We need snow and we need rain, but for the moment our winter has been pretty dry and mild. We keep looking at 4, 7, 10 and even 15 to 30 days forecasts and we hope like hell the snow piles up in our mountains soon so our lakes fill beautifully next summer and our rivers flow majestically like Oregon rivers do on good water years.
In the meantime, we enjoy these warmer days and make the best of them. Winter days like these don’t last forever so we take advantage of what we get and we fish!
The Metolius is our “home water”. We love it, and this winter is easy going out there. No snow to be seen, all roads are open from Hwy 20 to the Hatchery to Bridge 99.
I was on the river a couple of days ago and there was a nice BWO hatch bringing a few fish up on dries from about 12:30 to almost 2.
Nymphing has been solid. The usual suspects on patterns, with golden stones, lighting bugs, frenchie’s, PT’s, amber caddis pupa (for late afternoon), micro may’s, zebra midges and blue prince nymphs. Blue is an excellent winter color for nymphs!
Bull Trout fishing is good, and most have come on streamers, but in the winter a nymph like a red ice cream cone is a good bet too.
Crooked has been great, with quite a few days giving up better than average dry fly days. Mostly midges. On the Nymph side, Zebra’s, Skinny Nelson, Caped Avenger, Frenchie and Micro Mayflies have been great.
Still recommending the NZ Wool as an indicator! Or a sighter on a Czech style system.
Fall River has been good too. The fish seem to be sticking around, and there are some nice ones to catch. I haven’t been in a while but some of the guys who work here have been down recently and they are talking about good Midge and BWO hatches mid afternoon that is bringing fish up to the top. 7x is going to be your friend when that happens.
Nymphs (Frenchie, Micro May, Zebra, Skinny Nelson) and Streamers (Sculpzilla and Rufus) have been taking fish consistently too.
Looks like next Tuesday some weather change may really be happening, tomorrow (thursday 1/11/18 might be showery and windy, and then Friday through the weekend look awesome so get out and fish.