Another great fly fishing month with lots of good reports to share. As always, pictures first with the report below.
From George Coutts & Dave Kilhefner: We booked a dory trip thru Pacific City Fly Fishing and got really lucky with perfect weather and good fishing. We came home with limits of Black Rockfish, Lingcod and Crab.
From Ryan Callahan: Did a four day float on the Smith River in Montana. We had great weather but the visibility in the river was poor so the fishing was slow. I caught the Brownie in the picture on a large black streamer. Overall we did well on streamers and redhead prince nymphs.
From Wayne Hughes: Floated the Willamette river for Cutthroat and Rainbows. Not a lot of hatches that day but found lots of cutts that were interested in some swinging soft hackles.
From Tom Phipps: With restrictions lifting I was able to make the annual trip to Cape Cod to fish for stripers with friends from Eugene. The weather was more cooperative than usual but the fish were picky and not as big as they have been some years and conditions were a bit challenging. We all got fish and it was great to be out and about.
From Mike Shiiki: Took my sons and nephew on our first trip to Timothy Lake in our float tubes. We fished across the lake from North Arm Campground. Temps got up in the 80’s and fish were hitting all day. We trolled with intermediate sink lines with black, maroon, white and olive buggers and leeches. A few even hit a brown size 8 skulpzilla. Most caught were fat 16-20” hatchery rainbows, with a few big natives.
We were worried that the fish might be stressed from heat/warm water they weren’t. They all recovered well and we did our best to release them asap. The best location was “the channel” across the lake from North Arm Campground, and very few people fishing.
From Brad Jonasson: David Hopkins and I explored Oregon with a mid-June trip to Lake County (Ana and Chewaucan rivers) where the Chewaucan near Paisley was particularly beautiful and productive. Then over to Harney County where a few big rainbows (16″, 17″) were nymphed from the Malheur River at Riverside. Finally the Owyhee where a few Browns were caught early evening (PMD’s) despite the hoards of Idahoans.
From Dave Doble: June started with a trip to Trillium when it opened up. That was a good trip with lots of fish landed, including that huge trout my daughter caught on spinning gear with a small kastmaster and 6 lb test. We caught a lot of fish that day on fly gear as well, mostly on buggers. With the new fish, anything shiny worked.
Had a blast at the Shad Fish A Long, it was great to break in my new 4 wt trout spey rod and get to work on my two handed casting. And those shad are great fighters on light gear! The shad were also a new species for me. I returned to fish shad two more times and had a blast.
We made one more trip to trillium before the heat wave started. Fishing was slow for a while. I broke out a bugger I started tying a few years back. I tie it specifically for that lake. Trillium has that whiskey tint to it. I put together a standard bugger with brown marabou, gold wire rib, a root beer sparkly chenille body, and a brown hackle. The key is, tying in a pinch of orange crystal flash alongside the marabou tail. It gives a shimmering emerald flash in that water that drives the fish bonkers. That fly was the ticket!
From Darryl Huff: I’ve been hitting the Deschutes at first light and the trout are feeding on top water caddis until about 7:30. Also took the granddaughters to a local pond and had a great time!!
From Tim McSweeney: Spent Father’s Day weekend (Fri-Sun) canoeing around Timothy Lake trolling Buggers and Leeches for stockers with my Wife and Daughter. We caught 2 dozen or so through the weekend with a handful used as examples for teaching my girl how to clean and prep them for the cast iron. All and all it was a great weekend of fishing and eating.
From Dennis Murphy: With hoot owl hours in effect now fishing close by has become important for me to maximize my time on the water. I’ve been hitting McIver Park before sunrise to get a few hours on the water these days and the fishing has been a learning experience. There’s a good lane the salmon/steelhead run up right by the disc golf course that I’ve been fishing and while I haven’t caught anything, but I’ve seen them! Figure it’s a matter of time before I get one of the very, very few steelhead that are coming through. I’ve been fishing a variety of tube flies and muddlers in pinks/blacks/chartreuses/reds but continue to mix things up. If you want to catch something else, there’s plenty of pike minnows, whitefish and a few 10-12″ trout.
I was invited on a trip to the Keys with three experienced anglers from my company. We put in three solid days in the hot, humid, and unfortunately overcast weather only to come up mostly empty handed. The only one of us that had any luck was taken into back waters to hunt for baby tarpon. On the first night I had couple shots at some tarpon that came through but they weren’t eating what I was throwing (Palolo worms). The next day we stopped for lunch and just as I got my rod put away and my sandwich unwrapped, a school showed up. I tossed my sandwich in the cooler and got everything out as fast as possible, but it was too late. I decided lunch wasn’t worth it and from then on out focused on fishing, subsisting off water and snacks. While we didn’t have good luck it was a great time and we are already planning a return trip next year.
From Greg O’Brien: My main June event was fishing the South Shore of Massachusetts during outer trip to visit my in-laws. We had a good day catching lots of schoolie sized stripers. Nothing over 28” but fun fly rod fish! My cousin fished swim baits and we each ended up releasing about 20 fish.
From Dave Kilhefner: Cheryl & I traveled to Minneapolis to help my son move back from college. On the way home we spent a few days in Emigrant, MT which is just north of Yellowstone Park. It was a fun road trip and we saw lots of sights and did a little fishing too.