I just got back from a fishing trip through Central and Eastern Oregon. I had received Robert Behnke's book on Trout & Salmon for Christmas. He talked about the redbands available in the SE corner of the state around the Mahleur basin. Apparently there are 7 sub-basins in the region and each one's redbands have unique markings. They looked pretty interesting. I went down to see how many I could find.
The trip began with a detour to the Metolius. It isn't one of the rivers in the basin but I never fished it before. I couldn't pass it up. I spent 2 days trying to figure it out. The current is quite fast and you need to have heavy flies to get them down to the bottom hugging fish. The OR regulations do not allow any split shot to be used on fly fishing only streams. It helps if you tie your own flies. You can add as much weight as you want to. I managed to catch a few out of a quiet pocket but they were tough to get. After that, I started my quest for native redband trout. I drove down to Frenchglen, OR the next day to look for the redbands. These desert streams run small and probably won't take a lot of fishing pressure. I ran into only 2 other fishermen the whole week. Most people are there for the bird watching opportunities. The mosquitoes were BAD. I didn't think that there would be bugs in the desert but all of the marshes breed hungry bugs. I caught some Malheur basin redbands in the Steen Mountains and photographed them. They were small and feisty. The larger fish hide in the desert sun and only come out just before sunset. I was driving from Frenchglen to Plush when I blew out a tire on the gravel roads at Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge. After changing it, I fished in Rock Creek for an hour or so before driving to the nearest tire store was in Lakeview, 60 miles away. Rock Creek is only a yard wide and it has redbands. I landed a few, spooked a few. These are from the Catlow basin. I spent the night in Lakeview, got a shower and headed north toward Bend. On the way I tried to find a couple more creeks mentioned in Behnke's book. I stopped to fish Deer Creek and Silver Creek in the Fremont National Forest. This was my last basin to fish. There were more feisty redbands to be caught while fighting off the mosquitoes. I took some photos of these also before releasing them. These were the Fort Rock basin redbands. I then got back on the road, drove past the La Pine fire, hit Bend, past the Deschutes and back to Seattle. It was a good road trip. Most of the fish were small in these creeks, 6" to 8". But there were some larger ones. I was lucky to land a 14" redband out of a creek that was 10' wide. I took several photos of the various fish. I was lucky to catch Malheur basin, Catlow basin and Fort Rock basin redbands. My brother-in-law is a bird watcher. Bird watchers keep a life list of the birds they have seen. I can't remember how many different species there are in North America. I guess that I am keeping a life list of fish that I have caught. It was nice to add 3 new fish species to my photo journal this trip.
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