After a busy summer guiding in Idaho, Dave and I treated ourselves to a week of fly fishing and camping in Central Oregon.
For the first few days (Sept 30 to Oct 2) we floated the Deschutes River (Warm Springs to Trout Creek). Dave demonstrated his ability with French Nymphing Techniques and Slinky Indicators, landing many nice trout in the 14” to 18” range on #10 October Caddis Nymphs, #18 Beadhead Pheasant Tail Nymphs and #16 DD Nymphs. Below is his first catch of the trip.
Nice Trout French Nymphing!
I opted to chase steelhead in early morning and evening hours. I got a couple of grabs but no solid hook-ups. In the afternoon I decided to trout fish with a traditional dead drift and French Nymphing. I landed some nice trout fishing both techniques – but French Nymphing provided me with my largest trout of the trip. Check out the nice red side.
Nice Trout French Nymphing
We then moved to the Crooked River for the remainder of our trip. My goodness I hadn’t been on the Crooked River in years. I forgot how stunning the scenery is on that river and how many fish there are in that river.
Looking downstream on the Crooked River
Fishing on the Crooked River was extremely good during mid-day hours, with decent midge, caddis, and mayfly hatches between the hours of 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM. #20 Zebra Midges, #14 tan Elk Hair Caddis, and any form of #18 or #20 Blue Winged Olive worked well. Most of the fish we landed were in the 8” to 12” range. We fished dries and nymphs with a traditional drift and French Nymphed. Again french nymphing was more productive sub-surface. But to me nothing is funner than fishing small dries on a bamboo rod!
Another trout - French Nymphing
In the end – again French Nymphing proved to be the most successful technique for hooking and landing fish on both the Deschutes and Crooked River!
I ended the trip with teaching an intermediate fly fishing class. All the structure on the Crooked makes for a great classroom to teach line management!
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