Stormy Saturday Ahead and a Beautiful Sunday

Gabor was out fishing on his day off and caught some beauties. His picture of a heavily spotted rainbow is above. Phot credit: Gabor Gardonyi

This weekend looks to bring some wild weather to the river - and I can tell you that it has already begun. I woke up at 4:00 this morning to let Lupine out, and the wind was already howling through the trees. We have heavy cloud cover and the forecast for today and tomorrow calls for a chance of rain, a lot of wind, and skies filled with clouds. It is also going to be far cooler than we have seen in more than a month. Today (Friday), the high is only going to get to 59 degrees and tomorrow is forecast to be even cooler with a high of only 56 degrees with a 60% chance of precipitation. Both Friday and Saturday are going to feel even cooler because the wind is going to blow hard all day - gusting to 25 mph today and 20mph on Saturday. 

If you can tough it out through the weekend, Sunday looks to be the best day for fishing, with a few clouds, some sun, temperatures in the mid-70s and winds 5-10 mph (which is basically no wind). 

This is a classic cold front - and trout can be sensitive to the swings in the barometer. However, these clouds have silver linings and those are the mayfly hatches that tend to explode on rainy and heavily cloudy days. The winds may blow the dry flies right off the water before the trout have a chance at eating emergers, so my plan of attack would be to fish with nymphs that specifically imitate pale morning duns, pale evening duns, or crippled patterns of either species. We have some really good tungsten bead nymphs in mayfly shapes and colors that can be fished as droppers or nymph fished down deep.

Nymph fishing is usually a lot easier for anglers on a windy day. Another method to employ  would be the streamer fishing with sculpins, crayfish, or shiny baitfish. This can be done with a trout Spey rod, a Euro-nymphing rod, or a standard 9 foot 5 weight rod or something close. Unless you are using a long Euro-nymphing leader to swim your streamers in the riffles, you will be best off using a sink tip to get your streamer down. 

For those with Euro-nymphing rods, you should try jigging a crayfish or baitfish pattern in the shallow oxygenated riffles. Some of the biggest trout can hide in two feet of water with their noses right up in the heavy riffles. Cast and fish the areas close to shore BEFORE you wade out into them. You will be surprised at how may trout you might be kicking out from under your feet as you try to wade out into a riffle to fish the deeper water. 

This is not to say that there won’t be fish holding in the deeper water. They are there too. Swinging flies, down and across as you would for steelhead, is not always a very productive way to find sculpin-chasers. The fly needs action and the sculpin needs to look as if it is fleeing to safety. In order to accomplish this, you can either employ a jigging method (short quick tug-and-release bursts) as you swing your fly down and across the current; OR you can cast that fly upstream to allow it to dead drift and sink before you strip it quickly through the deeper water. The deeper you can get your fly, the better (in a lot of cases) and the more action you give it, the more strikes you will get. 

I know that the weather report isn’t the most encouraging for the next two days, but I do think that Sunday will make up for the fishing struggles that will take place today and tomorrow. If you have a house out here and you need to do chores like yard work or clean-up, maybe dedicate Saturday to chores and save Sunday as your fishing day. It will be much more pleasant. 

With the lack of heat, we will see a steep decline in the number of caddis and little yellow sallies on the river. They will still be around to some extent, but the mayflies such as the pale morning duns, pale evening duns, and BWOs will be the main players thanks to the cloudy weather. 

To say that the crowds out here have dissipated would be an enormous understatement. It has been, more or less, a ghost town in Maupin for the first two weeks of June. This si the time of year when people are consumed by graduations and weddings and Rose Festival and such. We are seeing very few anglers on the river. The most crowded stretch of river, by far and away, is the Warm Springs to Trout Creek section because that is the section frequented by Bend/Redmond/Portland day trippers and multiple guide boats from nearly a dozen fly fishing shops. That section can be challenging for anglers looking for dry fly eats, due mainly to the pressure that these trout see on a daily basis from the day that section opens in late-April all the way through the insane Salmonfly hatch in May and into June. You can find surface feeders if you can thread the needle and cast up and under the tree branches, but that will require careful stalking, great casting skills, and a lot of patience. This is true everywhere on the Deschutes, but the WS-TC section is particularly challenging. 

I think a lot of people avoid the Maupin area in the summer because of the heavy rafting traffic - but that traffic is very centralized to the paved section of road that parallels the river upstream of town up to Harpham Flat and downstream to the Sandy Beach. A bit of commercial rafting takes place between Buck Hollow and Pine Tree boat launch, but the remaining 16 miles of river down to Mack’s Canyon is pretty much untouched by any boats other than a few of the guides who work in the Maupin area. To get away from the rafting traffic, you can drive up river and onto the dirt access road up to the locked gate or you can drive down river to the dirt access road down to Mack’s Canyon and have the river pretty much to yourself. 

Fire bans have been in effect since the first of June, so please say something if you see a fellow camper building a fire. In the past, I would tell them that there is a fire ban and they can’t have a fire at this time of year. This usually elicited a response of, “F you! We will do what we want.” So, I changed my tactic to let campers know that their campfire during a fire ban is punishable by a fine of $5000 and jail time - and that plume of smoke can be seen easily by state police, BLM rangers, and local law enforcement as well as the local fire department. If your nice little campfire gets blown into the dry grasses along the river and starts a massive wildfire, the type that we see every year, you may be held financially responsible for the damage it causes and for the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to put helicopters, jets, and fire crews on the job. 

What is banned during the fire ban? All open flames - including propane campfires, charcoal BBQs, and smoking cigarettes, pipes, cigars, or anything else UNLESS you are standing in the river or sitting inside your vehicle. If you have just driven in from afar and your car is still hot, be careful parking along the road where the grass is tall. A hot catalytic converter will easily start a fire in the grass and may burn your vehicle to the ground. 

I only write about the fire ban because we have already seen one huge human-caused fire on the John Day River that scorched 10,458 acres this week and last and nearly burnt down the Cottonwood Canyon State Park. Because one group in a blue raft decided that a campfire on a windy night (two weeks into the fire ban) was a good idea, the entire river had to be closed down for several days, fire crews put their lives at risk, rancher lost a huge chunk of grazing land, and the scenic John Day River was scorched for miles and miles. Fortunately, the boater pass system will allow the fire investigators to know the names of the group leaders for all groups on the river during that week. They should be able to find the rafter who started this fire, watched it get out of his control, and left the scene as the hillside was aflame. I talked to one of the local ranchers who captured the fire on security cameras and has the blue raft and the start of the fire on film. 

Despite the fires that we have already seen in our region this season - including one that burned down over 50 houses near Rowena - we have not experienced any smoke whatsoever out here on the river. The air quality has been great all spring. 

Come on out to the river to enjoy one of our last cool weekends.