The Metolius is good on all sections of the river, with the upper river mostly Golden Stones, tan caddis and PMD’s.
The Middle River from Canyon Creek to Bridge 99 is seeing a lot more diverse hatches including massive Micro Caddis hatches most evenings, rusty spinners at dusk, BWO’s early evening, ameletus mayflies mid afternoon, plus a lot of tan and grey caddis in the 14-16 range, and if you can believe it, usually the last week of August is when we see the 1st pop of October Caddis and we are entering the last week of August. I remember an evening with my friend Jeff C fishing an eddy I call EZ Dunk and arriving expecting to fish small caddis and rusty spinners for the evening session and the fish were slashing october caddis emerging pupa one after another. I’ll never go to the Met on a late summer evening without a fly to match that now.
Below Bridge 99 is more of the same, with a better chance of also seeing golden stone adults, cascade stones in small numbers and some salmon fly’s along with increasing numbers of little olive stones.
Bull Trout numbers are good and fishing is good for them, if not really good for them….but, watch some of the areas for spawning activity from these exceptionally important fish. Most bull’s spawn in the tributaries, but some spawn in the Metolius main stem and places like the Meat Hole right now you should not be fishing for about 2 weeks. Places where you might wade need to scrutinized for redds before you step in to eliminate the chance of stepping on eggs.
A lot of the FFP crew has been fishing the metolius on a regular basis, and finding fish on PMD’s, caddis pupa (mattias said my improved fat ass caddis with the pink bead has been great), walt’s worm, split case PMD perdigon, Iris caddis, white jig streamers, henryville caddis and soft hackle PT’s. I think it’s cool how they are using streamers, nymphs and dries and fishing the river in so many ways. You know me, I am such a dry fly guy there I don’t often break that code but I should.
And in the category of ya never know when it comes form the Met….(Chinook)