Blue Wing Olives and Late Season Steelhead
Welcome, and thanks for visiting Outfishing Adventures! This business has been a labor of love to create over the last few months, with many long days and late nights of coffee consumption. I hope you enjoy poking around to see what Evan and I have to offer. We’re excited to launch our guide business on the Lower Deschutes this season and look forward to taking you out on the water. In the meantime, we’ll use this space to update you all on the fishing, post recaps of our trips, and share our knowledge on this fishery we love.
This last week we have seen some decent Blue Wing Olive hatches on the cloudy days, with hatch windows ranging from 1 to 2 hours. Keep in mind that the BWO hatches can come off in hoards one day then be non-existent on other days even when the conditions are right. With this being the case, I always have my dry fly rod rigged and ready for action and will nymph until I see enough activity to peak my interest in fishing a dry.
Nymphing for trout continues to be a very productive way to find fish as you wait for the golden hours of dry fly fishing to happen. The most productive patterns fished sub-surface lately have been heavy stonefly nymphs like the Hot Spot Bead Head Head Girdle Bug, or, to get a little fancier, the Zirdle Bug, which is a sort of Frankenstein’s moster of a Girdle Bug and a Zonker Streamer. We have been pairing these larger flies up with incredibly bright small size 16 and 18 searching patterns like the Metallic Pink Bead Hot Spot Pheasant tail and Hares Ears that always have a home in our box on the Lower D. We are even going so crazy as to fish Neon Orange and Pink Bead attractor style European Nymphs like the Orange Head Mary or Pink Bead Blowtorch. If fish are finicky for the day, try a small size 18 Midge pupa in red or brown to turn your day around.
Remember when fishing nymph rigs to look for slower paced water with a bit more depth. This can be a challenging transition for anglers coming out of fishing the fast shallow pocket water that is such a large part of our summer habitat. Once you find some fish be sure to take note of the depth and speed and try to match that throughout the day for continued success. Don’t be afraid to fish over sand a bit in the winter, as the Murder Birds aka Osprey are not here preying on our trout and they will move into more vulnerable habitat like sandy areas in the winter that provide slower water and easy living. Once temps start to rise in the spring and the birds are back, forget about that habitat until it’s December again.
Steelhead fishing can still produce a fish or two a day on the swing if you put your time in, but we are definitely getting closer and closer to the time that these fish just lose interest in grabbing a swung fly. I like to fish early in the month of December for steelhead, but as we get into the second half I typically accept the end of the season for steelhead and leave them to procreate in peace. If you do decide to continue swinging later into the month or run into one of these fish incidentally on your trout nymphing rig, then please remember to handle them responsibly and keep those wild fish in the water after bringing them in. The steelhead numbers have been a little bit better this year, and if we practice responsible handling of the wild fish there might be hope yet for even better numbers moving forward.
If you’ve made it this far, I appreciate you taking the time to read my report. I will try to have these coming out as regularly as possible so you can keep up to date on what’s happening on the Lower Deschutes here in Maupin, Oregon. Tight Lines and Happy Fishing.
