This isn't a steelhead -- it's a wild, resident Deschutes River rainbow trout. These fish are hard to find and even harder to catch -- unless an angler is lucky enough to fish the right water at the right time.
I often say that big trout aren't the ultimate in fly fishing.
Any day with wild trout is a rich one, and size doesn't really matter -- until that once-a-year bolt of lightning strikes, and really big trout hammer my flies. Then size really does matter -- at least while it lasts.
Lightning jolted into my life this week when I -- once again -- raced to the Deschutes River to fish the big salmonfly and golden stonefly hatch on a drizzly, stormy afternoon. I arrived to find swarms of salmonflies and golden stones rattling through the tall grass, brush and streamside alder trees, and the trout were waiting for the inevitable tumbles and crashes into the water.
This year's big hatch on the Deschutes got an early start, but the bugs are still around more than 10 days after the first wave of big, armored-looking nymphs crawled out of the water and split the skin along their backs and emerged as thumb-sized, winged adults.
I watched some nymphs crawl out of the water and transform into adults -- an amazing sight this late in the hatch. These big bugs often crawl out and hatch all at once, but they seem to be emerging in waves this year -- at least on my favorite part of the river. I have been fishing salmonfly and golden stonefly dry flies on this water for more than 10 days -- and the bugs are still there.
The anglers are there as well. Humans wearing waders and waving fly rods lurched along the banks and cast big dry flies into the bankside water. Most of these folks were catching fish, but I wanted to find fish that hadn't seen so many anglers, so many flies -- or felt the sting of a barbless hook.
So, I yanked on my waders, put on my rain jacket, grabbed my tackle -- and a big bottle of water. Then I started hiking down the trail. I hiked past lots of anglers. I kept sipping water and looking at the water. Deschutes redside rainbows rarely group up in pods and sip down salmonflies and golden stones. They'll tip and sip like clockwork for caddis or mayflies or midges, but they don't rise with any rhythm for the big, juicy stoneflies.
Good anglers look for good water -- a fairly rapid flow along a steep bank that is studded with rocks, overhanging trees, tall reed canary grass, brush, poison oak and other hazards. Then they creep along in this jungle and chuck their big flies into the slots, current breaks and other good spots along the bank. This is more like fishing a popper for bass than dropping a delicate, size 18 Sparkle Dun dry fly to a trout rising to mayflies.
There isn't much elegance to busting through blackberry or rose thickets, crawling along the bankside rocks, wiping a spider web off your face -- and then pounding a short cast under the branches of an overhanging tree. Ticks, spiders and rattlesnakes lurk in the tall grass, and it pays to move slowly and carefully.
On this day, it was wet and cold when the wind blew and the rain spattered my face -- and it was hot 10 minutes later when the sun came out. But I kept my breathable rain coat on while I was in the jungle. I didn't want to feel something crawling in my nether regions on the drive home. This happened to me last year, and I pulled over, jumped into the roadside Douglas fir forest and dropped my drawers to find a tick crawling around and looking for a place to dig in for a long snack.
Anyway, I finally found a spot where few anglers are dumb enough to go. The steep banks, sliding rock piles and jungle-like vegetation scare a lot of people away. After all, why suffer when fish are rising in the easier water?
I love this spot for all of its nasty perils, how it scares away other anglers -- and for the deep, fast water just off the banks. I suspect that many of the Deschutes River's biggest redside rainbow trout live in the deep, rocky fast water most of the year and feast on the meaty salmonfly and golden stonefly nymphs almost all year long. Millions of these bugs clamber around on the big rocks under the deep, fast, roiled water. And it is almost impossible to get a stonefly nymph -- even if it is weighted heavier than a .50-caliber bullet -- down through the fast, seething water to the bottom, which is where the trout lurk.
I suspect these deep-channel trout found a turbulent paradise in the deep slots, and they don't see many flies in a year -- until those fish follow the migrating salmonfly nymphs to the shallower bank water. The fish then hang around to gorge on the thumb-sized adult bugs. This is usually the best time of year to hook the biggest trout on the Deschutes. I know that some of these big fish come to the banks again during autumn to feast on October caddis, but most of them stay in the deep, swirling, food-rich water. Salmonfly and golden stonefly nymphs live for two years or more before becoming winged adults, so there are always several generations of big nymphs in the water.
I inched down the bank and eased through the bankside tangles. The Deschutes is popular river during late May and early June, but this bank doesn't have angler paths. The fishing just isn't good enough most of the year to bother entering this jungle.
I tied on a short section of 1X tippet -- about 12-pound-test -- to my 7-foot leader. This fishing isn't delicate or elegant, and anglers need heavy leaders to have a shot of landing big fish in fast water strewn with driftwood mazes and sharp rocks.
Then I started working my way upstream. On my third cast -- which put the size 8 Rubber-legged Norm Woods Special just downstream of the overhanging branches of an alder tree -- a big head sucked down the fly. I watched my yellow backing line zip through the rod guides a few seconds later. The big trout headed right for home, which was that fast, deep water just off the bank. Big trout know how to use fast current.
But I got lucky, as the trout didn't find any snags, and that heavy tippet helped me work the big fish upstream. My biggest Deschutes redsides rainbow trout -- longer than 20 inches and thick in the body and shoulders -- came to my shaking hand.
A few minutes later -- after a rainstorm blew a lot of big bugs into the water -- another big trout gobbled my Norm Woods Special. This fish blew into the fast water, hit a driftwood snag and snapped my tippet.
I tied on another fly and inched through the bankside jungle once again. A fish came out from under a bush that dangled branches into a bankside slot -- and whacked the fly.
The fish surged upstream and bulled against the current. The vibrations of big trout's tail beating against the river flow thrummed up my tight line and down the fly rod to my shaking hand.
The fish came downstream, and drifted into the slower, bankside water just downstream. The fish stopped under the canopy of an alder tree. I bent the rod toward the bank and coaxed the fish -- the third huge trout of the day -- upstream. The fish came closer, closer, closer -- and then rocketed back downstream. The pull of the fish bent the tip of my 6-weight rod against a tree branch -- and expensive graphite shattered.
Six inches of broken rod tip dangled on my line as I landed the fish.
I felt lucky and dizzy and sweaty and dazed. My rod was broken, and my fishing was done for the day. I wondered if my rod warranty covered the bull rush of a big trout roaring downstream and slamming a rod tip against a tree branch.
But I didn't really care. Lightning had struck more than once on this day, and it was a day to remember. I don't think I could have imagined the past few hours, but it all happened.
I reeled in my line, took a last swig of water and started picking my way up that steep bank. It was a long hike back to the car.
