The Middle Fork of the Willamette near Oakridge is fishing surprisingly well despite low water and high sun conditions. Today would have been fantastic with the clouds, tomorrow as well. Try hopper dropper set ups fishing the fast water and deep runs. In the evening look for Little Yellow Stones, Small Caddis and straggler large Golden Stones and Green Drakes. Try our new favorite nymph to drop off a dry the Tungsten Peacock Ice Prince. The Tungsten Ice Prince gets down in a hurry and is very durable. Sizes #12 and #14 seem to be the best so far but fishing these two in #16 and #18’s on the Deschutes will be murderous.
The McKenzie has also been fishing very well. Steelhead between Leaburg Dam and the town of Leaburg have been willing the past couple of weeks. Today’s the freshet of rain up the river today should improve fishing further. Trout fishing today was outstanding with more the half of the fish eating the large dry fly holding up the Possie Bugger. We had a steelhead turn on the dry and lost track of the number of fish (always a good sign for a day out).
The Lower Willamette is fishing well for Steelhead as well. The town run and the Willamette on up to Dexter Dam are producing decent numbers of fish.
Here are a couple of highlight shots from the past week. Including blog contributor Rob Russels first steelhead on a single handed rod in two years. And one of the largest rainbows of the season on the McKenzie.–CD
holy shit, is that the stretch right above the new boat landing, the cougar resv. exit? I’ve tyring to get my co-worker to fish that stretch for a while now, but we ended up fishing below the green bridge, whereupon I had a 9-10 inch rainbow on and I was stripping my line in and then it felt bigger and when I did see the fish, it looked like a 20″+ fish, then it spit out the smaller trout, must’ve been a dolly v.