I headed down to the mouth of the Deschutes River this past Sunday with the hopes of getting into a few steelhead. With the Columbia River running cooler and higher then normal the Deschutes hasn’t been receiving as many stray fish this year as it has in years past but within the past few weeks the fishing has picked up. It seems that the Deschutes finally cooled while the Columbia started to warm and fish were nosing into the Deschutes looking for a respite from the warm flows of the Columbia.

            We didn’t reach the mouth until 8 and quickly headed up river with the thought that we would hike up high and work our way down throughout the day. Given our late start most of the likely looking spots were already taken but when we came to Wagonblast there was one group in the lower end and another boat up high that was just pulling out. 

We quickly rigged up our rods with a type 3 sinktip and a small orange soft hackle for me and a nymph rig consisting of a Girdle Bug followed by a Orange Circus Caddis for Wyatt.  Wyatt has only steelhead fished once before so after I gave him a few pointers before I headed upstream to begin working through the run behind him.  I had made no more then 2 casts before Wyatt had hooked into a really nice hatchery fish that immediately took of running downstream. He worked the fish back upstream where I was hoping to tail it but the fish had other ideas and bolted back out on another even longer run before the hooked popped out.

Despite being extremely disappointed after loosing the fish Wyatt went back at it and it wasn’t more then 10 minutes later before he was into another fish. However after a quick boil this fish also came off having thrown the hook after thrashing on the surface. We continued to fish through the run and about a third of the way through I hooked into a nice native that gave me a good fight complete with several acrobatic leaps before I was able to tail her.  As soon as I had her by the tail and gave the line slack my barbless hook fell out and realizing she was free she bolted from my grasp.  We fished off and on for the next several hours without touching another fish before I hooked into a small fish that upon being hooked ran straight towards me so fast that I was forced to strip in line to keep tension on the fish.  Within a minute he was just a rod lengths away from me when I realized it was a hatchery fish which I desperately wanted for the BBQ, the fish however still had plenty of power and after a couple of good head shakes threw the hook while I watched dejected as my dinner swam away just out of reach.

Overall we managed to do pretty well despite fishing from 10 until 4 or so when the sun was shinning almost directly on the water and judging from the number of other people we saw with fish on there seemed to be a lot of fish around. Its worth mentioning that when we headed up they had highway 197 closed due to a fire and as of Monday the 29th both 26, 97, and 197 were all being closed off and on due to fire danger.  It sounds like the fire is only 10% contained so it might be several days before the roads are open full time again.

Ira Miller                          patientangler.com