Chile Fishing Report 03/21/2019: Greg's Edition

Just back from 2nd annual trip to Chile. It would be hard not to make this an ongoing annual trip from now til ???

I apologize now for sparse details about location but it must remain so as I am under a honorary oath to do so. If interested in this experience you can contact me direct.

What I can tell you is this game is for migratory brown trout. Like steelhead, much of your success involves how many fish are in the river. This years warm weather had us concerned. Those concerns where soon laid to rest.

What I've learned about fishing for these migratory's is they are moody! Sometimes it's everything you can do just to get one to show itself and other times they are aggressively willing.

New this season, I added an approach of big top water beetle fishing. Glad I did seeing that three of my catch came to hand this way and several other fished appeared for the offering. The visual is epic!

I've caught many brown trout but these fish are different. They are shouldered and strong. Fish of recent migration appear much more silver like. A couple of my catches jumped more than I've ever seen. Full body out of water type of jumps.

This fishery will test you and your gear to the max!

We're back home now and recovering. Muscles aches and sleep deprivation are on the mend but all we can think about is next year!
Greg

Deschutes Fishing Report 03/14/19: Guide Edition

Deschutes Fishing report

I know it’s not yet spring but it feels like it. The sun is shining, the snow is visually receding from my driveway and my boats, and it’s warm. I took a day, yesterday to go over to the Deschutes and play around with some “Euro” nymphing. The drive was breathtaking with snow everywhere and bright sunny skies. My destination was Maupin, a nice place to do a short day. My first sighting of the Deschutes since December was a bit shocking, it looked high and dirty. As I drove upstream I encountered large boulders all over the road from the snow runoff. There is so much snow melt right now that there are little waterfalls and Nena Creek is raging, that should make for happy steelhead.

I kicked my boat of the trailer, loaded my gear and set off to an all but empty river. I saw three rigs road hunting, and some dudes on a mid-afternoon float…all day. I didn’t have super high expectations based on the weather, color and flow of the river and water temps. My expectations were exceeded. I found willing fish at every stop, some spots many eager fish were found. To my surprise there was a nice little blue wing hatch about 1PM and in the shady spots the fish were feeding on dries and emergers. As the day wore down the bite definitely slowed down but not to zeros.

I chose to spend the day “euro’ nymphing and I hooked a lot of fish. I’m not sure if I’d have done as well with traditional nymphing techniques I’d like to think I would have but who knows. One things for sure euro-nymphing is elective and I foundd this style of fishing fun. If you head out to the Deschutes to go trout fishing bring a lot of pat’s stones with a tungsten bead. Even with all the BWO activity the fish were 3 to 1 on the stone. The other file I had a lot of success on was a little frenchie with a salmon hot spot.


C’mon Spring!!!

Sam Sickles
(541) 400-0855
www.steelheadoutfitters.com

 

Fishing Report 01/15/19: Guide Edition

The wait...

Fishing for steelhead continues to be pretty slow on local rivers but it’s picking up slowly on the coast, hopefully those fish move right on up the Columbia to the Sandy and the Clackamas and further upstream to the Gorge. That isn’t to say no fish are being caught but it’s pretty thin so far. The rivers are in great shape and other than being a bit wet out it should be game on. I’ll post more when I know more but we got a bunch of rain recently and the rivers are staying up nice and high.

I got my fingers crossed!

I should probably mention the noaa guage on the Clackamas is broken and reporting correctly, use USGS https://waterdata.usgs.gov/or/nwis/uv/?site_no=14211010&PARAmeter_cd=00065,00060


Sam Sickles
(541) 400-0855
www.steelheadoutfitters.com