Jay & I left on Wednesday for a multi-day trip down to Oregon to fish the Deschutes
near Maupin and the Metolius out of Sisters. The trip was a mission
to get me a steelhead on my spey rod. Since I knew I have caught steelhead
on the Deschutes before I figured that was the
river that gave me the best shot, the Snoqualmie fish still don’t seem to
like me. I also did something stupid a few days before and cracked,
broke, or bruised a couple of ribs so I was hoping I could even cast.
We arrived in Maupin on Wednesday afternoon just in time for
the wind to come up big-time in the canyon but we fished a bit anyway. I
fished a big nymph for steelhead in a run where I knew they existed before and
managed to hook up with one big fish that either was a steelhead or a monster
whitefish but never got a look at it since it came off after a couple of big
head shakes. We fished for trout in a few areas up from Maupin and Jay
got a couple on an orange stimulator, I got skunked. That night we
watched the moon glow light up the hills of the canyon as the wind buffeted the
camper hoping that it would die down before the night was out.
We had to get up at 4:15 to get to the fly shop the next
morning and set about 5 alarms yet still both woke up at 3:30 thinking we’d
overslept because the moon was so bright. Oh well, we got up, made coffee
and got ready for the day and noticed that the wind had indeed dropped off. We
got to the fly shop and about fell asleep in the truck waiting for the guide,
Todd, who showed up just a bit late due to a snafu in the location of the pick
up point. We headed out to the first put in below Shearer’s Bridge
and planned to float the 14 miles to Macks
Canyon and hit just the
best of the runs along the way. The plan turned out to be a good one, Jay
hooked up on our second run just as we were coming down to pick him up. I
took pictures while he landed a 24” hen. He was using his orange
Painted Lady. At the next small run I fished it and had a take but
blew the hook set (more on that later). On the next run I was still
working out my line when I got a good take and had on my first spey caught
steelhead, another 24” hen taken on a Streetwalker (hooker flies seemed
to be the trick today). After landing and releasing the fish I kept
working down the run and about 40’ later had another fish on that I got a
good surface thrashing out of before it came unbuttoned. The
hook-set trick we learned on this trip was to carry a loop of about 18”
of line under your finger as you swept the fly and when a fish took to let that
loop slide out before rearing back and setting the hook, thus giving the fish
time to turn on the fly. The first fish I messed up I just jerked on the
rod and pulled the fly from the fish (bad habits biting me again, I had this
problem with tarpon too). On the second fish I somehow did it right, let
the loop go then did the low and back hook set on it and had a very solid hook
set.
Once the sun got up things got slow. We spent some
time hitting runs anyway. Jay did some trout fishing and we also did some
casting practice. I watched in awe as Tood worked out almost my whole
line on my Fly Logic 7-weight when I’d been struggling at times to get 60’
of line out. I learned how to slow my cast down and make it work better
plus learned on off-shoulder double spey for the single-spey side and the snake
roll cast. I ended up being able to kick out a lot more line by the
afternoon and was using less effort. I was also getting sore from the rib
injury. After the sun went down we hit a few more runs and Jay
hooked up again on the same fly down the first of these. That was to be
the last steelhead of the day, another pretty much identical 24” fish. We
worked water until 7:00 or so then both just said “enough” when
asked if we wanted to do one more short run. I was happy, I got my steelhead
on the spey rod and we hooked up four fish and landed three of them, a
pretty good day. We got back to the fly shop at 8:30 and headed to
the camper. Too exhausted to cook, we made sandwiches and crashed.
We got up the next morning and decided that we’d had
enough steelheading so we packed up and left for Camp
Sherman and the Metolius River.
We arrived around 10:00 and set up camp on the shores of the river. I
was raring to go and rigged up and hit the water, landing a trout on a BWO
Comparadun about 100’ from the camper. That was the last rise I saw
for a long time. We did some nymphing and Jay got one before I got a
pretty decent whitefish. I kept working some runs with nymphs until I got
tired of throwing weight and just walked looking for fish. That strategy
paid off because I found a run where there were dozens of fish rising to the
BWO duns hatching there. I waded in below the fish and worked up close
and began catching them on a #18 BWO Comparadun. After a few fish were
landed I saw some bigger ones up top that I went for. They kept rejecting
the fly so I switched to a #20 and started getting rises to it. I landed
three fish in the 14-15” range there along with some other small ones. At
about 3:30 it shut down and I was content and walked back to the camper. At
the pool by the camper I saw a nice fish rise, cast to it and soon had a 13”
trout in hand. After releasing it I broke down the rod and walked to the
store to get a Metolius Pale Ale to drink. Jay had headed down river a
ways and never found the rising fish, it seemed like everyone we talked to had
a lousy day and I got lucky. We had dinner and listened to Ichiro break
the record while sitting around the fire.
The next morning I was sore as hell and could barely walk
let alone cast. There was no way I was fishing and the 30 degree morning
wasn’t helping any. We decided to pack up and head back, maybe
hitting the Santiam along the way home. We never hit the river on the way
back, I’m not sure I could pick up my spey rod right now. Anyway,
it was a good trip even though it got shortened a bit.
Tim
