Remember that Brown I wrote about a few weeks ago? The one that took huge Steelhead-esque jumps then bolted downstream, porpoising through the water and threw the hook? Well the following week Kevin and some of his buddies headed back to find these critters everywhere …
Along with 5 monsters landed on their imitations. This one was not the biggest.
It’s awesome to see a fishery give up such healthy, wild fish. Great job guys!
The Sandy Spey Clave is one the largest gatherings of anglers interested in two-handed fly fishing in the Pacific Northwest. This year was no different, carrying in attendance spey guru’s like Mark Bachmann, Al Buhr, Scott Howell and April Vokey. I was only able to attend Saturday, but got to see a number of casting presentations which I have to say got a little old after the 4th in a row. Scott Howell said it best “You can’t take the casting styles of 5 different fisherman and incorporate them into one; pick a style that works for you!” This hit home for me because at this point my mind had been thrown in so many directions with all these different techniques and contradicting do’s and don’ts of spey casting. I think to switch up the presentation topics, maybe talk more about how to fish once you’ve made the cast would have been a better format. The 3 hours of casting techniques I saw almost made my head explode!
After a free lunch Spencer and I decided to clear our minds of all these confusing instructionals and headed downstream to swing some flies. I quickly realized that my two month stint of trout fishing has taken a severe beating on my spey cast. Fortunately summer will help shake the sink tips and weighted flies allowing me to slow things down and regain my cast.
Trout, trout, trout! We’re in that beautiful time of year where the Deschutes is at its greenest, water and air temps are warming up and the trout are hungry! In lieu of this Kevin, Mark and I packed the car with a bunch of 2wt-5wt rods and beer to celebrate these fine conditions. As we approached the first piece of water excitement began to brew amongst us as we looked over a stunningly beautiful section of awesome trout water.
Within the first hour Mark had landed a couple nice 12-14 inch Redsides on a Stonefly adult. We hadn’t seen any floating down the river, but for some reason I think these fish know the bugs are coming and are more than willing to take an early snack. I decided to try some of the water Mark had fished, but this time with a nymph. About half way up a sweet trough I hooked into a chunky, hard fighting Rainbow who put up a few nice jumps before he tired.
What a great first fish of the trip! I continued to fish up this great trough and hooked into a real monster. Immediately this fished launched himself clear out of the water, showing his buttery brown belly as he flipped. This was a 20” Brown, the fish that turned me onto these waters in the first place over a year ago. I started screaming “BIG BROWN, BIG BROWN!” and Mark turned around to see him leap again, even from afar Mark could tell it was a huge fish. The beast then took off downstream and just as quickly as I had hooked him, he spat the fly right back at me. While I didn’t land the fish, to hook and see one of that size was enough to make me grin uncontrollably the rest of the day.
Mark caught a handful of nice Redsides and a few 9-11 inch Browns which was great to hear. Kevin was nice enough to host us at his place which was only 10 minutes from this water, but apparently that made no difference to the fish Gods who dealt him a goose egg! No matter, beer, cigars and one of the best flank steaks we’d ever had was more than enough to remedy the skunking. In the morning this view helped cure the headaches (plus two pots of coffee).
Since we had seen quite a number of people the day before we decided to head to some different water and agreed upon Trout Creek. We arrived to only find a few people camping and no one parked at the day lot; the weather was slightly overcast, all good signs to a great day of fishing. Sure enough Kevin got his redemption on almost the first cast! Again on a Stonefly adult, Kevin’s 3wt. was given a serious workout by a beautiful Redside.
It didn’t take long for Kevin to get another one of the same size class just 10 minutes later. Based on this I thought we were in for a lights out day of fishing. For me, I was wrong! It took me 4 hours just to get a fish to take. I tried all kinds of different dries, nymphs, emergers, I ran the gauntlet. Kevin all the while had the same fly on all day and caught half a dozen all in the 13-17 inch range, all on a big bushy dry. Around 1:30-2pm a decent hatch of what looked like PMD’s or Mahogany Dunn’s triggered trout to start rising, and Mark cashed in landing one really nice chromer.
I rallied and fished my way down below to catch a solid 15 incher on the dry, and that was all I needed! In the end it was an awesome weekend of spectacular scenery, laughter and lots of trout!
Winter is officially over, which means it’s time to momentarily put down the spey rod and replace it with a single hander. With the river finally dropping into shape and reports of good hatches I made the trek over the mountain in search of trout. The Redsides would have been out in full force had the ODFW not dumped in hundreds of thousands of hatchery smolts last week. Fortunately you only had to move up to the next piece of water to escape the schools of baby pellet heads, and find some hungry Redsides!
Since the forecast was pretty much sunny all day (with 20-30mph wind gusts that blew my hat into the river!) I decided to rig up both a nymph and dry fly rod to have all my bases covered. It didn’t take long to figure out the trout were gorging themselves on Stonefly nymphs. There was a decent BWO hatch that went off from around 1:30-3ish, but every time I came up on good looking dry water I would cast out a mayfly pattern and catch one or two fish. Whether the hatch was on or not, these fish were holding everywhere and eating all kinds of bugs! Even though I knew there was no way I could catch a 10 pound Steelhead on my next drift, it was a fun change to cast a dry fly.
Too many fisherman claim that all they care about catching are Steelhead or Trout. They say it’s because these fish are strong fighters, beautiful and found in secluded settings. Well, I’m not going to lie anymore! Forget swinging for 20 hours to catch that one fresh, native Steelhead. Throwing a large bushy dry to an aggressively feeding 20” Redside? I’ll pass. Here are the fish I’m REALLY out there to catch.
THE ALMIGHTY SUCKER!
THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT SQUAW FISH! (This fish really was my first ever on the swing)
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA’S GEM!
VIRGINIA’S BUBBLY DOMED MONEY MAKER!
WHITEFISH WITH A GRANDDADDY WHITEFISH!
Please remember to catch and release these exotic fish. THEY ARE NOT TRASH!
