Spring shifts to summer quickly in Central Oregon. The days are already getting near eighty . . . not complaining, but rivers will get crowded soon enough.
In a typical year the Deschutes has a salmon fly hatch at the end of spring. This is not a typical year and with the high run-off we’ll not see salmon flies for a few more weeks.
The other infamous Deschutes River event is the ‘rubber hatch’ which fills the river with rafts overloaded with happy boaters. This year it’s looking like that event will overtake the salmon fly hatch, at least downstream from Maupin.
This week we made one more trip to Maupin, hoping to enjoy a relatively uncrowded river and a canyon just coming into summer foliage.
The day was sunny and warm, though we didn’t hit any hatch, the fishing was good.
As is usually the case, wildlife was active along this stretch of water. JQ managed to get some great images of Red-winged blackbird and a Heron who seems like a permanent resident of this stretch of river.
We’ll try to fish salmon flies a little further upstream in the next few weeks. In the mean time, we just set up the camp chairs and enjoy a rare quiet day on the Lower Deschutes.