My good friend Mark and I decided to go hit the Metolius river yesterday while everyone else was getting ready for the big football game. Until at least the Middle of March you can figure on alot of Talk about the Metolius river. It is without a doubt my favorite winter fishery.
Yesterday was a picture perfect metolius winter day. Mostly cloudy, no wind, and above freezing. Its really about all you can ask for in the first part of february.
The morning basically started as it always does on a winter metolius fishing trip for Mark and I. Breakfast at the Gallery in Sisters. This is really an important part of any winte metolius fishing trip. When it comes to fishing the metolius Karma plays a big part and you don't want to mess with the fishing gods. After breakfast it was off to the river.....We decided to fish a favorite stretch of river for bull trout to start the morning off. Streamer fishing is the name of the game for us. There is no doubt that you can hookup more Bulls with nymphs most of the time. But its not all about the numbers...For me its all about standing in that crystal clear water stripping a streamer through the current and watching the bull trout give chase and grab the fly. Few things are as fun to watch.
I had a couple chases and one grab but no hookups, Mark managed to stick a smaller Bull and all was well....We decided to move farther upstream to a popular stretch of water to see if the Blue Winged Olive hatch was going to show up and if the trout were going to look up. We lucked out in both regards as around noon the hatch started and the fish started rising. Armed with some Parachute BWO patterns of my own makings we both hooked plenty of trout. Both rainbow and Browns. None were very big, the biggest probably right at 12" but we weren't expecting anything to large where we were and after throwing large streamers for large Bulls in the morning finishing out the afternoon with presenting dries to rising trout with a 3wt was nice.
We finished up mid afternoon as the hatch petered out. Home just in time to turn the game on. Man its a rough life being a fly fishing bum :)
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Nice. I hit the D first and then listened to a fuzzy A:M broadcast of the game on the way to the Metolious. The city of New Orleans deserved it. You said in my post that the upper river had lots of salmon smolts. Are those Kokanee smolts or are you talking Chinook? I'm starting another blog for just fishing and surfing. Will link you up when I'm set up. Cheers
ReplyDeleteBased on head shape, color and tail i am pretty sure that they were chinook smolts.
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