Summer Ends in a Cloud of Smoke

Didn’t really get out much this week. We remain sandwiched between two project fires and spent most of the week engulfed in smoke.

The opening, when it presented itself, was taken with a trip to the Crooked. Yeah  .  .  .  we’ve been there a lot lately, but it’s dry fly season and that tailwater has been very active.

Last year my brother-in-law passed and among his possessions was an old Sage Graphite II 9-foot 5-weight fly rod.

A very nice rod, but with one problem. It was missing the tip section. Not broken, which is common, but not in the rod case and nowhere to be found.

Sage rods are, in theory, lifetime warrantied. So I figured why not give that a try. I mean with only three fourths of the rod it wasn’t going to fish like that.

Long story short  .  .  .  Sage was unable to repair the old rod, but they did replace it with a new one  .  .  .  my choice. I opted for a 9-foot 4-weight, an ideal dry fly trout rod. It arrived this week and was immediately put into service.

Now there are negative points to late summer in Central Oregon; heat and wildfire smoke top that list. But on the positive side, the dry fly fishing is peak.

The Crooked River is a tailwater (flows out from a dam), a type of water that’s fished most of the year sub-surface.

Anytime of year, some type of aquatic insect is moving around and an imitation of that bug will catch fish.

In early spring and late summer, the aquatic insects hatch (present on top of the water) in greater numbers. You can have success with a dry fly any time, but during a hatch it gets crazy.

Dry flys require a more precise presentation than sub-surface fishing. However, the payoff is seeing the strike  .  .  .  often missing the strike  .  .  .  but it puts you more directly into the process.

It’s a lot of fun. The last few weeks have afforded us some great dry fly days on the water.

The signs of fall are around us. Days will be cooling off and we’ll soon move onto the Deschutes River to cast for Steelhead.

For now, we’re enjoying morning coffees on the Crooked and plying Small Black Sedges to hungry Redband Trout.