The Upper Deschutes Headwaters section was good for shop “doooods” Mark and Steve this week. They had a blast with a Split Wing PMD when the hatch was on, and on a small Purple Chubby and a Duracell nymph with many redsides, brookies and whitey’s to the net. Up there the euro nymph game is a good one, and streamers are always a potent way to find some of the larger trout hiding in the logs and under cut banks.
The Upper Deschutes section below the Wickiup Dam has been good too, with hatches of PMD’s and the subsequent Rusty Spinners that fall to lay eggs, and some caddis hatches there has been some good dry fly moments to enjoy. Hoppers and Ants are good ones to drift down the bank lines and logs but practice your down stream drift with a reach mend. Streamer fishing produces some good fish up here with a Sparkle Minnow or Dungeon being 2 that swim really well as you strip them off the banks.
I can remember in 2009 I had back surgery and was out of commission for fishing for a while, and my first trip back to the water with my rod in hand was drifting Tenino to Bull Bend in August. Bruce Berry the Montana Fly Company Rep and a long time friend was in the boat chucking articulated streamers to the bank and landed a pretty massive brown trout, mid-day, bright sun and at a time I just would not have expected such a good fish to be be found.
Another more recent day, certainly post pandemic (who else measures time before 2020 and after 2020? It seems to be a timeline I use to remember life events all too often). Troy and me and our friend Book Shelf (aka Joe) were floating the upper river in my drift boat and Troy had just taken over the oars from me and I moved back to grab my rod. It was a summer of bad fires around Oregon and that evening we got a nice night with no smoke to be found. I was casting one of my most favorite dry flies, a purple comparadun to the grassy banks and landed a very chunky brown that came as an above average surprise to the area we were fishing. The Upper D is a good bet in August and September.