Mid day fly fishing in the McKenzie and Willamette can be a bit tough these days. What’s an angler to do? The following are a few suggestions, thoughts, observations to get you through the next couple of weeks.
Smallmouth Bass on the Umpqua
Take a few Clousers, Mega Princes and JJ’s Special and head down to the Umpqua. The water is warm so you won’t need your waders. Tube it, wade it or boat it. Popular drifts are Umpqua to Woods Ramp, or Woods to Osprey. A raft or Pontoon can make the drift from Ferguson to Yellow Creek. I just made this one this weekend for the first time and it was a short productive drift.
Upper Tributaries
The Middle Fork above Hills Creek Reservoir and the South Fork above Cougar Reservoir are both excellent bets this time of year. Try attractors, hoppers, parachute adams, small caddis and small possie buggers. Both of these rivers have tons of walk and wade access and you will often have large stretches of river all to yourself.
Tuna Fishing With Capt Nate, the photo tells it all.
Sea Runs on the Coast
Take Jay Nicholas’s Class on Sea Runs scheduled for Aug 28th, see more details here.
Steelhead are moving into the lower Deschutes and reports vary from decent to poor. Look for water temperatures in the lower Deschutes to get colder and a “wad” of fish to move into the lower river.
Local Steelheading has been good on the Willamette. Dexter all the way into town has been consistently producing fish. Moal leeches, Hobo Spey’s, Bush’s Town Run, Morejohn’s Bantam have been productive patterns.
September and October are going to be amazing this year, good water, good salmon and steelhead returns mean to many places to go, fish to catch and not enough time.–CD
There is never enough time for all the fishing I want to do in this great state of ours!
If you want some adventure, and want to catch a bunch of natives from 2″- 10″, grab up your 3wt/4wt and head to Horse Creek ( a trib of the Mac). Horse Creek will more than fill the need for fish. Easy wade and good fishing will keep you occupied for a day of chasing native cutts and native bows. Take along some small caddis and and unweighted nymphs. A size 16 tan caddis with a size 16 unweighted pheasant tail nymph dropped about 10″ below the caddis produced many fish and some nice 10″ bows all day.
I recommend a light leader 5x or lighter and 10′ or longer. There were fish coming up on the caddis all day long. Those fish were very eager to take a fly. A couple of the fish that came up and missed my fly could have gone about 12″. I was fishing fairly high in the creek, so, I’m sure that closer down to the Mac, there should be some larger fish to be found. So, if you want to get away from the ever present summer rubber hatch on the Mac, and don’t mind gin clear water, easy to wade, and smaller fish, give Horse Creek a whirl, it’s a great escape.