Just spent 6 days swinging flies for steelhead. Slow is an understatement. Had about 8 known passes at my flies (all in the AM). Four hooked up, and I landed two (1 native and 1 hatchery about 26 inches each). Two of the other 4 passes made contact and the remaining two were swirls that missed the flies. Did catch a couple small mouth bass in the evening hours, but that is a most undesirable thing on the Deschutes. Just looked at the Columbia dam counts and the steelhead run is doing about 18% of the most recent 10-year average. That being, it will be a tough season throughout the Columbia system this fall.
Most other anglers we encountered had reports like: "my wife’s grandmother’s sister knows a mechanic whose son met a guy whose kid had heard that one had been seen just above Moody Rapids. Saw one guy hooked up on the way out, but he lost the fish about the same time I offered to cut it off for him as we floated past. About 50% of the premium campsites were vacant on the river, so fishing pressure is light.
Hope things pick up in the coming years, as this has been one of my annual passions.
The Cascade Locks (Eagle Creek) fire had the area heavily smoked up for 4 of our 6 days on the river. Had we kept anything, one could have simply hung it in a tree to smoke and dry.
Cookie chased bighorn with her cameras, but did not score any publishable images of rams.
Our only other excitement was the taking of a deer by a mountain lion a couple hundred yards from camp. The cat returned and finished things up the following night, but we never actually got eyes on it. Should have taken a trail cam along.
Good luck to those of you that do get with it, and do file a report.
Even if you do much better than I,
Last edited by 1minute; 09/12/17.
