If you want to get on the water, Sunday-Monday-Tuesday and Wednesday this week looks like a good bet and than starting Thursday the cold set’s in for quite a few of the days shown on the forecast.

Fishing the Metolius and the Fall River are both really good bets.
I was lucky enough to enjoy both of these spring creeks this week and found good dry fly fishing and nymph fishing on both rivers.

At the Metolius expect #16 yellow mayflies (cinygmula) and #20-22 Blue Wing Olives and some October Caddis and Black Midges.
Eggs, Perdigons, Caddis Pupa, Walt’s Worm, Frenchie, Blue Psycho and Golden Stone Nymphs.
Bull Trout are eating big streamers quite nicely. At some point in the winter they do tend to shy away from streamers somewhat and end up eating eggs and red ice cream cones as well as anything on a catch percentage basis.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE pinch your barbs. It is the law, but to ignore it purposely is not cool. My friend (and FFP guide) Steve ran into some young dudes that had a wrestling match going on with a nice bull trout. The poor fish was hooked in the face and the mouth (this goes back to the 2 hooks we talked about on the last report) BUT what made it worse is these guys said they did not pinch their barbs because they didn’t want to lose a fish. That is dumb. Selfish. And against the law. I hope Karma and the OSP Fish and Game guys catch up with these fella’s real soon.

The Fall River fish were giving a hard looksy to our egg offerings. Fun to watch them rush over to it, and even better when one would decide to grab it! Eggs are always fun.
BWO hatches are sparse, but some fish are looking up to them. I also made some fish come up to eat a tan caddis emerger even though we never saw any caddis that day. At this time there is a lot of new snow on the Fall River so be prepared for driving conditions that the roads will not be clear and the banks will be covered in snow. Felt soles are not going to work, they freeze up and get heaps of snow on them making walking dangerous and difficult. Rubber Soles don’t do that.

I will tell you, Winter layering under waders is so important. If you can, the new Simms Fjord Pants are the greatest layering you’ll ever buy and wear and enjoy. They are expensive pants but if you fish in the winter they are so worth it. We sold 8 or 9 pairs last week to people we know that fish year round and got rave reviews. I wore mine this week too, and was blown away.

The Lower Deschutes WS to TC drift is good today. Griffin from the shop is there now and just sent us a cool video catching some good fish today.
Stonefly Nymphs, Blue Perdigon, Caddis Pupa, Eggs would be a great direction to go now.

The Crooked is probably the slowest of the rivers. It will freeze up pretty good coming up late this week, so if you do want to hit the Crooked do it this week before Thursday. Zebra Midges, Winklers, Skinny Nelson, Scuds, Eggs and Micro Mayfly.

With the freeze coming it’ll be a good time to tie some flies, watch some fishing videos and read some good books. It’ll warm back up before we know it, but seriously the next few days are going to be the days to hit it.

See you soon!

Jeff