Oregon Fly Fishing Report – Small Stream Outfitters & Guides

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Some of my favorite things about fly fishing are seeing new places, going on adventures and meeting new people. So when I started packing for our family vacation to Michigan, I threw a few fly rods in the bottom of the bag. Rarely do I travel without one, and the fact that our lodging for the next week was to be on the banks of a 450 acre lake, just a stones throw from Lake Michigan, I packed three. Why take just one when you can take three? I condensed 20 fly boxes to 6, you never know what you’re going to need… especially considering I have never fished for bass before, tossed in some reels, tippet and other goodies and away we went.

My son is not yet a year old and feels that a life jacket is just too constricting when you’re learning to walk, so I had to find another angling partner. I had hoped that the Mickey Mouse pole would be a hit, but not so much. Next time…. Lucky for me, my father in law is an avid angler from Indiana and an expert on capturing and frying bluegills. I hadn’t caught one of those either, why not try.

We fished for a couple hours each morning, sipping our cups of coffee and casting dry flies from a pontoon style party barge, coaxing sunfish of all varieties out from around grass beds to sip dries. There were a few Hexagenia limbata (Hex) around at random times and plenty of mosquitos, which seemed to be a favorite of the little guys. I fished hopper dropper style with a 3wt for the sunfish and had those little buggers dialed in no time. I fished a large mayfly imitation on top and a small red serendipity below, they loved it. The bluegill and other sunfish varieties would only come up to feed when the lake was dead still, early morning and late evening, so once a breeze rippled the water each day, I switched to bass.

I experimented with different streamers and poppers throughout the week and had the most success on deep water clousers. I caught a few bass each morning session, from really small up to a pound or so, but nothing big. It was fun and they pulled well on a 4wt, but still no big ones. I know they live there, I’ve seen the shows, Jimmy and Joe-Bob can do it, why can’t I? Not that I felt any pressure, I wasn’t guiding, I was on vacation, fishing a lake in shorts and tee-shirt, casting a fly rod. Still it would be nice to get a good one.

On the very last morning of fishing we drifted over a weed bed not fished by use before. It was about 8-10 feet deep and I could just make out the tops of the weed piles under the broken surface of the water. I fan casted a #4 chartreuse and white clouser as we drifted slowly with the wind. I stripped once and felt the weight. I lifted and the fish immediately jumped, ahhh, a good one! Now I see why millions of people fish for these buggers. They pull on a 4wt. Still not a steelhead or salmon, but great fun just the same. I took me a minute or so to get him boat side, as he attempted to bury himself in the weeds a few times and jumped once more before coming to hand.

That did it, my trip was made. A change of pace, change of scenery and change of species was the perfect break in my Summer guiding schedule. As I boarded the plane to come home, I kept thinking, only two weeks to sea-run cutthroats. I’m refreshed and ready!

This short poem was written by a long time angling friend and captures the essence of Fall of the Oregon Coast. Enjoy.

in Fall
a poem by R. Christopher Anderson

After a summer waiting for rain
it came and left us in the night
and with all but the coldest fog burned away
By October sun’s faded light
Our thoughts balance on summer’s rays,
and approaching winter nights
a rising tide and fall freshet brings them through
fish running toward their journey’s end
A season of dust is washed from cedar boughs
That shade autumn’s fading frost
Blowing leaves stir memories not yet lost
A single curve of river or changing sky can bring them back
Of all the gravel paths that my soul knows
Amongst wood stove smoke and golden tamarack,
rusty machines, and the Coast Ranges ghostly posts,
Drift Creek road still haunts me most

Viewing Osprey on Oregon rivers is a regular occurrence. Like us, they are fishermen and good ones at that. I always enjoy watching them and it’s a rare treat to see them dive and catch a fish. They have never tried to grab a hooked fish from myself or a client, that is until yesterday.

I spent the day on the McKenzie with David from Kansas having a glorious time catching Rainbows and Cutthroats. Even with the sunny skies the hatchery rainbows were particularly aggressive and David’s rod was bent often. About halfway through our float, there’s a great riffle that always holds fish and is a favorite hang out spot for a pair of Osprey. Rich Youngers of Creekside Fly Shop has had client’s fish stolen on multiple occasions at this spot, but for whatever reason, it hadn’t happened to me. I had heard all the stories and saw all the pictures, so of course David and I were chatting about the birds as we approached and set anchor.

David made a cast with his streamer and instantly hooked up. I watched him as he fought the fish and just as I was about to reach over and grab the line to land it, a large splash startled us. An osprey was in the water, just feet in front of the boat. He took off with our fish in tow and now Dave had a 12″ rainbow and very large bird attached to his 5 weight! Awesome! “Break him off”, I yelled while laughing. He pulled back and away the bird went, back across the river. Now one less hatchery rainbow in the river… That alone was enough to make the day and certainly lightning couldn’t strike twice. As I tied on a new tippet and fly, Dave got out his camera to snap some photos of the other half of the Osprey pair, sitting in a tree across the river.

I finished the knot, stripped off some line and flicked a cast out the side of the boat, waiting while he finished snapping shots. As the fly swung in front of the boat (did I mention fishing was hot yesterday) the rod surged and now I had one on. “Get that camera ready” I said. And with that, she took off from the tree, flew across the river and started a dive on the fish. Not wanting to lose another fly, I shook the fish off right before she hit the water. Success!! She got the fish, I saved my fly and Dave snapped away. Count two for the Osprey. As she flew away, presumably to feed their babies, Dave and I chuckled as he made a cast and hooked another fish.

Now with the Ospreys fed, we can get on to catching more fish!

Small Stream Outfitters is proud to introduce new hat styles for 2009. In addition to our already popular Dark Khaki 6-panel low profile ball cap with the Small Stream Outfitters Puple Peril logo, we now have low-profile ball caps in black and knit beanies in black. The new black hats feature a logo with a gold hook and white lettering. Order yours today at Small Stream Outfitters!

Hi Anglers,

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Tight Lines,
Small Stream Outfitters

Written by Robert McWilliams
3/14/09

When Jesse invited me to scout with him the River, I asked him what time I should show up. He said between 4:30 and 5 AM. Even though I had to drive through cross-town Portland traffic and cross over the Willamette, there aren’t a lot of cars on the road between 3 and 4 AM and arrived up 3:55. Even so, Jesse was waiting by his vehicle, loaded and ready to go.

The only vehicles on the road were loaded logging trucks, zooming at or just above the speed limit, and never, ever, slowing down. I’ve always said that if you can keep up with an Oregon logging truck, you are driving too fast. I told Jesse they must load the trucks the day before so they can take off so early. Jesse said most logging truck drivers are done by 3PM.

There was snow on the pass through the Oregon Coast Range, a mere 1200 feet above sea level and still traces of snow when we pulled into Jesse’s favorite parking place, a giant mud hole on the side of narrow logging road. I was especially eager to fish this coastal river with Jesse because he knows the river intimately and guides scores fishermen there every year. Lots of people don’t realize how many times a guide scouts the same river before he brings in clients. What often appears to be preternatural knowledge of fish location is really the result of exhaustive preparation.

Steelhead, although they are in fact trout, don’t distribute themselves in the river the way trout do. Trout live in the river all year. They have plenty of time to find the best hiding and feeding places. Trout fishermen concentrate their efforts on these feeding locations. Steelhead are like 5 AM logging trucks. They are just passing through. They don’t eat; all they want to do is get to the spawning grounds. I’ve been told they can travel 20 miles in a day but like logging truckers, they have pull off at rest stops. The trick is to find these rest stops and be there when the fish are. My limited experience tells me there are two basic rest stops. One is in deepest part of the river channel and the other is behind or in front of big boulders where they can rest out of the current. Migrating steelhead are not very affable. The girls, until they are ready to lay their eggs, don’t want to be pestered and the boys don’t want competition. Both have teeth and use them to chase away others that get too close.

The weather was right, the water level was right and the water is a bright blue green, not too cloudy, not too clear. At the first stop we could see a pair of 20-inch fish waiting to spawn. Mamma was digging her redd (nest) and papa was impatiently milling around waiting for her to godammit get done. Ten feet behind were a pair of jacks (sexually mature, small fish) hoping to sneak in and fertilize mamma’s eggs when papa wasn’t paying attention. Papa may have been impatient but fully alert and eager to chase off the jacks if they got within 10 feet.

Even though the fish seemed crabby enough we couldn’t get them to strike. Jesse climbed up on the high bank told me where to cast and tried to guide my lure to the fish, but to no purpose. I was using a spinning rod and reel so that I could cast a heavily weighted lure that would sink into the deep fissures where I presumed the fish were. Jesse’s fly rig only allowed him to fish the shallower hideouts behind big boulders.

After lunch Jesse decided to fish a small relatively shallow lie upstream with his fly rod. I heard Jesse thrashing and I thought he had hooked a rock. His rod was bent into a fishhook shape and he was stumbling amidst hassock-sized boulder. The fish took off upstream, no small feat, considering the water was too fast to wade. Then the fish wrapped the line around a submerged tree limb. Somehow Jesse waded out into waist deep water, stuck his arm shoulder-deep in the water and freed the line. Then the fish took off again upstream through the boulders in the rapids. Jesse kept his rod tip, trying to keep the fish from wrapping the line around a rock. For 15 minutes Jesse stumbled but never fell as he thrashed after the fish. All I could do is pant along behind, hoping, but never finding a place where I could stand and help land the fish. Jesse didn’t need me and he brought the fish into a one by two-foot miniature sand bar between the boulders.

I came in handy after all. I had in my vest a disposable camera that I had carried in my vest for one month less than three years. I had half dozen pictures on the camera but hadn’t used it for at least two years, and didn’t dare develop because there was still a half roll of unexposed film. The battery was dead but I determinedly took pictures as fast as I could. The next day I had the pictures printed and Jesse digitized them.

There is a new steelhead calculation out to figure weight by length and girth ( L” x G” (squared) / 690 = weight. Jesse estimated the fish’s dimensions, using his hands as a point of reference and concluded the fish was about 34″ long by 17″ or 18″ around. Which would make it 15-16lbs. A truly gigantic steelhead is over 20 pounds. But I have never seen or heard of anyone landing such a ferocious, fish of this size is such a hazardous small creek as the one Jesse landed that day. Jesse has caught hundreds of steelhead and he said with nonchalance not typical of fishermen, that this was the largest he ever caught on a fly rod.

A week or so later I was embarrassed to realize I had at that time, in my vest, a small and flimsy tape measure, that I got for free at the hardware store, and I could have determined exactly how big the fish was. So far, I haven’t told Jesse.

I tried to get Jesse to go fishing with me to the Creek yesterday, but he was guiding a couple of fishermen on the Sandy and couldn’t come. Even fishing guides have to work. So I went by myself, to the same places where I caught my 32-inch steelhead several weeks ago and of which I have sent pictures to every mortal who might know who I am.

I fished every hole with no results. On the way back I decided to re-fish one hole with a spinner which I designed and made myself. It’s easy to make spinners if you have the parts, and I have hundreds. (How I came to have so many spinner parts is another story.)

I design my steelhead spinners to be unobtrusive. I consider most spinners to be so gaudy that they frighten the fish in clear water. My spinner is silver on the convex side, blue with a spot of white on the concave side and with a two inch white plastic tube-bait (don’t ask) on the hook. My logic is to provide a dark outline so the fish can see it against the sky if the fish is looking up and some color and flash so the fish can see it looking downward against the black rocks on the bottom. I had severe doubts about the shiny silver convex side, but the black tape I used to conceal most of the silver peeled off and I had nothing to replace it.

Whatever the reason, I hooked what I thought was a log, but turned out to be, praise the Lord, a steelhead. This time I remembered my flimsy tape measure. It lasted long enough for me to determine it was 35 inches long with a 17inch girth. According to Jesse’s formula that is a 14.65942-pound fish. I don’t believe in estimations. I brought with me a new disposable camera and the flash worked and I took four pictures. Which are safely stored in my fishing vest and which I will have printed when the roll is exhausted. (I only had Jesse’s pictures developed prematurely as thanks for inviting me to fish with him.)

When I got home I discovered the tape measure wouldn’t rewind and broke while trying to fix it. Reluctantly, I went to Fred Meyers to get a replacement. I found a small one in the hardware department but they only went to 36 inches. Remembering my last fish was 35 inches, I went to the sewing section and bought a seamstress tape that goes 72 inches. When I go steelhead fishing I like to be prepared.

A river report from the eyes of an angler, from a walk-in trip on the North Coast. February 15, 2008

I got up at 4 AM on a cold Friday in February, had breakfast and pulled two duffle bags of fishing gear out on the porch. One bag had two rods, two reels and my fishing vest. Unlike golfers who have a caddy or a cart to carry a dozen sticks, fishermen only take two and hope no more than one breaks. In a dozen years of serious fishing I have broken a rod or a reel on the average of one a year. My family insists I am clumsier than the average fisherman but I’ve never met a serious fly fisherman who goes out with less than two rods and reels. The other bag had my waders, wading shoes, wading staff, and most important of all, my heavy-duty rain jacket.

Jesse showed up promptly at 5AM and by 7:30 we were wading in the upper reaches of a stream in the Northern Coastal Range of Oregon. Jesse is only 32 but has been fly-fishing since he was four. Jesse has caught more fish between Mexico and Alaska than I have caught even in my dreams.

When I was exactly Jesse’s age I did geologic mapping in the same general area and didn’t think about steep canyons and seemingly impenetrable paths obstructed by deadfall and sticker bushes. But that was in the summer and I was wearing hiking boots, and that was 36 years ago when I could still lift my knees and I didn’t have what feel like stumps for feet. And then I wasn’t wearing what I call my Mickey Mouse costume: clumsy waders and floppy wading shoes. There are old fishermen and there are careless fishermen but there are no old careless fishermen. The first trail we took down to the river was so steep I didn’t think I could make it, but Jesse pulled a rope out of the brush that some one had tied to a tree for the purpose of keeping old men on the trail. That’s one of the things guides do: bring old men home.

The other thing guides do is catch fish. Jesse rigged up for the day with quarter inch diameter plastic bead two inches above the hook, then attached a small nymph below the hook on a nine inch piece of leader, then three quarter inch lead shot 24 inches up the leader and then a half inch plastic indicator at the top of a 9 foot leader. Even if you don’t know anything about fly-fishing you can figure that’s a lot of crap to cast. Especially when there is a high bank in the back with over hanging branches on each side of the river.

We fished 70 feet of water, then climbed up out of the canyon and went down and fished another 70 feet. The reason for all the trips up and down is because we fish the quiet water between the rapids. After four rigs lost in the bushes and half a dozen trips up and down it was 11AM. It all seemed like a wasted effort but Jesse said the next hole, only a half mile up the road, is one of the best in the river. It wasn’t any better but Jesse had another hole just a bit farther up that he promised was almost as good.

I hooked what Jesse judged a 15 pound steelhead. The fish was sluggish and I didn’t set the hook hard enough and it got away after a couple minutes. I met a guide in Wyoming who also fished steelhead who asked me how many steelhead I landed. I said I landed about one for every three I hook. The Wyoming guide said that’s about the same for me. Jesse says he lands half, but I knew I should never have lost that fish even if I only normally land a third. In the same hole I hooked another fish, almost as big as the first but this time I set the hook much harder and I landed it and we got a picture. The first two fish seemed confused and didn’t fight much but the third, the same size as the second, was more stubborn. We got that fish to the bank but it got away before Jesse could get a picture. We don’t use a landing net; we try to get the fish to swim up onto a shallow bar. These are all native fish and we have to release them unharmed, anyway. We counted the second as a caught fish.

The water’s warming up, Jesse said. The fish are getting more active. Jesse got up on the high bank and told me where to cast on the next run. Oh My Gosh, did you see that! That one tried to take the indicator! No, I didn’t I said, I’m down here trying to keep the drag out of the line. Make the same cast. There he is! Jesse could see the fish flash but all I could see was the indicator move. I set the hook and started getting the slack line off the water. He’s coming right at you! I reeled furiously but couldn’t keep up with the fish. The fish came around my right leg, made a U-turn and went back past my left leg. I raised my rod over my head and swung it behind my head and over my left shoulder and the fish took off. It went over the rapids into the pool below. The reel handle was spinning too fast to stop. Gotta get down steam! Jesse grabbed me by the nape of my heavy-duty rain jacket and pulled me down stream. I kept both hands on the rod and reel, trying to reel whenever I could get any line back. With Jesse keeping me from being washed away I stumbled and waddled 20 yards downstream to the next pool. By the time we got there the fish had crossed the rapids and was down in a third pool. Jesse estimated the fish pulled out between 80-100 yards of line. By the time I got the line back there was no fish. The fish had wrapped the line around a rock and went home. That’s what happens, Jesse said, when the water warms up. When it’s cold the fish are lethargic but when the water reaches the right temperature they become torpedoes.

I landed two out of four should have landed three but I will have to become a much better fisherman to land a fish like the fourth one. It’s not the size of the fish that counts. Some big fish are sissies and some small fish are tigers. All the steelheaders I have talked to say it’s impossible to stop a running steelhead in the rapids. Once they get in the fast water all you can do is chase them downstream until you get to quiet water. The trick is to keep them in the pool you hook them in. I did that for the first three and thought I had the fourth one cornered until he got behind me and took off.

Jesse and I are scheduled got back and try again in March. I don’t know what will happen but I know for certain my heavy-duty rain jacket is coming with us.

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