We’ve got a batch of new stickers at the shop with a lingcod chasing a clouser minnow, original artwork by David Wilson, layout and stickerwork by our man Brent Ross.
Stop by and pick up a free one. And if you took our survey and asked to be sent a sticker, it will be on its way soon.
-MS
The Coast Guard issued a small craft advisory the night before our trip. We were shut down, but it was for the best. The last thing we wanted was to be stuck outside when they closed the bar. Matt suggested a trip to the Siletz Canyon. After doing the math–first light would be at 5:15am, meaning we should leave Eugene at 3:00am–my travel-worn, jet-lagged brain said “No thanks.” I countered with the suggestion of an exploratory trip to the Siuslaw estuary for sturgeon.
“Sure, why not,” Matt and Nate replied. Nate had a bunch of fly-caught shad in his freezer and I had enough heavy tackle to get us in the game. We had been tipped off by a couple of sources as to the most likely spots, and everything I had heard about the fishery made it sound exceptional: big fish and virtually no angling pressure.
We arrived at the Florence ramp at 8:00am. The summer sky was clear-blue and a light breeze came down from the Northwest. The tide was rolling in at a good clip, but the clam beds were still exposed. Plenty of incoming left to provide a few hours of fishing. As we launched Nate’s skiff, other boats were already coming back in from the ocean, having heard that the bar would be closed at noon.
Nate motored us up the river, and in a few minutes we entered a huge pool lined with tall spruce trees, bushy willows and wild roses in full bloom. I breathed deeply and savored the Oregon air. Having just returned from a week in Orlando, Florida, the perfection of home was still soaking in. Nate rifled through his gear bag, pulling out a depth finder and a bunch of wires. “Oh, no!” Nate said sounding deflated, “I left the cord at home.” Apparently all the wires and doo-dads he was holding weren’t enough to hook up the depth finder. “Don’t worry about it, Nate,” I assured him. “We don’t need it.”
Thanks to the light breeze, the Siuslaw’s currents, seams and back eddies were clearly visible on the water’s surface. All we had to do was trust our combined sixty-plus years of on-the-water experience and pick a likely spot. Nate and I surveyed the pool and agreed on the best spot almost instantly. We puttered over and pitched the anchor. One, two, three, thud. It was about twenty feet deep, just to the shore-side of the main current. I prepared some audacious baits of shad fillets, soaking each in the pungent gut-juice and blood that erupted from the fish’s swollen belly. Kersplash, kersplash, kersplash! In a few moments all our lines were resting on the bottom, ready for a giant prehistoric sturgeon to vacuum them up. Within a minute or two, each rod tip was dancing the “Pogey Dance” as sculpins and God-knows-what-else nibbled away.
I turned my back for a moment, grabbing a rich, dark breakfast beer out of the cooler, when Nate warned, “Rob, Rob…ROB!” I jerked around just in time to see my rod tip making big bounces, and then stillness and slack. I waited breathlessly, but the fish never returned. I reeled in a tightly wrapped ball of hooks and fish skin. As is customary, the pogies had tied my leader into a tangled mess–one of the many joys of bottom fishing.
Soon I was back in the water, sharing my beer with Matt and basking in the coastal sunshine. We were talking, probably joking about something, Matt and I looking upriver toward our baits, Nate looking downriver. My mouth and heart stopped mid-sentence as a GIANT sturgeon breached just 60 feet off the stern. I stuttered briefly then exploded into wild jabbering. My heart rate and blood pressure had to be off the charts. The fish showed us two-thirds of its immense body, and I estimated it’s length at around eight feet. “Nate, you are a fishy dude,” I assured. “Of all the places we could be in this long estuary, you put us directly on top of an eight foot jumper!”
Unfortunately, the following hours produced nothing but little nibbles. We moved all around the pool, then tried other pools down river. As we moved toward the ocean, the bait-thieving became oppressive. Below Cushman, as the tide slowed to high-slack, we were amazed by the efficiency of baby Dungeness crabs at devouring our shad. In sixty seconds, all that was left was skin. “Jeez, let’s get the hell out of here,” we agreed. With only an hour or so left in our fishing day, we decided to return to the scene of our only sturgeon encounter to soak our last few fillets.
We dropped anchor and splashed our baits around the boat. Matt was losing patience, writhing around on the bench seat, trying to get comfortable. His faith was gone. Nate and I held our rods, happy to feel the pecking of tiny fish, and knowing full well that we were in the zone. “C’mon, Matt,” I said. “There’s a giant fish swimming around down there!” But he wasn’t impressed. He and I reeled in to see the wasted remains of our baits. I stepped to the front of the boat for a couple of fresh fillets when Nate’s line tightened.
I saw the whole thing: big slow grabs, then moving line, then peeling line…”Set the hook lightly,” I warned. He set, and the fish took off down the river. His rig had 150 yards of 80-pound Tuff line and a short leader to match. I rushed to the bow and pulled the anchor. Matt started the outboard, hands shaking. At first Matt raced the engine in reverse, flooding water over the transom. Captain Nate was rather distressed by this. “NOT REVERSE!!!” Line peeled off the spool, and there wasn’t much left. Matt spun the boat around, the spool emptied, Nate pointed the rod at the fish and it was over. A clean break, and three stunned fishermen. Matt and I were catching our breath, and Nate was calmly grappling with the mixed emotions that come with hooking and losing the biggest fish of one’s life.
Soon we were bashing our way against the wind, back to Florence. We consoled Matt that the loss was not his fault. Such fish require a higher level of preparedness and experience than we had at the beginning of our day. But we learned a lot, and would return soon for another chance.
“I know what I’m doing on my next day off,” Nate said with a smile.
“Trout fishing?” I asked.
-RR
It happens sometimes. I’ve stored my working stock of fly hooks in these 21 compartment boxes for thirty years or more. I’ve been careful. All those years I have imagined how messy it would be to sort the pile if I dropped a box. Never thought I’d really do it, though. Still, I was careful. Thoughtful.
Then it happened. A moment’s distraction. A slip of the hand. A crash.
There, on the floor in a corner near my tying bench, lay somewhere between two and three thousand fly hooks. In a crazy pile. The size-fours were easy to pick out, and so were the sixes. I just dumped the rest into a pile, back on a shelf. Good thing I’m not tying trout flies right now. There are TMC 3761s, 100s, and 101s. There are Gamakatsu dry fly hooks. There are Daiichi scud hooks. There are size 8s, 10s, 12s, 14s, 16s, and 18s. Twenty-one compartments with 21 different hook sizes, and only the fours and sixes have been sorted out.
Think I’ll wait for winter, some weekend when I’m laid-up with a cold.
JN
You could just throw a loop over your thingamabobber on a tapered leader, but you’d be missing the point of the greatest strike indicator ever invented. The more effective strategy is rigging it for a right angle nymphing system. Find out how to do this in the following video.
According to a press release today from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the BLM has withdrawn its legally flawed plan for Western Oregon, the WOPR!
“We have carefully reviewed the lawsuits filed against the WOPR and it is clear that as a result of the previous Administration’s late actions, the plan cannot stand up in court and, if defended, could lead to years of fruitless litigation and inaction,” Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said today. “Now, at a time when western Oregon communities are already struggling, we face the fallout of the previous Administration’s skirting of the law and efforts to taint scientific outcomes. It is important that we act swiftly to restore certainty to timber harvests on BLM lands and to protect vital timber infrastructure in these tough economic times.”
Our Trout Unlimited chapter has been fighting this departure from the Northwest Forest Plan since it’s inception. While not perfect, the Northwest Forest Plan has had remarkable success in at least one regard: improving riparian conditions. It is no secret that salmon, trout and steelhead need cold clean water with complex habitat in order to thrive. The Aquatic Conservation Strategy implemented by the Northwest Forest Plan is a cornerstone of Oregon’s salmon recovery efforts and has been successful. Scientists have documented improvement in riparian conditions in over 64% of the streams sampled since implementation of the Aquatic Conservation Strategy. The new plan would eliminate this proven management tool on BLM land.
The BLM planned to reduce existing Northwest Forest Plan riparian buffer widths by 50% on fish bearing waters as well as on intermittent streams. This would have resulted in over 130,000 acres of previously protected riparian forest being opened to logging. This was not just an academic issue — it put the waters we love to fish at risk:
Thank you to everyone who helped fight this proposal.
Be sure to check out the Bamboo Rod Fair, this weekend, July 18th-19th, 10am-5pm Saturday and 10am-3pm Sunday at Camp Sherman on the Metolius. This was a very cool event last year, packed with fly fishing experts from around the state.
We just caught up with Chet Croco, of Genuine Bellinger Bamboo Fly Rods to chat about what’s new at the event for 2009.
What’s new this year at the festival?
There will be more bamboo rodmakers, vintage tackle and bamboo rod dealers, fly tiers and angling art and book enthusiasts then in years past. Jason Borger, Brad Pitt’s stunt double in A River Runs Through It, will be doing casting demonstrations and clinics. And local Metolius River legend, John Judy will be on hand to discuss Metolius River tackle and techniques. A representative from ODFW will also be on hand giving a presentation on the Metolius River basin and all things trout. The Bamboo Rod Fair is in its eighth year and this year promises to be the best.
Are you bringing anything up there you’re excited about?
We have a couple things we’re excited about. We are showing off a new taper that we’ve developed that is an “old school” progressive taper that is absolutely wonderful to cast. We’ve come out with a couple reproduction reel seats that we’ll be displaying and a new look in nickel silver plated hardware. I’m quite happy with the action of this new taper and the look of our Classic series of bamboo rods. Of course we’ll have our official Bellinger pint glasses for sale.
What do you like the most about the event?
Many of our friends and customers attend the show and so it is a good opportunity to catch up with them. I particularly enjoy watching someone with little experience in casting or fishing a bamboo fly rod take the plunge and choose a rod, cast it and come away a convert to the allure of bamboo.
We waded the Middle Fork Willamette this evening, picking up plenty of wild trout on nymphs early with dry fly action later — after 7pm. Megaprince was the hot nymph for the day, scoring some nice fish for Matt Siegmund. There were some large stoneflies on the water, and lots of caddis, shifting later to mayflies later on. The hot fly for the evening dry fly bite on the Middle Fork has been a Stalcup’s Green Drake adult.
-MS
Is your four piece a two piece? Or worse, your two piece a one? We aren’t talking women’s swimwear here. What I’m asking is whether you through no fault of your own, (or in my case a complete case of neglect) have a rod, or will have a rod that you just can’t get apart? I did and I have a sweet Caddis fly rod tube that held the two piece nicely but it still irked me.
I tried the knee trick–that’s the first method. Hold the rod behind your legs in the knee area and use your legs as as well as your arms to try to pull the offending ferrules apart. That didn’t work. I tried silicone spray in the joint and allowed it to seep in and got Shelly to pull as hard as she could on one end with me reefing on the other. Nix.
Kvetching about this situation to Nate, he asked “have you tried icing it? That’s what we’ve always done”
I felt sorta like Archimedes, except I was fully clothed, and it wasn’t my idea. Other than that though it was really similar. “Oh, good idea, it’ll contract.”
“Yep, it contracts.”
A stroke of pure genius. I went home and iced the rod at the joint for a couple hours and when Shelly got there we tried again. With a satisfying, ‘ploop’ the rod did the unstuck. File this one away, you might need it someday.–KM
Call to action all fly tyers. Hareline Dubbin has steped up and provided us with a great prize, see photo below. Entries are slim right now, which means your odds of winning are great. Deadline for turning in flies is August 1st.
Check out a couple of fine entries below. Clik here for contest details.–CD
Plutonium Sucking Leech
Hook: size 4 TMC 5262
Bead: Green 5/32
Weight: Lead
Thread: Chartreuse 6/0 Uni Thread
Tail: Black Rabbit Strip
Flash: Crystal Flash
Body: Black Ploar Chenille
Collar: Fl. Yellow Senyo’s Laser Dub
Black Orchid
Hook: 25mm Waddinston Shank, #2 Gamakatsu Octopus
Conection: 50lbs flouro
Tag: Shell Pink Ice Dub
Rear Hackle: Hot Pink Marabou/Hot Pink Lady Amherst Tail
Body: Purple Ice Dub
Front Flash: Mettalic Purple Flashabou
Front Hackle: Black Marabou with Hot Pink Lady Amherst Tail
Collar: Purple Ice Dub
Eyes: Small Pseudo Eyes
Head: Hot Pink Senyo’s Lazer Dub
Ocean salmon and tuna fishing has been red hot as sea conditions have been more than favorable. Ports up and down the coast have been checking-in longfins and silvers filling freezers and creating sore arms for anglers lucky enough to get offshore.
Fly fishing opportunities exist especially in these conditions. While trolling gear we encountered several pelicans working bait along with the coho and had fish bust our flies on the strip and in the prop wash! Good luck trying to stop a dime bright fish lit up 3 feet from the boat.
Summer is here and get on the ocean if you can. Anglers targeting coho need to remember barbless hooks only and 3 hatchery coho apiece with regulations changing constantly. Clousers and baitfish patterns paired up with heavy shooting heads will get you started and obviously calmer conditions will give you a better shot with light tackle.
Call the shop for more info and be safe.
-NS
Our wild fish stocks are at a turning point in Oregon
Dams are coming down. Studies are showing that inbred hatchery pukes are no substitute for (and are in fact complicit in the destruction of) native fish. Ocean conditions have returned to high productivity, providing a buffet of marine life for a huge run of coho. And thoughtful conservation minded individuals are climbing the ranks at even the most backward state and federal agencies that affect our watersheds.
At the same time, our fall chinook populations are crashing this year, maybe hitting bottom on some rivers. Ideologically outdated fisheries managers continue to equate angler opportunity with angler harvest. County commissioners are demanding the opportunity to destroy some of the most fragile, productive, publically-owned temperate rainforest in the state. And our region is poised for continued growth – which translates to further encroachment on floodplains and water resources.
As native fish advocates prepare to battle politicians, hatchery-heads, and short-sightedness, we need to arm ourselves. In order to protect and restore our rivers, we need to have the knowledge of the historical productivity and condition of the watersheds. And in order to fight a long, seemingly futile battle against politically entrenched, well-funded enemies, you need to have manic optimism.
And so I recommend you read two books: What the River Reveals by Valerie Rapp and My Story as Told by Water by David James Duncan.
Rapp’s book, What the River Reveals, is an exploration of what constitutes a healthy river in the Pacific Northwest. Rapp’s home water is our own McKenzie River, and she uses it throughout the book to illustrate how a river can appear pristine, but not necessarily be healthy, as salmon populations are disconnected from spawning habitat, fallen trees are removed from the river and water is diverted to power plants and irrigation.
The book provides some excellent facts about some of our rivers’ historical states.
For example, in 1826 there was a logjam on the Siuslaw River that was over a mile long and extended across the entire valley, immovable, creating a braided, complex river that encompassed the entire valley floor, instead of the channelized trough running through cow pasture we have today. At the time, the Siuslaw was one of the most productive salmon watersheds in the state, second only to the Columbia.
Or our Willamette River (which every endangered McKenzie River Spring Chinook needs to swim up from Willamette Falls) was at one time twisted and braided across wetlands, sloughs, islands and logjams two to three miles wide, instead of the brown stripe running from Eugene to Oregon City. In the 1870s, the Army Corps of Engineers removed 10,000 snags from the Willamette and cut down thousands of riverbank trees.
This book has excellent information about the natural history of our watersheds and its inhabitants and is a must-read for river supporters.
An excerpt: Simplified rivers look recovered after a few years. In fact, biologists don’t know how long it takes for severely degraded waterways to recuperate because they have never seen one recover on it own. Channelized streams are almost completely severed from their watersheds. Riprapped banks and levees usually stop rivers from reinhabiting their old flood plains and side channels. Richly textured channels with meanders, pools, riffles and logjams are replaced by straight runs of riffling water. The riparian areas may be narrowed to thin lines of alders and cottonwoods that no longer have the ability to buffer a stream from events in the watershed, and that contribute little to the stream. Cobbled rivers once rich with young salmon, trout, sculpins, beavers, mergansers, osprey, and eagles are turned into simple canals with greatly diminished life.
Rapp’s book offers guidelines to restoring our watersheds, but the most salient point she makes is that we need to manage people, not rivers or salmon. As University of Washington Jim Karr said in the book, “Northwest rivers have been making salmon for millennia. We need to manage people so natural systems can make salmon as they’ve done for a long time.”
According to Rapp, we need to save the best places first, as the truly degraded watersheds could take up to 100 years to recover. Lucky for us, in Oregon we have so much potential to save the last best places.
But in order to save the last best places, we’ll need something to sustain and inspire us. Something that will allow you to keep fighting against the currents of entrenched beliefs, political cowardice, and defeat. Luckily, we have David James Duncan. I’ve excerpted a few paragraphs from My Story as Told by Water below to illustrate the kind of Quixotic hope we’ll need to see wild fisheries restored in the next generation.
Life itself sometimes hangs by a thread made of nothing but the spirit in which we see. And with life itself at stake, I grew suspicious of my eyes’ many easy, dark conclusions. Even the most warranted pessimism began to feel unwarranted. I began to see hope, however feeble its apparent foundation, bespeaks allegiance to every unlikely beauty that remains intact on Earth.
I believe every life-loving human on Earth carries a far-from-agnostic obligation to remain primitive enough, and reverent enough, to stand up and say to any political power or poll or public: Trees and mountains are holy. Rain and rivers are holy. Salmon are holy. For this reason alone I will fight with all my might to keep them alive. This is not an argument, not a number, not a polled opinion. It’s naked native belief.
Appearances are deceiving: the Columbia and her salmon are as ancient and God-given as the mountains and the seas. Whereas the average dam’s lifespan is about the same as yours and mine. As I slide toward my half-century mark and feel the currents of time lapping at my knees, my memory, my libido, I sure feel removable as hell. Welcome to the club, dams!
Read both, and get ready.
-MS
This past Saturday, I fished with Senator Merkely’s Central Oregon point man on the Middle Fork Willamette. You might imagine that I was in his ear all day about Trout Unlimited’s conservation agenda–but you’d be wrong.
Johnny is one of my oldest friends and we used to fish together a couple times a week. Since his move to Bend we haven’t been out much and it was great to fish with my erstwhile partner in crime–reliving our old adventures in angling–like the time we without hesitation turned down the two hotties who tried to pick us up while we were steelheading the ‘Slaw, only to realize later what we had done. Talk about a singular pursuit–doh! Or the time we found a huge blaze on the Mckenzie–calling it in before it got a chance to spot and spread . . . I could go on all day but I read the survey results and you want fishing reports not my semi-coherent ramblings. So here goes:
We started on the Middle Fork above Hills Creek Reservoir, fishing from the head of the reservoir which is still higher than I’d like to see it and working our way upstream. We hooked and landed a mixed bag of hatchery fish and wild trout. Johnny hooked a big rainbow that managed to throw him before we got a good look at its orgins. Trout ate Golden Stone dries and the Parachute “I hope it’s me” Adams–a story for another time . . . or not.
All this was prelude though to the evening bite on the river below Hills Creek. The hatches weren’t as prolific as they were the other day but the fish were still looking up. We caught a mess of wild rainbows, exclusively on Green Drake dry patterns. Here Johnny does battle with a fairly typical Middle Fork wild rainbow (I’m pretty sure the chin strap is supposed to go under your chin there Johnny):
and the fish:
A few minutes later this happened–note my horror:
Ok, it wasn’t all that upsetting:
and the release:
The Middle Fork Willamette is fishing great in the evening along its whole length. Perfect for a post-work get away!–KM
Saturday, I was fishing with Pat McRae, author of the new steelhead diary The North Umpqua Chronicles on his home water – the famed pools of the North Umpqua. McRae’s book will be available in August — it covers fishing twelve months on the river. We sat down to breakfast at the Steamboat Inn and chatted about why he wrote it.
Why the North Umpqua?
In 1974, I read an article in The Oregonian about one of Zane Grey’s children, describing the river, sun slanting through the trees, beautiful green water. And I wanted to go see it. I came down, and once I was here I was hooked.
When I first started, I knew three or four pools and I fished them over and over again. There are about 140 pools, and each one is different. As time passes, you learn them pool by pool. You learn the details of each pool little by little, and after 34 years you know it pretty well.
Your method is very specific: Spey-casting on a single hand rod, with floating line, long leader and sinking fly. How’d you come to that system?
It’s a specific river. It’s not like you’re on the Deschutes where you cast and take two steps down. When you go to a pool, you’re hitting specific spots and trying to get your fly to do what you want it to do in front of the fish’s eyes.
Can you tell me about your flies and how you fish them?
The Blue Captain Nemo is predominantly a blue flashabou fly. I like the way it looks in the water, with a gold head, and a black marabou tail. Every steelhead fly has got to have a little black in it. And it moves.
I never actually want the fly to be on a tight line. I want to be in control, connected to it, but not tightly. When I have a fly swinging, I’m constantly trying to provide a little more slack to it so it can move.
So why did you write the book?
I started keeping track of the steelhead I hooked with the very first one. I used to keep a ledger. The logbook would have the date, male-female, the size. And then I started wanting to write a little more about the day and the fish. So I kept journals. I have a big huge stack of them down at the cabin.
I’ve got steelhead fishing friends all over the place that can’t fish except when they get down here for their summer vacation. And I started writing for them. Check this out guys, don’t you wish you were here?
At one point, Peter Tronquet said, “you have a book here.” So I started taking stuff out of the journals, cleaned it up and showed it to Jim Van Loan. And he thought I had something. He proofread it three times and taught me some things about proper English. And out of that came the book.
What do you want people to get out of the book?
I hope they enjoy it. I hope they like the way it’s written. It’d be nice if it brought more lovers of this river here. The more people that love this river, the more people will help us take care of it.
Conservation is a form of giving back. There was a period of time in my life when I was depressed and steelhead fishing got me out of that. The river and fish did that for me, so I’ve always wanted to give back for that reason.
Stay tuned for this book’s release in the coming weeks.
-MS
Having just returned from a 3-day, marathon fishing-trip to the North Umpqua, I wanted to share what I learned. Get ready, folks, this will be shocking.
This internationally famed Oregon River is reputed to host runs of summer and winter steelhead, catchable on flies. I suspect that this rumor is of questionable substance. The run of summer and winter steelhead to the North Umpqua is probably around twenty-seven steelhead, total. The fish-counts at Winchester are mostly a fabrication to create the impression that it might actually be possible to catch one.
Caption: North Umpqua tailout. Note two dozen “faux” steelhead placed around rocks by Umpqua Fly Guides Association in order to maintain client enthusiasm.
The North Umpqua is still a beautiful river and a great place to test inflatable life jackets and waterproof fly boxes. Clever fly-fishing guides place steelhead “decoys” underwater in strategically located tailouts to motivate their clients, creating an illusion that Steelhead live in the river. “Faux” steelhead are typically placed in areas where guide-clients can view them from roadside pullouts. This is a tactic to increase sales of Polaroid glasses and binoculars. Most photos of fly anglers releasing steelhead in the North Umpqua have been staged on the South Santiam, hoping to increase occupancy rates in local motels and sell more fly fishing gear.
The North Umpqua River is mostly populated by “Pogies”. A future article will feature research conducted on this fascinating and furtive fish. Pogies will splash at steelhead flies and even tug on one’s line, enhancing the fantasy of hooking a real steelhead on a fly. Pogies have been known to attach small alder trees to an angler’s fly line, thus creating the impression of a monster steelhead screaming off downstream, taking line and backing through the next three pools. No one knows what motivates or rewards these Pogies. Better not ask, I think.
A list of fly fishing products supported almost solely by the North Umpqua Steelhead “legend” includes armpit-high Gore-Tex waders; cleated, felt-soled boots; Shortie vests; Polaroid glasses; wading staffs; snake-bite kits; Poison Oak creams; and October Caddis Skaters. Lately, the most prominent product line supported by the North Umpqua is: (surprise-surprise) Spey rods, Spey reels, and Spey lines – by the shopping cart-load.
Caption: Steamboat Inn caries a deeper stock in Poison Oak cream than in steelhead flies. This should tell you something.
It is little known (but true) that several Orthopedic Clinics in Eugene are supported almost entirely by knee, shoulder, back, rib, wrist, and collarbone surgery – all for fly fishers injured by falling off the highway while scouting for steelhead on the North Umpqua.
Caption: Note tell-tale sign of wading cleats sliding across the surface of rock that is harder than diamond. There is a 300 foot cliff below this rock — let’s just hope the poor devil fell into the river and didn’t bust his Spey Rod.
Getting to the point – I fished hard for three evenings and three mornings. I Spey fished my guts out. I mended my mends and twitched my twitches. I went swimming three times. One camera is definitely not waterproof. I hurt all over. I found a place where I could fall and crack my butt on one rock and jam my kidneys into another. Repeatedly.
Caption: Two-and-a-half days without a tug. Fell in river 3 times already. Sore. Tired. Must have Coffee.
On the third morning, at 9 AM, I got the tug. Not just a tug, actually, a MONSTER, ker-sploosh and eat-it grab. All the time I had invested, all the pain, the tackle, the practice casting, and the fly-tying – all of it came together in a blinding flash of joy. A magnificent fight took place and I released the giant fish. I was lucky enough to snap a photo of the release.
Now, in spite of the truth, I am hooked for life; I am mesmerized by the legend of the North Umpqua. No matter what it takes, no matter how long, no matter how much more tackle I must buy – I’m hooked. Steelhead crazy, ya might say.
Caption: North Umpqua Summer Steelhead. This fish took a secret skated-fly on Day-3 and was released unharmed.
JN
Thursday, I floated the Middle Fork of the Willamette from Oakridge to Black Canyon . . . ok, floated might be a bit generous. I banged and dragged my way down the river with a couple gentlemen who had purchased the trip in the Trout Unlimited auction back in February. Thanks for your generous support of TU guys!
Beautiful weather, good company, good anglers, good times, the day couldn’t have been better except for one thing: a river that appeared completely devoid of insect life. Despite the tough conditions, the guys managed to hook a couple nice fish and eked out several more.
Reaching Black canyon around 6:00 the guys had enough and called it a day but Matt didn’t start calling me ‘The Mule’ for nothing. Stubborn and a good bit dumber than a bag of hammers I decided to hit my favorite bank spot before heading home. Jackpot!
There were bugs galore, caddis, huge golden stones, PEDs and big green drakes. The drakes really had the fish turned on and I caught active fish everywhere they were supposed to be and even in a couple places I’ve never hooked a good fish before. It was a mixed bag for a change, a couple nicer cutts and a slew of fairly good rainbows.
Seeing interest in but several refusals of the Green Stimulator, I switched my approach. A hairwing green drake on bottom and a high floating Green Humpy (yeah, I know) up top. Fish ate them both and the two biggest ‘bows even ate the less precise Humpy. It was getting dark and not wanting to miss the hot bite I didn’t get photographic evidence of all the fish–but guys, it really happened, I promise.
They were eating every few casts and I’m guessing it’ll be an early morning/evening show until the weather cools. I’ve been wrong before but every so often my stubbornness gets rewarded.-KM
