Chester Allen's Watery Planet

Learning old lessons during a foolish day on Oregon's Deschutes River

The last sunshine of the day casts light onto the Deschutes River Canyon rim.

We anglers spend most of our time thinking about fooling fish, but all that thinking can actually make us fools.

I love the Warm Springs to Trout Creek stretch of Oregon's Deschutes River -- the plentiful, large, wild redsides rainbow trout, the lack of roads and the many little spots that hide rising fish. The part of the Deschutes is closed from November through the fourth Saturday in April every year, and I miss this water like crazy.

This part of the river used to be open all year, and I have fond memories of big rainbows tipping and sipping blue winged olive mayflies and midges in foamy backeddies during the months of February and March. But this section was returned to seasonal status many years ago, and I've gotten used to the notion of a closed season.

One nice thing about a closed season is it gives the fish a long break from anglers, which is good for the trout. They can pretty much spawn in peace -- although I've seen Deschutes redsides on redds in May and June -- and eat in peace for a few months. All of that peaceful eating tends to make smart trout a little dumber, as they forget about us.

That's my theory, anyway.

The Deschutes was high and cold and nasty for the April 24 opener, and I was delighted. I stayed home in Hood River, pestered smallmouth bass on the Columbia River -- and kept an eye on the Internet river flow websites. My plan to was to hit the Deschutes during the week -- when the flows had dropped, the river had cleared -- and all the weekend anglers were long gone.  I thought the real opening day of this water would come during the week -- and I plotted and planned to be there.

I didn't feel brilliant -- I'm too old for that -- but I did feel smart.

So, I lashed the Subaru to Warm Springs Wednesday morning -- the river was still a little high, but it was very fishable. Few other anglers were on the river, and I had a good feeling as the sky clouded up and light rain showers buzzed over the canyon.

I sat on the bank -- at a spot just below a riffle that often pops a blue winged olive hatch on a drizzly day -- and tied on a size 20 biplane, which is a Craig Mathews pattern that straddles the line between a crippled adult and a messed-up spinner. I love this fly -- even though it is hard to see on the water -- as trout often prefer cripples or spinners during a hatch. For years, I fished regular flies that imitated blue winged olive duns -- the winged adults that just climbed out of the nymphal skins -- and watched rising trout refuse them. One day I realized that the fish were eating spent spinners -- the adults that have molted, had buggy sex and then flop onto the water to lay eggs and die. 

I didn't come to this discovery through years of on-stream study. I just looked down at my waders while tying on yet another dun pattern. Hundreds of spinners were clustered on my thighs. Then I remembered hearing John Hazel -- one of the owners of the Deschutes Angler fly shop in Maupin, Oregon -- telling a customer that most anglers don't notice spinner falls -- and don't fish them.

 It's hard to notice spinners, as they usually lie flat on the surface in a martyr-like pose of limp bodies and outstretched wings. Duns, on the other hand, float primly along on the surface, and their upright wings look like sails on a sailboat. Light flashed in the many dark corners of my trout-addled brain. I tied on a spinner pattern, and all those tough, picky rising trout became silly and easy and fun. Some of them were also big. The world has seemer a little nicer and more fun since that day.

So, I now carry lots of mayfly spinner patterns -- or patterns that, like the Biplane, could be seen of as a spinner. I'm happy about all this, but I also wonder what other obvious things I'm missing out there. 

Anyway, quite a few blue winged olive duns -- and, yes, quite a few spinners -- rode the surface. After a few minutes, quite a few trout were rising. I crept into position and cast my fly to risers. But something was wrong. The fish didn't eat my fly, and they left rings of swirling water. Not one fish was tipping and sipping or porpoising. Tipping and sipping or porpoising are the kind of rise forms I expect to see when small mayflies ride the surface. Boiling, swirling rises are often a sign that caddis are hatching.

I didn't see any caddis -- and hundreds of mayfly duns and spinners were on the water. So, I kept flogging the water and not catching much. I did catch a couple steelhead smolts, which are swarming almost everywhere on the Deschutes right now. These silvery, panfish-sized fish are snapping at any food during their long trip downstream to the Columbia River, and, eventually, the Pacific Ocean.

A steelhead smolt -- the only hatchery fish you'll find on the lower Deschutes -- will snap at anything.

Smolts will eat just about any fly -- even a fly motorboating against the current -- and I don't like to catch these fish. I want to hook them in few years -- when they return as big, bright steelhead.

I could see resident redside rainbows rising and eating -- but they didn't want any of my mayfly imitations. I submerged myself into a frenzy of tying on new flies, casting them a few times, cutting them off  and tying on new flies. After a while, I ran out of new flies -- and tippet. I sat on the bank to tie on a new tippet. At that moment, a caddis tried to climb into my nose. After I dislodged that bug, I looked at the spears of new reed canary grass all around me. Yes, quite a few caddis -- a size 14 with a brown body that I suspect were grannoms -- AKA Mother's Day Caddis -- scuttled around in the greenery. 

But I didn't see any caddis on the water. Then, I remembered that hatching caddis are really hard to see, as they usually don't bob along on the surface. I felt kind of, well, foolish. How could I miss these bugs, those swirling rises and the trout's total indifference to mayflies?

All my plotting and planning added up to too much thinking and not enough noticing. And the fish seemed to have a pretty good idea of what they wanted to eat -- even though they hadn't seen any fake flies for months.

I was foolish.

But I did tie on a Iris Caddis -- another Craig Mathews creation -- and drifted it over a bank riser. The fly vanished in a swirling rise, and a thick redside rainbow bolted for fast water. The hatch petered off after that moment, and I spent the rest of the day wandering the river -- and seeing what was familiar and what was new.

I had a lot to learn.

Slowing down -- and even stopping -- for maximum efficiency on Oregon's Deschutes River

Deschutes River redsides rainbow trout like spots like this one on a drizzly, cool spring day. 

A mild,  spring-like winter has given way to a chilly, wintery spring across the Northwest, and the fishing is bollixed up all over the place.

One storm after another keeps rolling in -- and the rivers are going up and down like a kid's yo-yo. And the fishing gets hot and cold just as fast. I've haunted Oregon's Deschutes River near the trout-happy town of Maupin a lot during the past two months, and I keep missing the big hatches of blue-winged olive and March Brown mayflies.  Maybe my timing is wrong -- or maybe I've just been moving too fast.

I suspect I've been moving too fast -- and driving too much.

An angler can drive along the river upstream and downstream of Maupin, and it's tempting to ease the Subaru along the muddy road and look for rising trout. Now, this is a dangerous thing to do, as a big rising resides rainbow trout is quite a distraction, and  it's a swift trip to cold water if the car veers down the bank.

I saw that the weather called for cloud cover and showers on Monday, and I hoped that the trout had gotten used to these shots of cold water rolling downstream every few days. I prefer to fish the Deschutes when it is clear, as stained water -- even the light, green-tea tint we've been seeing lately -- seems to cut into the number of rising trout. Yes, nymphing will bring a lot of bites, and I'll nymph when I have to. But seeing a big redsides suck down a dry fly fires all of my fishing cylinders, and I'll happily trade four nice fish on nymphs to one nice fish on a dry fly.

I left Hood River with hopes of one good fish. I thought about the Deschutes as I lashed the car the 60-odd miles to Maupin, and I realized I've gotten away from the most efficient way to fish the river -- which, strangely enough, looks really inefficient. The best fishing usually comes when you slowly creep along the bank and scour the water up close. It can take two hours to cover a quarter-mile of bank, but I learn a lot more -- and seem to catch more fish -- when I'm creeping along the steep banks.

I didn't learn this bankside dance all by myself. Amy and John Hazel, owners of the Maupin-based Deschutes Angler fly shop, tell anyone who will listen about bank-feeding trout. But those banks are steep, the rattlesnakes are scary and it's a lot easier to drive a car or row a driftboat along the river. And all of us -- including me -- get lazy from time to time.

I'd kind of gotten away from my usual late winter/early spring ways of parking the car, rigging up, sliding down the steep bank and walking a long ways. I was driving around too much -- and hoping to stumble onto a good pod of trout rising to fleets of floating bugs. That's kind of a longshot on this part of the Deschutes, as most of the trout sipping dry flies are sprinkled along the banks.  You can find pods of rising fish, but most of the good trout -- the broad-backed, 16-inches-and-better tippet busters set up shop in the foam lines within inches of the bank.  These bigger fish tip and sip and tip and sip all day -- until some angler bumbles along and spooks them with a crummy cast.

On Monday, that bumbling angler was me. 

I parked upstream of Maupin, rigged up and picked my way down a bouldered bank. I thought of rattlesnakes coming out of winter hibernation, so I watched where I put my hands and feet. An Deschutes angler navigating a steep, rocky bank looks kind of like a modern dance -- minus the black leotard and bare feet. There are short bursts of hopping from rock to rock, followed with frozen pauses as the angler teeters on a boulder and looks for the next step.

So, I did the slow-motion dance down the bank. Every few steps, I'd stop and stare upstream for the poking noses or spreading rings of a rising trout. The hatch -- a few skimpy waves of blue-winged olive mayflies, even fewer March Browns and a few midges -- wasn't enough to get pods of fish rising. But enough bugs rode the foamlines to attract a few fish to the bank. I even sat and gazed at especially good looking stretches of water. 

I bungled the first trout, which was rising in the glassy currents below a riffle. My leader slapped the water, and the fish sidled off into the deeper water and vanished. Deschutes trout grow up with some of the best anglers in the Northwest, and they see dozens of fake flies and bad casts every year.  That spooked trout was big.

I redeemed myself a bit on the next fish, which sucked down a March Brown parachute -- size 14 -- with an audible slurp. I soon has 12 inches of Deschutes redsides at my feet -- after the trout took one nice, long run into the fast current.

Weather fronts -- walls of clouds spitting rain -- blew overhead from time to time, and the bugs hatched best when the rain fell. Swirling winds pulsed through the canyon during the short sunny stretches. One burst of wind blew my cast right into the bank and tangled my leader in the spiny branches of a wild rose. The rose was sprouting new, light-green leaves.

But that fickle, troublesome breeze also carried the heady scent of wet sagebrush.

Every now and then, a tree or rock outcropping blocked my slow dance upstream, so I'd climb up the bank and walk the road to get around the obstacle. On one such detour, I found evidence of a big mule deer.

 

A fresh deer hoofprint  -- crisp in the muddy edge of the road -- caught my eye. I followed the track for about 100 yards -- until it veered across the road and vanished up a rocky draw that led toward the top of the Deschutes River's basalt canyon. 

I wondered whether I'd spooked the deer as I slowly danced down the bank. Mule deer are very common in this canyon, and the animals flush like quail when I hike back to my car in the darkness of a summer evening.  

A little further down the bank, I came across raccoon track in some bankside mud -- and the remains of a crayfish dinner. 

I came close to some prime water -- foam lines slid into pillows of soft current agains the bankside rocks just downstream of a outcropping covered with dead, rustling reed canary grass. A large snout poked out of the water a few times. That snout was huge -- far too big to be a trout.

The steep banks of the Deschutes River can be a pain to climb -- or hike down -- but they also give slow-moving anglers a great view -- an osprey-eyed view -- of what is happening in the water. I scrambled up the rocky bank and frog-walked down the road toward that rising snout. I found a spawn-battered steelhead rising to just about every bug in the current.

 

I hid behind a clump of sagebrush and watched the fish.

The steelhead waited for foam lines to pass overhead before rising -- lots of floundering bugs ride Deschutes foam lines -- and I could make out a broad red stripe on the fish's ragged sides. This stripe -- plus the feeding -- made me pretty sure that it was a steelhead and not a salmon. A salmon would have been black as midnight and drifting downstream in the current.

I didn't cast to the steelhead -- there is nothing sporting or fun about hooking a spawn-weakened fish -- but watching the big fish made me a little dizzy.  The fish fed for a few minutes and then eased under the grassy outcropping. I walked upstream about 100 yards before I eased down the rocky bank and started dancing from rock to rock -- and pausing to look for trout.

I caught a couple more fish before the afternoon hatches petered out. The trout sprinkled in the soft water along the banks stopped rising. I thought about rigging up a nymph and casting into current seams, as I hadn't landed a really big trout in several hours of fishing. Lobbing a big, black stonefly nymph into the river -- especially if it has a small, bright nymph tied onto a trailing dropper -- is the best way to hook a big Deschutes redside. I thought about hearing my reel chirp and screech, but I lurched up the bank -- looking for rattlers every step -- instead.

I walked downstream to look at the steelhead again. The big, ragged fish was gone. The rain pelted my face on the long walk back to the car.