What started out as a slow afternoon with high water turned out to be a dry fly bonanza yesterday as Caddis Fly Shop guide Lou Verdugo put Frenchy Laroux and I on a shallow riffle with scads of rising cutthroat trout. We drifted from the McKenzie/Willamette confluence to Harrisburg in the afternnoon, but didn’t see much action until 4-5pm. Most trout were in the 8-10 inch range, but we caught a few that were larger. The hot fly of the day was a March Brown sparkle dun, size 14.
Just about the end of the hatch “Mongo” decided to come out and play — the big dogs of the lower Willamette River — fat trout slurping mayflies in slack water. But they don’t get that big being dumb and I put them down with a couple sloppy casts.
