Fishing the Deschutes and Crooked Rivers

Deschutes River, Tuesday 4 October 2016

Bud and I decided to fish the Deschutes upstream of Maupin. There is a road on the east bank that was once a railroad providing passenger service to Maupin. Several miles upstream is a spot known as Locked Gate because, as you might have guessed, there is a locked gate across the road. A sign indicated you could walk upstream several miles, but no motorized vehicles were allowed. I was hoping to catch a red-band rainbow on a dry fly but I fished for several hours without a single strike. Carol and I watched Bud catch a nice red-band on a nymph in a riffle (Carol took some photos from a distance). This was in the same riffle where I had already fished, I might add. Bud said he had on a float indicator followed by two dropper nymphs. The three of us met downstream and had lunch.

Bud nets a nice one.

Bud nets another.

There was a very large eddy nearby. Carol reminded me she had read in one of my guide books that it was worth letting nymphs just circulate in the turbulent eddy waters. So I rigged up for nymphing and cast into the turbulent eddy. I would like to tell you that I immediately hooked into a monster, but that's not the way this river fishes. I must have cast my nymph into this eddy at least 50 times without so much as a nibble. In the meantime, Bud caught another good-size trout in the riffles that led to the eddy where I was fishing.

Maybe in desperation, I decided to let my strike indicator follow the entire length of the eddy, which was about 75 feet long. Not a good idea to have so much line out, but I was into trying anything at this point. Bud had walked up to the edge of the eddy to watch me fishing and he watched, as I did, my white floating indicator went zipping off toward the main current stream, immediately followed by a large fish jumping into the air. I have a strong suspicion that this fish was looking for the jerk who had just hooked him, because the fish headed straight toward me, forcing me to strip in line fast to keep tension on the fish. As my line seemed to go slack, I yelled at Bud that I think the fish got off and just left me with a snag. However, the snag started moving and I quickly found out the fish was still on and had planned his next trick, which was to power out toward the main current stripping line off my reel at a blazing rate. Fortunately the drag setting on my reel seemed to wear him down and I was able to reel the fish in, only to have it once again power out and strip line off my reel. This “power-out, then reel-in” game finally came to an end. I got the fish close enough to remove the hook and return the trout to the water.

Jack with fish on, finally.

It's a red-band rainbow.

Jack about to release the rainbow.

Crooked River Wednesday-Thursday, 5-6 October 2016

Bud and I drove the RoadTrek to the area north of Prineville, OR to fish the Crooked River, which emerges from a dirt irrigation dam. For about 12 miles below the dam the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has several camping sites (which cost $8 to camp overnight, unless you have a Golden Age National Park card, then it's only $4).

We chose the campsite called Poison Butte where Carol and I had previously spent a night and where I had caught a trout during a late evening hatch. This time when we arrived in the afternoon, a hatch was already in progress. We suited up and both of us caught several trout in the 8- to 10-inch range. Bud caught at least one 14-inch trout. Dusk arrived with a cold rain so we decided to call it an evening.

Bud's red-band rainbow caught in Crooked River.

Up early the next morning, we suited up again and noticed a guide with two clients had arrived. While Bud and I grabbed the boulder area, the guide took his clients downstream to the spot where we had fished last night. We both caught fish, with just as many getting off the hook before landing them. Toward the end of our fishing day, I hooked into a sizable fish and, while trying to release him, I dropped a fly box into the water that I didn't want to lose. Just then the guide's clients, a husband and wife team, appeared and retrieved my fly box. I still had the fish on which I then reeled in and noticed it was a 12-14 inch whitefish. As the woman fisher reminded me, there are a lot of whitefish in this river, but it was the first we had caught. All the other fish we caught were rainbows.

Jack releasing a large whitefish.

As I stuck my fly box back into my waders and walked upstream to get Bud, I thought about how this beautiful stream earned its reputation as an introduction for novice anglers to all the types of waters available for stream fishing. It was certainly challenging to Bud and me.

Carol's Story

While Jack and Bud were off fishing the Crooked River for two days, I had a nice relaxing time in our little cabin. It was kind of rainy in Maupin so I mostly stayed in and read and paid bills and caught up on correspondence. And watched the seemingly tame mule deer wandering around the place. The guys got home late in the afternoon on Thursday and they regaled me with their fishing adventures.

Mule deer seem tame at the Oasis.

On Friday we had a lazy day – slept in and just hung around the cabin, eating, talking and working on our respective computers/tablets. We had planned to meet up with our friends Wayne and Ellen again so Bud could see them. They had a meeting Friday morning in Portland but would call us when they were done and we would then meet at a restaurant in The Dalles, about a 45-min drive from Maupin, on the Columbia River and about a half hour from where they live now. We ended up driving to The Dalles and meeting them at about 4 pm at a local brewery (Oregon has a lot of these). We had a great time chatting and reminiscing and telling stories. Since Jack and Bud had to meet their fishing guide early Saturday morning, we made it an early night.

Fishing the Deschutes with a Guide - 8 October 2016

It was still dark at 5:30 AM when Nate, our guide for the day, showed up with his large pickup hauling a trailer on which sat his boat. Just before I left our cabin, Carol asked me why I was not wearing my new waders, since my old waders had a hole somewhere near my butt, as I had discovered on Silver Creek. I gave her no reason because I was a bit ashamed that I had no reason, other than not wanting to look like a newbie flyfisher to the guide. I should have remembered that pride interferes with logic, but more on this later.

After introductions, we headed up the river to a spot not far from where Bud and I had previously fished. We busied ourselves setting up our rods while Nate singlehandedly launched his boat. Getting into the boat with waders and boots on is quite an ordeal. Swinging one leg over the gunwale, then the other, seemed like the way to go, but waders severely restrict your leg motion. Nate suggested the best way to enter the boat was to sit on the gunwale and then fall back onto the boat cushion, then swing both feet into the boat. This worked, but I suspect Bud and I were happy it was still dark.

Once we were seated, Nate paddled us into the middle of the river and headed downstream, where I could hear the roar of a rapid but could not see it. I think I made the comment that it's a brave person who heads into a rapid that you can't see. Nate replied, “Either that, or he's crazy.” Anyway, thank God, Nate knew the river well and navigated the rapid with only a few drops of water splashing on Bud and me.

Bud snaps a shot as we head into the first rapids.

Nate maneuvered the boat to the west side of the river, dropped his anchor, and proceeded to rig my 6-weight fly-rod for steelhead and trout. He set aside Bud's 5-weight rod and rigged another 6-weight rod for Bud. Each rig consisted of two heavily weighted nymph patterns topped off with a 3/4-inch spherical strike indicator. The distance from the strike indicator to the bottom nymph was about 7 feet. The size of the leader varied from 1x to 3x as I recall. Nate said oftentimes a steelhead will hit this rig and he didn't want the leader to break. The big size would not have any effect on the large desert red-band trout he hoped we would catch.

Armed with these rigs, he asked us to get out of the boat and watch while he demonstrated how to cast and fish the rig. The thing about the Deschutes River is that the fishing regulations state “no fishing from boats” so we have to get out and wade at every spot where the guide wants us to fish. Of course, getting out of the boat was just about as difficult as getting in. What works, Nate said, was to slide feet first toward the gunwale, then sit on the gunwale and slide into the water. This sorta worked.

By now it was getting to be daylight. Nate demonstrated his casting technique and explained how he wanted us to first cast near the bank, then in two-foot intervals work our way out as far as we could. After each cast we were to let the current take the strike indicator straight downstream without any drag and then allow the nymphs to float in the current for several seconds before starting to cast again. He did not want us to stay in one position fishing the same water over and over again.

While showing us the correct way to drift the rig, Nate caught a 14-16 inch red-band trout. I think he was a bit embarrassed and tried to quickly release the trout. I guess he figured we would think he was showing off. Of course, Bud and I were impressed that his methods obviously worked.

Nate separated Bud and me by about 20 yards and told us to yell if we had a fish on. He proceeded to rig another two spey rods for us to try. As I recall, Bud caught the first red-band trout, a hard-fighting beautiful trout with brilliant red sides. Then I caught a big fish which I was certain was an equally hard fighting red-band trout. After I got the fish in, it turned out to be a very large whitefish. Not long after that I caught another good sized whitefish. Bud started calling me “El Blanco.”

We continued to catch red-band trout, about one every 15 minutes. I never caught another whitefish and most of the red-band trout I caught were jumpers, lots of fun to catch.

Nate helping Jack release a red-band back into the river.

We spent an hour or so learning how to use a spey rod and cast for steelheads. Casting with a spey rod is very interesting. The line is weighted and the rod is long with two cork handles. You basically roll cast (no back swing like you do when dry fly fishing) and can cast 60 to 70 feet when everything goes right. You cast across and down the stream and then let the fly drift down and flutter in the current. It's a sport that some refer to as the “sport of 10,000 casts.” We ran into several anglers who had been on the river for a week, fished for steelhead every day and never caught any. One fellow said he was having two bad years in a row. I had already fished the Umqua for steelhead with a guide using a spey rod and caught nothing. But the chance that you can catch one of these very big, powerful fish keeps anglers trying and trying.

I want to get back to the story of my waders. Turned out that Nate wanted us to wade out into the current as far as we could because, as he said, the further out you can get, the more likely you are to catch trout or hook into a steelhead. Now the Deschutes is a big river and the current is strong. The further out you wade, the faster the current gets and the deeper the water gets. And that meant the closer the water got to that hole in the butt of my waders. Every step away from the bank I took, I could hear Carol saying, “Why aren't you taking your new waders?” Well, it got to be sort of a joke with Bud and Nate, with me on the butt end of the joke, so to speak. So I had to tell Carol this when we got back. You can guess what she said, and she was right.

Carol's Story

I had gone back to bed after the guys left at 5:30 am on Saturday. Then I did some grocery shopping, wrote and mailed some cards and got the van's propane tank filled. It was almost dark when the guys got home from their long day floating the river. They had more fishing stories to tell, and needed to refill their own tanks, so we went to the little Oasis cafe next to our cabin and had milkshakes. (They make many flavors of yummy, old-fashioned milkshakes.) Then we visited a while with the fishermen staying in the cabin next to ours. They obligingly took some photos of us clowning around with the goofy photo props out in the yard next to the cafe, making us look like muscle-men and bikini-clad bathing beauties. Jack and Bud were pretty wiped out after their long day in the cold river so it was another relatively early night!

The Oasis Cafe.

Bud and our neighbors telling fish stories.

Goofy photo of Jack, Carol and Bud.

Actual photo of Carol and Jack in our bathing suits.

I had scoped out a church in Maupin for Sunday, so I got up early and went there—the Maupin Community Church. It was a very friendly and welcoming nondenominational congregation, very similar to our church in Oriskany. I enjoyed the worship and fellowship.

Maupin Community Church.

When I got back to the cabin, the guys were up and ready to go out and fish some more, since it was their last day. We went back to one of the same spots they'd fished before, near Locked Gate. However, not too much luck this time. Jack had a couple of strikes but couldn't hook one, and Bud thought he had a strike but it was a weird one. I think they were tired from the day before. They tried one more spot but nothing. We talked to two different fellows who were fishing for steelhead and hadn't caught anything. (One said he hadn't caught anything for two years and the other was there at the campground for a week and hadn't had a bite. I don't know about this steelhead fishing....)

We consoled ourselves with another milkshake and went back to the cabin to get organized, since we were leaving Monday morning and taking Bud to the airport in Portland. It had been a very good week, with lots of trout caught and lots of beautiful country to see.

On Monday we got cleaned up and packed the van and headed off, with a plan to stop along the way to see Multnomah Falls, the tallest waterfall in Oregon, which is right off I-84 about a half hour from Portland. It was a perfectly clear and sunny morning, and when we got on the road we realized that we could see Mt. Hood in all its glory, for the first time! We stopped to take some photos. Also a little later in the drive we could see Mt. Adams clearly, which is in Washington state, and is over 12,000 ft.

Mt Hood on a perfectly clear morning.

Jack poses for a photo at Multnomah Falls.

We pulled off the interstate at the Multnomah Falls exit and were astonished at the size and power of this falls! One of the coolest waterfalls we've ever seen! It's in two levels and the combined drop is over 600 ft. You get wet from the spray a LONG way from it. An old stone bridge goes across just above the top of the second falls. There were several other nice waterfalls in the immediate area as well. We drove up to see Vista House, a stone structure built in 1918, from which you have a panoramic view of the Columbia Gorge. A beautiful area.

Carol taking in the vista at Vista House.

We got Bud to the airport in plenty of time and said our fond farewells, making plans for future trips. Then Jack and I headed off to get the windshield replaced in the van, as the crack has been growing ever since it got whacked by those rocks in Idaho. Nice to have a clean, clear windshield again!