• Jeff’s note- Between being super busy at the shop 7/3, the Argentina World Cup match, and fishing last night some of this report was written Friday and some was finished today. Pardon the time warp, it’s not you, it’s me.
• Happy Birthday America, and happy summer vacation time to so many of our readers.
  4th of July tomorrow and Quilt show next saturday. These are some of the biggest weeks we see in Sisters and it is a fun time to be here.
  I was on the lakes again this week and I have mixed emotions leaving them; the fishing up in the volcano was really good the last couple of days, but yesterday afternoon the holiday yahoo’s began showing up. Boating etiquette is lost on these people! They need to be reminded East Lake is not Lake Havasu. But alas, it wouldn’t be worth the argument to try to change their minds and it is just a good weekend for me to work in the fly shop and fish the Metolius in the evening. All I can hope for is the extra patrols Deschutes County Marine Patrols are doing for BUII enforcement for the next few days catches up with the jerks in the pontoon party barges.

On the Metolius River there are still a few Green Drake stragglers hatching, and Chester tells me he’s been having good fishing on green drake spinners in the morning. Usually by the 1st to 4th of July drakes go kaput until September, but maybe due to how late they were to hatch this June we will get another full week? Whatever happens, for the next few months a drake nymph like a 20 incher, or a TJ Hooker is a good fly to have, and for the next few days a green drake emerger and dun and spinner is recommended to be at the ready. As the drakes disappear PMD hatches will remind you why you want to spend a summer day or evening on the Metolius. Another mayfly to watch for, usually after 5 PM is a small Blue Wing Olive. Why do you suppose they hatch later like this in the summer? Usually you’ll find them in shadier side bank lines and eddies because during the heat of summer the shade creates a little humidity and coolness critical for taking flight off the water.
Make sure to have #16 PMD and #20-22 BWO’s this week in nymphs, emergers, cripples and duns and for sure add a rusty spinner #16 if you’ll be in the river until dusk.
Caddis hatches have been pretty good, kind of depending on the area you’ll be. The upper river and below bridge 99 is where some of the best caddis dry action will be found. Mid river around the hatchery, maybe. Maybe not. Could depend on the day and the evening weather. Pupa is good everywhere. In a month from now, the caddis will begin to explode mid river.
Golden Stones and Yellow Sally’s and Little Olive Stones are all on the increase. In July it is usually the very best month for Yellow Sally’s and these can be all the way through the system from the Blue Hole to the hatchery to Candle Creek. I can recall evening sessions after work that I have seen the fish keyed on nothing but Sally’s in July. I used to believe Olive Stones were really only important in September, but now it’s a super hatch experience on our river and you need a pattern to match it all summer long.
Most of the Golden Stone hatch action is from Gorge CG to the headwaters now. A Clarks Stone, Norm Woods or Chubby is a good bet, and while I am not an advocate of a dry dropper for the middle and lower river areas due to more complex currents and drag on both flies, in the upper river a dry/dropper is $$$$.
All the standard nymphs like PT’s, Perd’s, Walts, Golden Stones, Zebra Midges, Tan Pupa, 2 Bit’s, 20 Inches, Frenchie and Rainbow Warrior will be good to have tied on the line at different times during the day.
There are some good numbers of Bull Trout in the river now and nice fish are being caught on various streamers, with a White Dolly Llama, Sparkle Minnow (articulated), Milk Shake and our giant black conehead streamer.
* Gavin and I met on the river last night and collectively caught fish on an Iris, Rusty Spinner, Missing Link and CDC Henry’s Fork Caddis most likely taken as a Little Olive Stone.

Crooked River is fishing great now, mostly with nymphs and getting a tiny bit of afternoon PMD hatch and some caddis in the evening with rusty spinners at dusk for those of you camped out, or staying late before driving home.
It seems very few people do that on the Crooked, but it is worth it.
On the nymph side the scuds, ray charles, zebra midges, 2 bit hookers, frenchie, skinny nelson and soft hackles.
For dries, PMD’s, purple comparaduns, parachutes adams, small royal wulff (try it in the morning) x-caddis and small grasshoppers. We have a fly called the Larimer’s yellow sally that I think the fish eat on the Crooked as a small hopper.

Fall River is crowded but man there are a lot of happy fish in there now. Summer conditions. When the hatches are on we’ve been getting fish up on PMD’s, purple comparaduns, ants, beetles, olive caddis, yellow sally and midges. Attractors have some game and don’t be afraid to twitch and skate flies like a hippie stomper or PMX.
Jig streamers and balanced leeches are really effective and can be fished dead drifted or stripped, and you can dead drift them on the same leader you sightline your perdigons, eggs and mops.

McKenzie River has been good for the guide team this past week, fishing a lot of Chubby/Leech or Chubby Perdigon combo’s. Dry caddis like a #12-14 elk hair caddis or parachute pattern for good visibility and a light cahill when the mayfly hatch is on will be good patterns to add this week.
Small streamers including a squirrel leech and sculpzilla on a 10′ sink tip and also swinging soft hackles is a good approach from the front of the boat.

The Lower Deschutes action is best for nymphing throughout the day using tan or olive pupa in the 14-18 range, and a grey pupa size 18 for the abundant micro caddis. Perdigons, CDC guide hares ear, psycho prince, split case PMD (make sure to check out our new jig/perdigon version!) Napoleon’s (especially the yellow one) plus smaller girdle bugs and squirrel leeches and slum lords.
Evening dry fly fishing is heating up and the magic hour can provide some fabulous choices of dries using tan caddis #14-16, pale evening duns #14, PMD #16, purple haze #14-16 and rusty spinners #16 (the winna spinna is highly visible for dusk)
Warm Springs to Trout Creek is definitely the spot to be on the lower river for a day trip in terms of water quality and should hold true until bottom releases begin on August 1st which should cool down the lower reaches of the river in a few weeks.

Middle Deschutes evenings are a fun way to hit some dry fly fishing close to Sisters, Bend or Redmond after dinner. Or after work for us locals. X caddis, purple haze, PMD sparkle dun and rusty spinners are the top 4, although I would tuck a BWO #20 and some soft hackles (yellow #12-16), renegades and float-n-fools in the box too.
Also a wonderful spot to tenkara in the pocket water near Bend.

Upper Deschutes Big River there have been some good days on the stretch below Wickiup. In mid to late August and September we will start guiding up here again and this is another river area you can fish from the boat making it a great trip for our guests who don’t like to wade the rivers much.
Hoppers and PMD’s and Caddis now, and that will be the same all summer with more BWO’s and even Trico mayflies as we hit Fall weather in Sept.
Streamer fishing with sparkle minnows and dungeon type flies is worth the effort but not easy to do. Bring game.
I consider this to be a technical fishery and even with the dry flies our guests need to be able to achieve a perfect drag free drift and know how to reach mend, parachute cast and feed line to the fish obtaining a long float along logs and grassy banks. 2 seasons ago in the 9 days I guided up there I lost about $100 worth of hoppers because a lot of my guests did not do this well. Practice practice practice. Watch Doug Swisher’s Advanced Strategies for Selective Trout video and read John Judy’s book Slack Line Strategies. These things will make you better everywhere river flow and trout are found.

Upper Deschutes Headwaters this little gem from Little Lava to Crane Prairie is worth crawling over downed lodgepole pines and through the forests to get to the best waters. It is prime for euro techniques with a single streamer or single tungsten nymph presented in small runs and along the logs. The whitefish up here are abundant a blast to fish for, and there are some amazing rainbows to be found along with brook trout too.
Beetles, Ants, Corn Fed Caddis, Weiss Caddis Light Cahill, Orange or Yellow Missing Link and Clark’s Stones for dries.

Small Streams are an good place to spend a summer day, at any time of the day for a quick session of fishing or all day hiking and exploring the clear mountain streams like The Upper Santiam, Upper Mckenzie, Tumalo, Whychus and Crescent Creeks.
For me this is usually with my Tenkara rod or my Winston 7’9″ 2 wt rod to compliment the fact a lot of the fish are 4 to 9″ long.
I like to load my fly box with a few flies: Ant, Beetle, Renegade, Adams, Cahill and PT Soft Hackle…. maybe add a brown perdigon to the box just in case they won’t look up or you get a deep pool to explore.

Stillwaters Reports

Like I mentioned in the opener, the Newberry Crater Lakes are fishing quite well now, as is 3 Creek Lake and Little Lava are top of the list, along with some mountain lakes that you could 4×4 to or hike to. There are a lot of these gems up there and they hold some nice trout too.

East Lake had some exciting moments this week, foremost for me was watching Dan use the Pink Hopper with a Beetle dropper, but the afternoon hatch of Callibaetis offered some really lovely dry fly opportunities which I love.
Yesterday the 1st fly I tied on when the hatch began was an Olive Haze. We didn’t need any other flies for the duration of the hatch. Usually it is not so easy. If you are a regular reader of this report, you know we love the off white extended body callibaetis for the duns, the captive dun and the sprout for emergers and either the cdc spinner or the bent cripple for spinners.
Chironomid pupa or red blood worms under an indicator from 10 to 18′ deep is good, or down over 20 to 30 feet deep with the type 7 full sink on the dangle. Using a chriromomid on the point and a blob on the dropper is a great combination of flies to fish this way.
Yesterday we did not have great nymph fishing with my normal set up of the Red PT, CB Cate under the drop back bung. Watching Live Scope told me why, and an adjustment was made. The fish were feeding in deeper water areas but at 6 to 8 feet deep, and no where near the bottom there. And along the edges they were close to the bottom but only in 6 to 8 feet of water. So I just cut off the dry fly, added a dropper tag and an Oros indi, tied a CB Cate to the point position and a Poxy Back CB to the tag and we whacked a bunch of fish including a nice brookie.
I love EL this time of year and I just have one thing to add and that is watch water temps over the next 2 weeks. It got to 62 yesterday, and 68 is the temp we can no longer safely release our special fish. I’m surprised how few anglers have a thermometer. Get one and in July and August use it. In nearly any of our lakes the mornings are going to be safe to fish, but maybe after lunch it’s time to rest the fish until late evening, or tomorrow morning again.

Paulina Lake was good right after launching the boat this week with a Dark Assassin and CB Cate with the Bung Indicator. If you question the Bung, ask my clients Rich and Tim, as Tim had a Bung and Rich a Sphere (oros) and Tims fish count was way higher with the same 2 flies. We switched Rich to the bung and he maybe didn’t catch up completely but gave it a valiant effort with some good numbers.
I finally found some fish down the south shoreline but the east and north shorelines are still holding the most trout.
We had good success on a Bionic Ant to begin with, but later the Beetle was better. But….this time the fish were doing a “drive by” on my Jiggy Beetle and I switched the guys over to a lower floating beetle and the success was immediate.
Sometimes when it’s calmer the Jiggy is a high profile with 2 stacks of foam and not right for the situation on this day. An easy fix with a lower profile beetle, and yes the lower profile is harder to see on the water.
Also grab some Flag Ants, and add a few Callibaetis emergers and duns and spinners as July and August see the best mayfly hatches of the year on Paulina and they were popping a bit on Wednesday. Morning hatches are usually the best before the wind comes on.
Balanced leeches, damsels and chubbies are 3 more flies essential for the week ahead.

Little Lava Lake is one to enjoy this week. For the most part you can expect a good morning callibaetis hatch and another wave in the afternoon. Some days it’s not strong, but it usually is. And if it’s not, try some beetles and ants, a blue or royal chubby and a red hippie stomper.
Stripping an olive leech, damsel nymph and callibaetis nymph on an emerger tip, hover or intermediate will offer good results and the full sink type 3 line can offer some deeper presentations that at times will be beneficial.
Under an indicator balanced leeches, ice cream cones, hanging with my chromies and blood worms, CB Cate, PT jigs and spicy squirrels should result in some solid bobber down moments for you.

3 Creek Lake is fishing quite well, with a lot of diversity going on like we are seeing at East Lake too. Callibaetis, Ants, Beetles, Damsels and Black Caddis are the main drivers of the day but add some Balanced Leeches for sure!
There is something quite special about getting up to this little lake in the evening in the summer. For me, it’s almost entirely a dry fly game until dark. Callibaetis, emerging midges and finishing with Black X Caddis.
3 Creek Lake is a good wading lake too, so you don’t need a tube or boat to get to all the fish, but for me I prefer the boat.

Hosmer Lake is getting warm in the lower lake and channel so use your thermometer and do not fish in water temps that will be lethal for catch and release. The Upper channel and upper lake are good with cold spring waters protecting the fish.
Callibaetis hatches have been good, and there are a lot of damsels so you want nymphs and dries for all of these important hatches. Leeches, Chironomids, small Scuds, Black Caddis, Goddard Caddis, Chubby (makes a fantastic indicator), Ants and Beetles and if you are on the water very early or very late a tiny white mayfly called a Caenis.

Shop Stuff

We have a sale table with some amazing packs: hip packs, chest packs, sling packs, backpacks and even some luggage for your travels marked down at 30% off. Patagonia, Simms and Fishpond….come see.

Travel

OK, who is ready for a 3 day float trip with 2 nights of camping, then 3 more days of single day floats in Sam Martin de Los Andes. December 6-13, you’ll be home December 14 in plenty of time for Christmas with the family.
We need 6 more people to fill the trip. It is amazing. $5500

Happy 4th!

Jeff