Spring Fishing on the Deschutes

Dry Fly Seeker (click image for detail)

I’ve never understood why spring fishing on the Deschutes isn’t more popular. Oh sure, there’s the weather. Everybody thinks it’s going to be rainy all the time. I won’t lie; you can get hit, but 90% of the time it’s just showery – the rain doesn’t last long. The all day storms are rare.

What the moisture does to the river and the surrounding landscape – now that’s really special. Spring is the growing season. The river has a completely different look. The hills that are so dry and golden brown in summer are all green and growing. Down along the river the plants really flourish. We often have to “break out” the camp sites. Over the winter the beaten down areas all come up in grass again. Sometimes,  going to bed at night in one of my regular camping spots, I have to put my cot down in a bed of wild flowers. I'll go to sleep with a little sensory massage – smelling the flowers, listening to the river and watching a passing meteor shower.

The fishing is always good early in the year. Even though the river will be a little high and off color the water temperature is still rising. A lot of deep river activity is starting. Stoneflies are migration toward the bank in anticipation of the hatch in late May and June. There lots of Mayflies and caddis too. Nymphing is usually preferred but dry fly periods do come along – if you catch them they can be very good.

All the fish are active, even the little steelhead and salmon smolts are feeding hard. Sometime you see the tiny one or two inch long King Salmon feeding so heavily in the soft foam lines near the shore it looks like rain drops on the water.

The slightly larger 6 and 8 inch steelhead smolts can be down right pesky. The ones from the hatchery are not all that bright; they’ll go for any fly that swings through the water. You’ve actually have to be a little careful and try not to let your fly get in the smolt zone (close to shore). You don’t want to hurt ‘em – better to rendezvous a couple of year form now when they’re swimming the other way, freshly back from the sea.

This year on one trip I was watching the sea gulls hunt for the smolts. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Every time we came to a rapid with a wave train below it I would see the sea gulls flying up and down the river looking for food but I couldn’t see what they were after. Finally I a bird got a fish. The smolts were being disoriented passing through the waves – the sea gulls were waiting for them to come floating up near the surface.

The ducks and geese are fun too. They’ve all got clutches of young. The geese are so cute at first – then so homely when they get to that little larger gosling stage. The little Mergansers are complete water babies right from birth – they’ll go right through the heaviest whitewater. The mother will take them running across the river to escape for the boat. When she stops suddenly without putting on the break lights, the little ones run right up on her back. They’ll hitch a ride there for a while if she’ll let them.

There’s just so much going on, so many things, such good fishing. You know, on second thought, don’t bother with the spring fishing. It’s not nearly as good as I said. The one thing I don’t have on the Deschutes in spring is other fishermen. I don’t think I really need them.