Deschutes Redsides

Home water. 

Surface slab.

Red side.

Mia captured this lift off.

It's been a fun few weeks over here!

Get some April and May 2016 with us.

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Hello October Steelhead

Made in Montana, hooked in Oregon. Photo by Jess Gibson

With the lack of time to tie flies, I'm thrilled when friends gives me a few of their patterns to fish, especially when the flies are tyed by the person that cuts my waders. A few weeks ago I was gifted this red and black fly by Clay Krull, perfect for Deschutes summer steelhead and it paid off.   Clay is Simms' lead fabric cutter, he lays out Locke's blueprints on his 16-yard-long cutting table. Wearing a metal mesh glove, he guides a fabric saw through various thicknesses of the fabric, cutting along razor-thin lines all designed to minimize waste.

Simms-Made in the USA
photo by Brian Grossenbacher’s

"I think I've cut the patterns for 99.9 percent of the waders we've made over the last seven years," Krull says.

The patterns that Locke prints out and Krull cuts are filled with lines that come within a fraction of an inch of each other. Any waste, which is generally thin strips of fabric, is collected for recycling in a bin simply marked "Gore."  

Clutch of High Water Hope

Landing steelhead is tricky. Mix a rising river, days of searching with few results, and the feeling of complete victory or total defeat sitting in the hands (my hands) of calculated execution. It is a team concept and in this particular situation it worked to perfection. Clutch (Portland Trailblazers are not-so-clutch lately) is the term used in a sporting event victory when the team wins in the final seconds. Many times in the greatest games in history this is just the case.

 Three days of fishing with Phil and Daniel and we had some early success. Enough to keep our hopes up for all three wet days. The river was high and rain punished us but we continued the hunt through it all. We found ourselves near the end of our fun times as the river was swelling faster with each minute. We could actually see it happening. The color turning, logs starting to float by, and willows being swallowed near the shore. Now or never if a last fish was to be hooked. Then it happened. Phil was solid to one. Clutch.A battle for the ages. Daniel, like the paparazzi, snapping every angle so we could relive the highlight reel at days end and in future dreams. We finally got the first glimpse of a pretty massive tail which explained the bull dog long winded battle. I have nets and the question is always to use or not? I am simply more confident tailing these fish. Nets in past experience for me have made the fish victorious more times than not. The key to tailing is for the angler to get the prize straight out or even slightly above them. If the fish is tired it's head can be lifted and then "steered" to the tailer. Big bucks make it tough. They burry their heads and even when most of their energy is used just the weight of them make it hard to get a good lift on them. Have you ever attached a 10 pound weight to the end if your line on dry ground and lifted it? Try it! (if you want a broken rod) Its crazy hard/impossible to pick it up! 

With a bigger fish like this, each time Phil tried to turn the fish into me it would put its head down and go on another run. Our normal strategy was not working. Plan b: Next time he was able to get the head of the big buck lifted to the surface I was able to move in for the tail. I had it...but not for long. Thick fish like this are not easy to get a lock on. 

The trick is to get them by the tail and give them a cradle of support underneath the belly. Attempt #2 was a success! Clutch! Keeping them in the water is comforting to them and in this position they relax. keep them in the water and they concede the fight. Lift them out of the water and things get ugly quickly. They struggle. 

We estimated this fish to be 37-38 inches with a great girth in the 19" range which put this guy at around 18 pounds. With the fish never leaving the water it was easy to hand off Phil his fish to capture the memory and honor of such a fine specimen.

Clutch.

Summer Steelhead Dreaming

Three weeks and three different rivers in Oregon.

 Steve lets one fly.

 Cedar on point. Must be one in here...

 Mark is living the dream.

 Darcy loaded and ready to shoot.

 Lots of skaters skating.

Full Circle. Mia puts an exclamation point on a great time!

A Little Steel in Our Life

photos by Mia

A Dirt Road and a Wild River

We dream of places where no road signs, traffic lights or city congestion will choke one up for hours, just arrows pointing to dirt roads that lead over endless landscape.  Homesteaders settled here in the late 1800's seeing the opportunity for rich, abundant resources, wildlife and water but the landscape isn't what it used to be, hundreds of irrigation canals, reservoir dams and no trespassing signs add to the topography of the land forever changing a wild river. 

 

After hours of driving, a dusty stretch of road emerges where there’s no fence line blocking an entry to the river, it’s almost dark and I set up camp and fall asleep to the sound of the river at my feet. The call of a Western Meadow Lark wakes me up at 5 am, I listen to the river gospel singing, reminding me of my childhood days in church, listening to the chore hum Amazing Grace.  I get out of bed and brew some coffee, and change my fly to a subsurface beadhead because the river is moving fast and the visibility is about 2 feet.  

The bank is green with tall native grasses; I analyze the river trying to determining where a fish might lie. There’s a small pool turning behind rocks and a soft seam hugging the bank. My first cast is to the grassy cut bank, casting up stream and stripping fast, I take a couple steps up stream and cast again, then behind a rock where the current is moving at a considerable pace and bam, the trout explodes, cart wheeling out the water. She’s strong, pulling, not giving in, her fight ceases after a few minutes and I get her to the bank and release her back.  

 

This river use to be abundant with Steelhead  but with the construction of reservoirs in the 1930's and then the Snake River dams, their passage has been blocked, so redband trout now struggle to survive and their fate is in the hands of The  Bureau of Reclamation, the agency responsible for controlling the flows of the river and there is no minimum pool requirement. I can only wonder if she will make it to see next year and hope someday to catch and release her again.

Kelts and Caddis

Holding on to the last good days of Steelhead fishing before heading to the John Day River for bass, we enjoyed another day of great company and fishing on the Sandy. October Caddis covered rocks along the banks in the early morning. Caddis belong to the family Dicosmoecus. They range from California to Alaska. The larva of these giant caddis build tube-like cases. During the winter months when the larva are tiny, these cases are made from vegetable matter attached to a foundation of silk. As the larva grows in size through the spring months they abruptly switch to cases made from small gravel. You can observe these larvae crawling around on the streambed dragging their cases with them as the forage for algae and decaying plant and animal matter. During the the summer months of June and July Dicosmoecus larvae are important trout foods. Daily behavioral drift cycles occur in the early afternoon, usually peaking about 4:00 P.M. They are one of the few families of caddis that leave their cases before behavioral drift cycles. This makes them extremely enticing to large trout. In August these larvae seal themselves in their cases and by September they are ready to emerge as adults.
Emergence occurs from late afternoon until dark. The pupae usually swim and crawl to shallow water, but some emerge mid-river. Many actually crawl from the water to hatch on rocks along the shore. Even when adults are not active, you can tell if October Caddis have been hatching by observing their shucks on stream margin rocks. Seeing Caddis along the banks is a sign of a health river.

Mid morning Marty tailed a beautiful kelt for me. When fishing for the income summer fish there is a chance of hooking a strong kelt making its way to the ocean. Handle these fish with care and keep them in the water, this is the future return.