[VFB] Crooked River trip

[J&A Burbank]

Hey all,   Well got back last night at about 9:00 from 2 days on the Crooked in Central Or. We headed out Thursday morning at about 7:30 (would have left earlier but I slept right through 2 alarms) and arrived a little before noon. There was a little rain falling but wasn't too bad. Our plan was to camp (that's right I said camp) and fish for 2 days. We pulled up to our favorite spot and headed down to the river noticing right away that the river was lower then we had ever seen it before. After watching for a few minutes I tied on a large yellow fly as an indicator with a pheasant tail as a dropper. After using this method for some time without results I switched to a wooly bugger as did Frank. After a few minutes Frank caught one, abut a 10" Redside Trout. The fishing was slow for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I did get several hits in the evening on an emerger pattern and a few on a parachute Adams but no hookups.   We started up our camp fire and sat around the fire for a bit before cooking dinner. As we looked up the clouds had cleared and we could see a billion stars. Two things came to mind, how beautiful it was and, Damn were going to freeze our butts off tonight. Well Frank had bought a small tent heater so we got that going in the tent and come bed time it was nice and toasty in there.   Friday morning we got up had our ham and eggs and headed down. I had a parachute Adams with a Pheasant Tail dropper. I had a few looks at the Adams but no takers. I worked myself above a whole a little ways and cast to allow my rigging to swing through the whole. First cast and Fish On, a nice 10" Redside that did his best not to be landed.  I had several more hits on the same set up on both the dry and the dropper. A little later noticed a small midge hatch so I tied on a size 20 Adams. Started getting hits and looks on almost every cast, managed to hook and land 2 fish. Switched to a size 16 parachute Adams to give the fish something else to look at and it worked at least for one fish, and got several others to look and nock it down.   All in All it was a great trip, the weather was such that I didn't need much more then my T-shirt and a light sweat shirt, you would have never guessed that it was the middle of Winter. We were very glad we had decided to camp, we had the hole campground to ourselves and only had to share the river with a couple of other anglers.     Tight lines Jim Burbank