It was on this weekend in 1990 I started working for Harry and Dee Teel at the Fly Fisher’s Place. A big change for me, from salesperson at the Fly Box after classes and UPS truck loader starting in the wee hours of the morning, classes at COCC in between, and I left all of that for what turned out to be not only a good decision, but a life changing move to Sisters.
Back then FFP was a full Orvis dealer, and we had a line of custom Powell fly rods names for the Metolius, the Deschutes and one called a Summer Run. Harry loved Patagonia jackets and was often found in a blue synchilla fleece or a snappy multi-colored windbreaker. They complimented his khaki pants he always wore (I say with a grin). The shop was small, with just a few guides working mostly the Lower Deschutes back then. Flies were always a priority and the tying room was intimate with a wood stove, a couch and a library.
Harry was a United States Marine veteran, and fought in WWII and had a lot of discipline, yet he had a wonderful warmth to him and loved Oregon for the outdoors.
FFP has grown slowly and for the most part steadily since 1986 when the Teel’s opened the doors to the shop for the 1st time. I am proud of the accomplishments we have all made to make it the shop it is today. We have had some amazing crews, on the guide side and in the shop. People who haven’t worked there in many years remain friends and say it was the best job they ever had. This is the culture I want to bottle up forever for us. It transcends a job most days and trickles out in to happiness to our friends and clients.
In the end, FFP is a happy place. I need to spend more time in the shop and less time on the boat moving forward over the next 5 years, and that will be my goal in 2027 along with continuing building of our South America, Belize and Baja hosted trips. I miss seeing people in the store, and taking the time to visit. It sucks to be there one day a week, maybe 2 but have so much catching up to do on mail, orders, banking and organizing travel for our guests going on a trip of a lifetime to not have more time to just be relaxed.
I was reminded of this yesterday when an old friend Kyle came to the shop with his son, and how much fun it was to help them for sure, but to be jovial and talk about funny things and laugh. That is the FFP I need again for me. And there a lot of people I want to share these moments with and hope to do so soon.
For the next few weeks I am stuck in the office when I am not guiding. I need to do my re-application of my Deschutes National Forest Permit (every 10 years), write all the big orders for flies for the flies we will sell in 2027 from 7 different companies and the Sage/Redington/Rio order amongst many others. And I have 10 more guide days to before I put the boats away for the year. And I finally get to move in to my house, and tonight I believe will be the 1st night I get to sleep there. Tomorrow morning and am going to drink coffee in my own living room, walk to the Sisters bakery for a doughnut and then go to the Siters Fire Station for my Covid and Flu shots and spend the rest of the day getting caught up.
I appreciate all of your encouragement and support. So many of you have asked about the house. It’s been slower than I thought getting things ready but it’s getting there. I am working towards getting it beautiful and hope to find a traveling nurse or PT or doc who might be relocating to Central Oregon and need a place from December 1 to March 31 while I am away in Argentina and Chile.
How’s that for a sunday morning ramble?

Today is going to be a hard weather day on a lot of the waters around the area. Wind will be the biggest factor, and it will be cold. But as we move through the week there is a lot of wonderful weather coming again and it will be a gorgeous time to be back on many of the rivers and lakes in our region.

The Metolius River is full of kokanee so eggs are a very good nymph to be using, along with caddis pupa, soft hackle PT’s, TJ Hooker, 20 incher, walt’s worms and many colors of perdigons. Nymph fishing has been the best, but many days there have been good hatches and decent to very good dry fly opportunities too.
Flav’s and Drakes are not quite done but this may be the last good week to use them until next year. When the hatch is good you can expect to see fish eating emergers and duns. Fall drakes see good spinner falls in the morning so look for that between 8 and 10 AM.
PMD’s are one of the best mayfly emergences now, along with Blue Wing Olives and Mahogany Duns. October and November (and sometimes into December if the weather is not too cold) Cinygmula mayflies are added to the mix. I have also seen PMD’s on the Met in early December. That is highly unique and as we all know, the Metolius is a highly unique place.
Plenty of caddis around. The 3 to really pay attention to mostly will be #18 dark grey caddis, #14-16 tan caddis and #8 orange october caddis. Fish the adults during the hatch, or as a searching fly, and fish the pupa pretty much any time you want.
Today I imagine the stoneflies are hunkered down, but later this week high 70’s and maybe even low 80’s return and the goldens and little olive stones will be active again. Clarks Stone, Norm Woods Special and Hemingway’s. We also have a sweet little olive parachute caddis #18 that is killer because it can be accepted as a little olive stone, or it’s dark enough to match those little charcoal caddis I mentioned already.
With all the kokanee in the river, the Bull Trout action is quite good. Best of the year? Probably.

The Lower Deschutes has been good for trout on the day stretch, and we had a wonderful 3 days last week with a great group of guys from Trout Creek to Harpham. Nymph fishing has been the best by far, with small Euro Jig Streamers, Eggs, Caddis Pupa, 2 Bit Hookers, Split Case PMD, Berry’s PCP, Jig Napoleon in brown or red, Girdle Bugs and TJ Hookers.
You might run in to some dry fly fishing in the eddies and along the shallow riffles. Purple Haze and comparaduns, BWO’s, Griffiths Gnats and Corn Fed or Fin Fetcher Caddis. I love that Fin Fetcher because you can really see it on the water. Sip, sip Hooray.
Remember steelhead season is closed as per ODFW. I don’t really understand why at this point. Numbers are not great over the dams still, but around 41, 000 hatchery steelhead have passed Bonneville and if Oregon is going to put so many hatchery fish in the system, anglers should be able to fish for them.
In that vain, handle wild fish with respect and keep them wet always. Always.
There is no doubt trout anglers are catching steelhead while trout fishing. I know of a few fish that were landed on small nymphs recently….

The Middle Deschutes has risen with the end of irrigation season. It is certainly a viable fishery and with higher flows you can aggressively use a streamer, fish deeper nymph presentations and find the fish more spread out in likely holding waters. I rate it as a good choice for the week ahead.

The Upper Deschutes is all closed from Benham Falls upstream of Bend all the way to Little Lava Lake.

The Fall River is fishing great. I guided Sean there a few days ago and we had a killer day on dry flies. In the morning about 10 BWO #20 got the fish looking up, and by noon it switched to PMD’s #16. We did best using the one wing KD Dun for matching both hatches, and kept the Trout Hunter 6.5X fluorocarbon tippet on for every thing all day.
#22 Midges and a #14 Amber Caddis, Mahogany Duns and even some #14 Flav’s are in the hatch mix.
Nymphing is really good too. I loved (again) being in the shop and working with the chaplain from St Charles on getting a 2nd Euro Nymphing rig set up for his family. He showed me some killer photos of his daughters with really quality rainbows they caught. All very happy and he was so stoked that Mattias get him set up for Euro a while ago and has seen the light. Now the good chaplain is sharing it with his girls. Hard to beat a story like that.
Seems like all the sections are fishing about equally, with the only section closed from the falls to the Deschutes. The rest of the river is open year round and is holding fish all over.

The McKenzie River is fishing well and we continue to enjoying good float trips with good fihsing. A lot of Chubby action with a perdigon or walt worm dropper, and excellent action side drifting a leech, sculpin or micro streamer.
With lower waters there is some better than average walk and wade access in some places. Some of our customers are enjoying great trout spey fishing with soft hackles and streamers and occasionally a swung golden stone too.

The Crooked River is a bummer. 36 cfs today. Normal winter flow starts around this time of year and is about 100 cfs. Normal summer flow is 250 to 280 cfs.
So it is low.
Is it too low? Well, Chester and I could tell you stories about fishing the Crooked many times over the years when it was this low. It still fishes ok. Fish move to more comfortable places and in some cases may move way down river to the deeper, slow pools closer to Prineville.
On November 1 the river will be raised to 50 CFS for the winter.
I have seen the river at 10 cfs more than one year, and have fished it back in the 80’s and 90’s at very low conditions. But the fact is, we are not in the 80’s or 90’s and there are just a lot more people using the resource than the good ol’ days so going to a pool and catching all the fish stacked in it is not responsible angling ethics.
Be cool. Go fish. November will offer more habitat, and pray for a good winter.
BWO’s, PMD’s, whitefish eggs, midges and scuds are the flies. If you go, keep it mellow. here are some ideas: Limit your catch to a dozen and call it a day. Bring a lawn chair and sit by the river and watch it flow by. Bring binoculars and watch birds, download the Merlin app and have it “listen” to the birds and learn to identify them. Hike Chimney Rock. Drive back to P-ville and have an ice cream at Tastee Treat.
Chester and I stopped there so many times in the early days, partly because I had a huge crush on a cute redhead that worked the counter. Great days then and great days now, and respecting the resource makes great days ahead too.

Tumalo Creek and Whychus Creek, also the little creek coming out of Three Creeks are wonderful places to fish in the autumn. Renegades, Ants, Beetles, Elk Hair Caddis, Hot Pink Adams (!) and little Perdigons ought to be all you need on these small waters. My friend Milt was small stream fishing with his little Sage 1 weight, and that kind of rod is perfect on these waters. I love my fiberglass 6 1/2′ 3 weight or Winston 7’9″ 2 weight or a Tenkara rod on these waters.

Lakes Report

Paulina Lake is my #1 choice for the rest of the season so I will be there as much as possible targeting browns and rainbows using everything from Beetles to Balanced Leeches. I’ve also been getting a lot of nice fish on Ants, Purple Chubbies, Aero Red Legs (can you tell I love dry fly fishing?) and with red 2 Bit Hookers, Red PT, CB Cate and Ice cream Cones. It is a good time to fish streamers, big and small. having a set of sinking lines will be a benefit. Hover for shallow edges, intermediate camo and type 3 and type 5 are important to get the fish to notice your fly at the level and speed they will eat it.

East Lake is also fishing well. Some friends launched their boat at the resort (the resort is closed and the dock is out) but it is a good slope to back in and out and is w/o rocks like Hot Springs. He said he just put waders on and it was ok for his smaller boat.
Wade fishing and tubing the edges is another great option.
Scuds, Leeches, Chub like streamers, Beetles, Ants, Chubbies, and callibaetis nymphs are all important flies now. Waterboatman are occasionally very important fall food sources.

I had a really good day with Darryl and Dick at Little Lava Lake this week. Our best success was with a Red Hippie Stomper and a Red 2 Bit Hooker. My friend Rob was also there that day and his success was on Olive Leeches, although 2 days before it was on Callibaetis Nymphs.
Water is low, pretty clear compared to earlier this fall, and some of the fish are of high quality!

Hosmer Lake is always fun this time of year. It can be fickle some of the days as the brook trout stack up and can remind me of a quote from a Fly Fishing the West magazine I have saved in my collection from June of 1980. It shows a photo of a school of brook trout and the caption reads “if they are biting they must be biting each other” meaning the guy was surprised at how lock jawed fall brook trout can be! I know this to be true but usually a small streamer can get them at least some of them to turn and chase. Or a patient approach with a red chironomid under a NZ wool indicator.
Scuds, immature damsel nymphs, callibaetis nymphs, water boatman as nymphs and a floating pattern are good.

Three Creek Lake this coming week will be good. Add some Micky Finns and Hot Headed Leeches to your box and fish the edges with a hover line. Beetles, Ants, Chubbies are great dries. Not many days left at 6500 feet so I recommend this place for sure.

Amanda has opened Justesen Ranch Lakes for the fall, and they are excellent now. Leeches and Chironomids and Water Boatman are the top 3. Some of the lakes are walk and wade access, some are perfect for the float tube and others I like to launch my drift boat in. Let me or Mattias or Amanda know what you need and the date and we can get you set. $150 per person per day for private access to high quality fish.

Travel

One single spot (of 38) for patagonia. It’s the week of January 9-16, 2027 in Argentina. $5500. Let’s do it.

I am about half full for Belize May 1-7, 2027 at the Blue Bonefish Lodge. My favorite saltwater destination for bones, permit and tarpon. Join me.

Baja with Mattias at our friends in La Ventana/Angling Baja in early June. Talk to Mattias at the shop and get signed up for primo Roosterfish and Dorado fishing.

Shop

I have 2 incredible used rods from a customer, a Sage XP 890-4 and XP 990-4 for $295 each.
Still have a few closeout T&T rods too at 40% off, including the Zone 10′ 4 wt which is a rod we use locally so much. It can be a tightline rod, an indicator rod, a dry fly rod, a lake rod. It is incredible and you should own one like it.

Thanks as always for reading the blog, the reports and for your support of all the FFP crew from the shop dudes to the guide crew.

I am headed to Sisters to put together a bed, hang some art and get my fly tying table set up.

See you soon, in the shop or on the water.

JP