fishing

June 15, 2025June 14, 2025

Summer Ritual

Grasses against a backdrop of riparian green.

For many years (due to my teaching schedule), summer didn’t begin until the second week in June. While that constraint came off when we retired, this week’s heatwave really felt like the start of summer.

There were a string of eighty degree days this week, matched with a dozen small wildfires. It feels like summer (our new norm).

A kestrel preens during a brief stop on a busy feeding schedule

A few things shift for us when the weather warms up.

Primarily our schedule . . . early starts to the day and early ends. This practice has two advantages; first it gets the active part of our day away from the heat, but it also tends to keep us away from the hordes.

Keeping an eye on things

About the time people start showing up on the river, we’ve had a choice of parking spots, a couple of hours of fishing, and lots of peace and quiet.

That is how we managed this week’s trip to the Crooked River.

Lupine seems to like the gravel edges of forest roads

Most of the spring wildflowers have been reduced to leafy stems, replaced with hardier summer varieties.

Lupine for example, is in full bloom on nearly every gravelly borrow pit. It lines our route with a carpet of purple and blue hues.

Fishing was better this week. The river has settled into its summer flow and fish are taking up their usual holds.

Witnessed the kestrel pair fight off a bald eagle with incredible acrobatics. The falcons harried the eagle, and at one point, one plunged from above onto the back of the eagle hitting with ferocious impact.

The kestrels were in full hunt mode, stopping only long enough to drop off some tasty bits for the fledglings, before swooping back up the canyon walls.

By the time the breeze was starting to loosen it’s cooling power, a small group of picnickers set up a few hundred feet from us. That was our cue to load up and head for home.

Daytime temp, even on the river, was just over eighty and climbing. We’ll be back again during the cool of another morning.

June 8, 2025June 6, 2025

June’s first river trip

Summer is in full blaze. The week is getting progressively warmer and we’ve already had a couple of small wildfires.

There are more places to go than days in the week. Plus, we kind of like to have a rest day between excursions.

That means we can do home-based errands when not on the road and in theory, stuff gets done.

Deschutes Canyon upstream from Blue Hole

One of the drives this week was up to Maupin to check out the Lower Deschutes before the rafters take over.

We kind of missed the Salmon Fly hatch this year . . . not sure what else we were up to.

The tail end of the hatch was last week, so we thought I might get some ‘big bug’ action.

There were no large stone flies on the river’s banks, so we resorted to other patterns. Caught a few little guys and had a great hike along the river.

The day was clear with a cooling breeze. We sat out the chairs along the road’s edge and enjoyed the morning.

By noon I’d gotten in plenty of casts and the place was filling up.

This was likely our last trip to the Lower Deschutes until fall . . . when the crowds thin and the rafts are put up for the season.

There are plenty of other spots to wet a line and with far fewer bodies.

May 25, 2025May 24, 2025

May Musings

May, in Central Oregon, is an anomaly to seasonal shifts. April brings hope for spring. May comes, and winter still hangs around . . . think hail storm just two weeks ago.

Then you hit Memorial weekend, the official start to summer activities (camping, rafting). It’s not summer, yet it doesn’t feel like spring.

This week was a busy finish to the month. While we didn’t do any major excursions, we did manage a couple of trips up to the Crooked River.

There is the promise of a caddis or mayfly hatch . . . which didn’t materialize . . . on top of shirt-sleeve warm afternoons.

We’re still shaking off layers of winter, but are well into wildflowers, lower river levels, and increased wildlife activity.

Some of the week was spent raking up those layers of winter in the form of yard debris (disposal offered for free).

We also pulled out old trees to replace with new bare root stock. Not real exciting stuff, but nice additions to the yard.

With the promise of summer we’ve renewed plans for adventures now that our home improvement projects, AKA spring cleaning, has been completed.

May 11, 2025May 10, 2025

Central Oregon Tour

We put a lot of miles on the Subaru this week . . . kind of a Central Oregon tour.

Summer has come on with a vengeance, but the rivers are still running too high to fish. The alternative is checking on places where we will be fishing soon.

High Desert spring green is short lived.

The Deschutes River canyon is dressed in spring colors . . . green and yellow. there are still a couple of weeks before the rafters take over. We hope we can work in a fishing excursion before then.

This grain field will only be green for a few more weeks . . . Mt. Adams in background still wearing winter cap

The Crooked flow never really went down at the end of winter, so it is just now getting flow rates that allow fishing at all.

But this hasn’t stopped us from taking a picnic lunch stop at one of many great spots up there.

Cottonwood Canyon and the lower John Day River

We even managed to get to the Lower John Day River, Cottonwood Canyon, Colton and Service Creek.

Again beautiful country, freshly greened for spring, but extremely high levels on the river.

In the end we did some birding around Abert and Summer Lake.

That proved to be a bit premature for the summer migration, but we managed some great bird images for the blog.

A Black-necked Stilt forages in a mudflat

With the return of warm dry weather we’ll be getting out a lot more in the coming weeks.

February 2, 2025February 1, 2025

Winter Fishing

Weather finally softened this week and we headed to the river to fish. Fishing doesn’t stop in winter it just takes a different form.

The Crooked River is a ‘tailwater” . . . that is, its flow is regulated by a dam. On a tailwater, levels can fluctuate dramatically, sometimes in a matter of hours.

This inconsistent flow is offset by more constant water temperatures. The mix is good for the aquatic insects, fish food, that cling to the rocky stream bottom.

In winter months a fish feeds mostly on small aquatic invertebrates, most of them less than a quarter inch long. For that reason one employs a different method casting to winter waters.

The Canyon walls can close off the sun by early afternoon. But on days where the wind is light a few hours of midday sun will temper the air over icy river water.

Tying winter fly patterns is simple but not easy because the materials are wrapped on very small hooks. To get these bits of thread, fur and wire down to the fish a tungsten bead adds some weight sitting just behind the hook’s eye.

Adornments of silver wire ribbed over purple, red or green thread and topped with a collar of dyed rabbit fur . . . midge patterns . . . . are the choice for this day.

But nothing I attached to the end of my line enticed any takes. Getting on the river and taking in it’s sun glazed surface was reward enough. There will be other days to ply the river with my handspun offerings and pretty soon winter will pass.