Gorge Fly Shop Blog: Columbia Gorge Fishing Report

Owyhee Brown

Owyhee Report

I was out on the Owyhee the last four days doing an annual family fishing trip. It actually was about 10 degrees cooler out east than here in the Gorge/Valley which was a nice surprise. The heat doesn’t impact that river as much as it comes out of the bottom of the dam from Lake Owyhee where it is nice and cold.

The fishing was really good as it usually always is in June. As soon as it was light enough to fish until around 10am, heads were rising everywhere eating spent pale morning duns. These pmds had hatched the night previous, laid their eggs, and died and now float down the river where the trout line up and gorge themselves. These mayflies were hatching in a #18 and an old rusty spinner pattern was the ticket in the mornings. Mid day when it got hot we had success using dry dropper rigs with an ant pattern and a split case pmd nymph dropped off the back. Most eats came on the nymph, but a few slowly slurped the ant.

The late afternoon 4-5pm until dark, the pmd’s were coming off hard. Fish were keyed in during these times on duns, so we were using hackle stackers and small pmd comparaduns to match the hatch. Dry fly fishing was fantastic all the way until it got dark.

I messed around the trout spey in certain riffles where there was enough current flow and depth to swing a fly. CFS was around 175 when we were there which is fairly low, usual summer flows are closer to 250. Swinging flies was a little challenging but managed a few fish.

Trout - Deschutes River:

With record daytime temperatures throughout much of Oregon where the Lower Deschutes flows, the river has heated up to scary high temps. Addressing this issue, PGE is now releasing cooler water from the dam in hopes of cooling the rest of the river. The water coming out of the dam is now around 54-55 degrees instead of 58. The upper lower river, ie above Maupin, is good to fish throughout the entire day, but below Maupin down to the Columbia, you should be very mindful of water temps for both trout and steelhead. 68 degrees is generally the cutoff point to where you should quit fishing. Fighting both trout and steelhead in this warm water, can be fatal to the fish upon release. It may look like they swim off okay, but more than likely will end up going belly up later on. The gauge at Moody is reading 70.5 degrees and on an upward trend as I write this post. This is too warm and you should not be fishing at all for trout or steelhead at these temps. Go chase warm water fish or tie flies and drink beer. After this heat wave, there will be possibilities of fishing early mornings till about noon or 1 pm before it will likely get too warm again.

In the upper river, caddis and pmds will be the main hatches. Nymphing and streamer fishing remains a good bet as well. Fish early if you’re going to fish and land fish quickly if possible!

S hop Trout Flies

Mount Hood Lakes:

The lakes are a great place to beat the heat and cool off and catch a mess of fish. Stripping nymphs and small leeches/buggers on an intermediate line is a great method up there. You can use a floating line as well, but I would make a really long leader and some weighted flies to get down in the column. Nymphing with chironomids and balanced leeches under an indicator is another productive lake technique. Have fun up there!

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Steelhead -

The dam counts for summer steelhead have been increasing as we move closer to the 4th of July. These fish will be stressed with this 70 plus degree water at the mouth so if you can wait until this heat wave passes to target these fish, that would be ideal. Should start to cool off in the coming weeks.

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Smallmouth Bass / Carp:

Really tempting to get out on the big C for some smallie action especially with the calm wind conditions. Your best bets are going to be early morning and late evening. Will be hard to find any in midday. Go topwater and focus on the shaded areas. Work the weed edges and sharp boulder drop offs.

This is an excellent opportunity to search for carp on the shallow flats.

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-Zach Parker