October is a big fly fishing month and so we have a lot of good reports to share. As always, pictures are first with the reports below. Enjoy!
From Wayne Hughes: October day on the Willamette river featured both Smallmouth bass, Jack Salmon and Silvers during the float. White & blue Clousers caught everything that day.
From Dennis Murphy: Towards the beginning of the month I was full speed on trying to catch a Coho. I spent a lot of time on the Clackamas and Sandy with no fish to speak of. I did find some great oyster mushrooms one day though!
It took me some time to get out to the fish a long and I caught the tail end, but I got a great euro rod lesson from Brad and got to spend the next day fishing with Richard. I got a handful of redsides, tons of whitefish, and towards the end a pretty big fish. After about 15 minutes of fighting this very lazy fish, it got close enough to Richard to confirm it was a near dead Chinook. It somehow got on my stonefly on 6x tippet so it was a fun/tiring fight until it finally broke off.
Going off my previous weekends success, I headed out to the Deschutes again. I tried a bunch of different spots and caught some great redsides as well as another chinook on the same stonefly nymph while Euro Nymphing. On my way home I stopped at Laurance Lake for the last day of the season and to bring home a few stockers. When I finally found a spot shielded from the wind I caught my fair share of fish on a black wooly bugger. Towards the end when I was about to cast, a bull trout lazily swam up and took the bugger. I took a minute to admire a species I’d never caught and sent them on their way.
From George Krumm: My annual trip to swing for Naknek rainbows went well. I also did a fly-out to Ugashik Narrows to fish for Arctic char. We caught lots of big rainbows. The char are Arctic Char & not Dolly Varden. Fish bit on a variety of flies like my LST (big-ass Leechy Sculpiny Thing) and flesh flies. I host a trip up there every year. If anyone wants to join me next year, the dates are October 1st – 8th, 2022. I have 3 or 4 spots left.
From Chris Brehm: I was planning to attend the October Fish a long but got a last minute tip from a friend about fresh Coho in the Siuslaw tidewater near Mapleton. We landed and released 10 bright (but all native) Coho on Twitching Jigs and Spinners.
After reading the Fishalong report, I made the trip to Beavertail on the Deschutes on October 27th. Using egg patterns I was able to land a few up to about 14″ along with some whitefish. From there I drove to Bend to fish two days before the season closed on Crane Prairie. A buddy and I landed about 15 fish in good weather on Thursday and about 25 more in drizzly weather on Friday in 47 degree water. The fish were in prime fat condition, sized from 14″ to 20″ and were caught using various methods including my lucky Red Bead Pine Squirrel Leech pattern. The attached photo is from a previous trip, but illustrates why this is one of my favorite fisheries.
From Mike Shiiki: The day after the fish a long my son Nathan and I went back to Beavertail and then down above “Grumpy’s” on Sunday. He brought one of his friends for his first fly fishing trip & had a great day. Beavertail was the same as the day before, but we got into a Whitefish convention downstream at the Grumpy’s run. I lost count down there, but ALOT of whities along with one lost steelhead that busted off my 3 wt euro stick after coming out of the water 3 times.
Other pics: October at Timothy Lake in the float tubes was really good – my son and I, and Darryl reeled in multiple 24″ size rainbows; I heard ODFW dumped in a load of trophy sized fish and I’m assuming we landed some of them.
I hit the Molalla 1 day, and only fished about 90 minutes but landed a cutthroat, a couple whitefish and a little rainbow.
Also my son hit the Wilson River and landed a couple nice cutties last month
From Greg O’Brien: Got out with another club member a couple of times in October. We had a trout spey day on the McKenzie that was slow due to rapidly rising water but managed a couple nice trout. We also got into a couple Coho on SW WA rivers.
From Tim Mahoney: I went to the Metolius for a few days mid month and caught a few nice rainbows and a small Bull trout for my first time euro nymphing. It was cold in the mornings, but nice that it wasn’t overly crowded.
At the fish a long I caught one white fish. The next day I went down River to Macks Canyon area and caught about 15, half redsides and half white fish. The biggest redside was this 18” long. I also had a steelhead on for about 15 seconds as he stripped off line and jumped in the center of the River before the 5X tippet broke off. That’s was exciting!
From Dave Kilhefner: the weekend after the fish a long I went back to Beavertail and met up with Mike Shiiki and Darryl Huff. Fishing had slowed down a little but we all got into several trout and redsides. We tried standard indicator & Euro nymphing tactics, but Darryl’s indicator & bead was the most effective method this day.