The Granada Theater, The Dalles, Oregon. It was Feb. 19, 2010. No snow was on the ground.
Sure, the calendar says it's February, but:
The Vancouver Winter Olympics are on television -- but it might be the warmest Winter Olympics ever.
Iris plants are sprouting green spears in my Hood River, Oregon garden.
Wild redsides rainbow trout are rising to blue-winged olive mayflies -- and the odd caddis -- on Oregon's Deschutes River.
And the 2010 Fly Fishing Film Tour just blew in and out of The Dalles.
Spring -- for fly anglers -- has sprung -- at least until a March snowstorm rumbles out the arctic and hammers the Pacific Northwest. I'm not sure that storm will happen, but it is hard to believe that spring is really here. But I can't help thinking that we all have to pay sometime for all this mild February weather.
Yeah, it's weird, weird, weird out there right now. But there's also some fun out there in this El Nino weather year.
Trout are indeed eager to wallop blue-winged olive mayflies on the Deschutes -- if they're hatching in the part of the river where you're standing around and staring at the water. This hatch is spotty this early in the year, and a section of river that boiled with hatching mayflies yesterday may be dead today.
Cloudy, drizzly weather is best -- these bugs love nasty days -- but they will do what they please. I was on the Deschutes near Maupin twice this week, and both days were that mix of high clouds and bright sunshine. I even saw a few bugs hatch during times of bright sunshine.
Go figure.
Some parts of the river -- even the prime swirling back eddies and foam-line banks -- didn't show one hatching bug, and the trout never showed up. But other spots popped bugs like crazy, and the fish were up -- and a little bit silly for a size 18 olive Sparkle Dun.
Early season hatches of blue-winged olives can be hair-ripping frustration, as the bugs do not come off like clockwork -- even though we humans expect and really, really want the mayflies to hatch at predictable times and places. So, it pays to keep moving up the bank, looking at the water and hoping for the best.
It helps if the river levels remain stable -- a rising river kills the fishing on many winter streams -- and if you check The Deschutes Angler website for river levels and hatch reports. John and Amy Hazel -- Deschutes River wizards and good friends -- have a spectacular obsession with this wonderful, tricky hatch.
And blue-winged olive addicts -- such as myself -- get all giddy when the river flows are stable, the weather is above freezing and the sky is dark and gloomy.
Bad news for trout-addicted anglers: Sunshine blasts onto Oregon's Deschutes River on Feb. 18, 2010.
I spent most of my time both days -- at least between the blue-winged olive witching hours of noon and 3 p.m. -- marching down the bank looking for backeddies and bankside foam lines with hatching bugs and porpoising trout. Blue-winged olives will hatch when they feel like it -- which is usually the warmest time of a miserable day -- and that often happens between noon and 3 p.m. during this time of year. I have seen February hatches of these bugs start at 10 a.m. -- or a half-hour before sunset.
I've also seen these hatches start like clockwork at 1 p.m. and last until dark. But the bugs usually wait until a dark, warmish day for that kind of magic. In the Northwest, it's usually very easy to find a dark day in February, but the warmish part is tough.
So far -- in this warmish, bright, weird El Nino of a February -- a dark, drizzly day is harder to find. So the fishing can veer wildly between lights-out Trout-O-Rama to long periods of staring at sun-dappled, troutless water.
I was on the river yesterday by 11:30 a.m., and the delightful overhead blanket of clouds -- which can spark big hatches and an afternoon full of rising trout -- melted away in less than an hour. Banks of clouds rolled in and out, and I cursed the the bright sun whenever it appeared.
But the cloudy times were wonderful, as mayflies appeared on the water -- at least in some spots -- and trout rose with the foolish confidence of fish that haven't been pestered for three months. I managed to hook and release a few fish. It was never Trout-O-Rama, but it was Trout Rising to Dry Flies after three months of No Trout Rising to Dry Flies.
And the fish were eager to bite small, shiny nymphs -- a size 18 Copper John worked well -- when the bugs didn't hatch on the water.
It's worth heading to the local trout stream this weird, warm winter -- especially if it dark and depressing outside.
It was dark -- but not depressing -- when I arrived at the Granada Theater in The Dalles on Feb. 19 for the local showing of the 2010 Fly Fishing Film Tour. The usual crowd of suspects -- swilling beer, wolfing pizza and talking fly fishing -- jammed into the lobby of the grand old movie house and schooled around tackle and conservation display tables.
Little kids -- toting balloons and wearing the free hats that came with each admission -- scampered around in front of the screen while a pre-movie slide show amped up their moms and dads.
Yeah, it was pretty cool. The economy may be in the dumpster right now, but no fly-fishing junkie can resist zoning out on movies that show permit rising to dry flies -- no kidding -- coho salmon whopping pink flies sloshing across the surface of an Alaskan river or New Zealand trout wolfing down floating mouse flies.
My favorite flims were "Heads or Tails" -- the permit movie, and "Hoodoo Style," which was the coho movie. But all the movies were worth watching.
This traveling film roadshow -- which gets bigger and better every year -- could have been called "Year 2010 Films About Fish Rising to Weird Dry Flies." And why not? Anything seems possible in this spring of a winter.
For more information on the films and film festival, log onto www.flyfishingfilmtour.com and start mainlining.
