An X-Caddis in the mouth of a back-eddy Deschutes River redsides is a sure sign of spring.
Spring comes to the Northwest in scattered fits and starts.
Snow drifts still glow in the thick, shaded Douglas fir stands on Oregon's Mount Hood high country -- weeks after flowers bloom in the foothills. It snowed eight inches on the high slopes of Mount Hood a few days ago, even though it was first week of May. Mount Hood keeps at least some snow all year, but the some of melted water from the mountain's snow, and glacial ice eventually flows down into the Deschutes River.
I found myself driving past patches of Mount Hood snow -- and then steering the Subaru down the big drop in elevation to the Deschutes River Friday morning. The air was pretty balmy while I lashed the car over the Highway 26 pass and through a part of the Northwest that is still pretty much in winter. The highway gradually dropped away from the steep, forested slopes of Mount Hood and headed across the spring-green high desert sagebrush. I was on yet another trip to the Warm Springs to Trout Creek drift in the Deschutes River Canyon.
The 20-odd miles of sun-lashed highway between the alpine forests and the giant, basalt Deschutes Canyon is oddly lush right now. The rains and snows of the past few weeks have pushed swathes of green grass among the desert sagebrush. Spring isn't quite ready in the high country, but it has arrived on the Central Oregon high desert.
Spring -- real spring -- somehow arrived on The Deschutes River since my last visit a week or so ago. The high, cold, murky flows have dropped and cleared. The green grass on the riverbank and canyon walls is already starting to go to seed. Spring is the shortest season of the year in the Deschutes River Canyon.
Summer arrives when the hard sun bakes and bleaches that grass into brittle, yellow-brown clumps. But the grass that lives within a few feet of the river stays green all summer.
But summer is still a few weeks away.
I've always thought the surest sign of spring is when caddis flies start emerging from the river's rocky riffles and jam up in the swirling backeddies. Real spring caddis hatches last for hours, but it's hard to see lots of bugs on the water. The caddis just trickle off the river -- and then go hide among the pea-green leaves of riverside grass, leaves and brush. It's easy to tell when the trout have finally started noticing caddis. The fish leap from the water, make swirling, boiling rises in the slower bank water -- and stack up in the eddies to eat the caddis that didn't quite make the jump to winged insect.
That's exactly what I found on the Warm Springs to Trout Creek drift on Friday. Caddis rattled around in the brush, fish rose on the banks -- and healthy, thick trout sharked around for crippled caddis flies in the swirling backeddies. A big Deschutes River backeddy looks kind of like a satellite photo of a hurricane headed for Florida. The current swirls like a whirlpool, calms -- and then swirls again. The wild redside rainbow trout cruise around in the billowing currents and sip in the helpless bugs.
My battered copy of "Hatch Guide for the Lower Deschutes River" by Jim Schollmeyer reminds me every year that many different species of caddis get cranking this time of year. Green sedges, spotted sedges, weedy-water caddis, saddle-case caddis, Grannom -- the famous "Mother's Day Caddis -- and probably dozens of others cut their way out of submerged, cocoon-like pupal cases and thrash their way to the surface.
Anglers need to tie imitations of caddis pupa and adults in sizes 12 through 20. Have a selection of dry flies -- X-Caddis, Elk-Hair Caddis, Iris Caddis and Lawson's Spent Partridge Caddis in shades of olive, green, tan and grey. It's also a good idea to tie up soft-hackle wet flies in the same sizes and colors. Soft-hackle flies imitate the emerging caddis swimming to the surface -- and adult egg-laying caddis swimming toward the bottom.
Many of the emerging caddis get tangled up or stuck in the surface film -- and the redsides hammer this easy food. Friday was warm -- but not hot -- and clouds shaded the canyon on and off throughout the day. This is the most pleasant weather of the year on this desert river. You need to carry a fleece and a rain jacket, but the blast-furnace days of summer are still weeks away. You also need to carry flies that imitate crippled caddis.
I usually tie a size 14 or 16 X-Caddis onto my 5X tippet -- and then tie a dropper tippet onto the hook bend of the X-Caddis. An Iris Caddis goes onto the dropper. Then I hunt for a backeddy with swirling fish. Sometimes an eddy can be crammed with steelhead smolt eating their way downstream to the Pacific Ocean. I leave these ravenous babies alone and look for bigger, better redsides.
On Friday, I found nice redsides rising in backeddies all day long -- thanks to all those emerging caddis trickling off the water all day long. The fish fed harder when the clouds softened the sunlight, and I always wonder whether the lower light makes the trout bolder -- or whether the the cloud cover prompts more caddis to thrash for the surface to start life as a winged adult. I suspect more bugs hatch under cloud cover -- and that the fish are happier in lower light.
A few fish ate the X-Caddis, but most gobbled the Iris Caddis.
One cool thing about this spring caddis fishing is that long periods of hatching bugs each day get the trout in the habit of looking at the surface for food. And most caddis hatch from spring through early fall. I love it when huge salmonflies and golden stoneflies crawl out of the river and hatch into winged adults that helicopter over the water and get into lots of trouble with big trout. But that crazy time usually lasts for a few weeks from late May through mid-June. Caddis keep going and going and going. I catch more Deschutes redsides on caddis pattern than any other fly.
When summer arrives -- usually in the first blowtorch days of June -- Deschutes caddis hatch into adults and lay eggs during the long, soft evenings. Sometimes the fish lock onto adults, sometimes they want the crippled emerger and sometimes they want a fly that shimmies in the current like a diving, egg-layng adult.
But on this spring day -- a day when trout never stopped rising in the swirling backeddies -- the fish wanted a fly that matched the crippled bugs that never make it out of the river. The Iris Caddis gives the impression of a crumpled, weak, gleaming, dying insect. Craig Mathews, owner of Blue Ribbon Flies in West Yellowstone, Montana, invented this fly for the Madison River. Craig showed me the fly years and years ago, and it works wherever caddis and trout live. That of course, is just about every trout stream in the world.
These same flies and methods work on spring and summer trout streams throughout the Northwest and Rocky Mountains.
A warm, balmy, partly cloudy spring day melts away when I'm standing in a swirling backeddy that is alive with rising trout. The fish get greedy and shark around with their dorsal fins poking out of the water. I miss more fish than I hook -- the currents quickly turn flies into tiny motorboats, even if you use an long leader and light tippet. But, if I find the right fly -- and keep casting -- my line and fly rod soon feel the electric charge of a trout.
It is spring -- at last spring! -- on Oregon's Deschutes River.
