan) but you may be helping yourself out. You need time by the river. You need to hear that river gurgling by as you lay in your cot after a long day in the sun, bones weary but happy to be in such a special place. You will get to see the river in a new light as well. Many steelhead enthusiasts might not even fish for trout any more and they may have forgotten how fun it can be to sneak up behind a trout that is happily sipping caddis off the surface, to make a delicate cast, and to hook and play a wild redside. 

You are going to see great wildlife - deer, bighorn sheep, mink, otters, birds of all kinds, possibly a big cat like a bobcat or a cougar, and maybe even a bear. You can practice or tune up your Spey casting - put yarn on the end of the line and use the after lunch hours to get better at your craft. Bring a fun game for the river, like corn hole, or even a small projector to watch a movie on the side of the wall tent in the evening. Heck, thanks to Starlink Mini Internet devices, you may be able to watch live sports on the river. For me, I like the quiet evenings on the river away from all the moden conveniences of life in the “real world” but, to each his own.

Steelhead fishing trips encompass a lot more than the mere act of hooking a steelhead. Though it takes most anglers quite a while to come to this realization, you get a lot more out of any day spent on the water fishing than mere fish. Here is my favorite quote by my favorite fly fishing author, Roderick Haig-Brown: