This months Fish-A-Long will be held Saturday March 24th on the Crooked River by Prineville.
The plan: meet at Big Bend Campground about 1 mile below Bowman Dam between 8am and 9am. Coffee and doughnuts will be provided.
Gear: 3 to 6wt rods with matching reel & floating lines. Dry fly fishing can be good with Midges and Baetis dominating the hatches this time of year. Another standby technique is Indicator Nymphing with small glo- bugs (they look like scuds) and/or standard nymphs like Pheasant Tails and Hair’s ears. This is also a good place to swing soft hackles or small woolly buggers.
Waders with felt or cleated boots for slippery, moss covered rocks and layered clothing as it will likely be cold in the morning.
Lunch: Lunch will be provided.
This is a great time to fish the Crooked River for trout and whitefish. Fishing can be excellent!
Pyramid Lake is located 30 miles North of Reno Nevada. It’s a large picturesque High Desert lake, 29 miles long and 8 miles wide with 188 square surface miles.
What makes Pyramid Lake a destination adventure is the fish, Lahontan Cutthroat trout. Fish exceeding 30 pounds are being landed. Best time to catch these special fish is when the water is cold, mid October till the end of April. That’s when these big fish patrol the shore line looking for food. When the water warms they head for deep water & out of the reach of fly fisherman.
Equipment
– 6 to 9wt rods with matching reel & lots of backing
– waders, layered clothing, be ready for everything, it’s high desert, can be cold & windy
– Step ladder, nice but not necessary, helps keep you out of the cold water
– Float tube, pontoon boat
Pyramid lake is on the Paiute Indian reservation. I’ve found the people and businesses to be friendly & happy you are there. Tribal fishing permits are $11 a day or $28 for 3 days. Camping is available. Reno is 30 minutes away.
Information? Just Google up Pyramid lake, there’s a ton of information about this fishery. This a destination fishery without the high cost, should be on your “Bucket” list.
The plan
I’m leaving early Saturday morning March 24th to attend the CFF Fish-A-Long on the Crooked River. Afterwards I’ll proceed to Pyramid lake to fish the lake for 3 days before going to the Owyhee river in Eastern Oregon. Late March is prime time to fish the Owyhee River; it will still be in Winter water flows of 35 to 45 CFS. There are usually good hatches at this time that provides some prime dry fly fishing. CFF members are invited to join me on all or any part of this outing. I can help with equipment, flies and knowledge. If interested, questions, contact me, I’ll be at the March CFF meeting to finalize plans.
Mark Bachmann of The Fly Fishing Shop will be CFF’s guest speaker Tuesday, February 20th.
Mark’s presentation will be on growing trend of Trout Spey Fishing: Learn about the flies, tackle and techniques used in Spey Rod fishing for Western Trout. It will be a great presentation you won’t want to miss!
Several months ago the fine folks at Deeper Sonar contacted me about doing a product review on their portable fish finder. I’ve tested the unit for several months and since Christmas is coming, this seems the ideal time share the results.
It’s full name is the Deeper Smart Portable Fish Finder. It’s a little smaller than a baseball and weighs only a few ounces. It works by broadcasting a WiFi signal to your smartphone and the PRO and PRO+ models have a range of 330 feet and will scan to a depth of 260 feet. Given this, it can be cast from shore or trolled behind a float tube or boat. It’s small size and remote positioning makes it very stealthy, which I’ve found is a big advantage.
Given its stealth capability the Deeper unit can find fish in shallow water. Most of us have had fish finders before and since they have to be attached to your boat, float tube, etc. the presence of your floating device scares the fish way.
This summer and fall, I tested it from my float tube in shallow water impoundments. It instantly proved itself valuable. I put it in the water next to the float tube and established the WiFi link with my phone and it showed the water depth to be 12’ and surface temperature of 50 degrees but no fish directly underneath me—no big surprise here. However, when I let it trail about 30’ to 40’ behind the float tube (attached to a length of line) it started picking up fish, and what I saw was very interesting! No matter how deep the water was, all the trout were stratified at a depth of 6 to 7 feet. Armed with this knowledge I was able to fine tune my angling strategy, catch more fish plus lose fewer flies on submerged logs by trying to fish too deep.
As I’ve gotten older I really appreciate things that are small, light and actually work. The Deeper Unit does all these things. When I’m not using it, which in my case is most of the time, it’s not in the way. When I need some insight into the waters I’m fishing, it quickly provides information I’m after.
If you go to the online product reviews you’ll notice some people had difficulty establishing the WiFi connection with their smartphone. I followed the directions and my own experience was trouble free. However, it should be noted you need to download the app to your phone before you go out into the middle of nowhere with no cell service. Once you have the app, you don’t need cell service to make the device work as it communicates directly with your phone.
My next field test with the Deeper Unit will be on my local salmon & steelhead waters. I can’t wait to get above some likely looking water and let the Deeper unit stealthily float back behind the boat and broadcast it’s finding to my smartphone. Stay tuned.
There’s still plenty of Time and Opportunity to complete Clackamas Fly Fishers 1st annual Fly Fishing Challenge to earn YOUR patch and certificate for 2017.
Bring your completed catch record to the next meeting (Tuesday, November 21) or email an image to Brad at jonlawpdx@comcast.net
This months Fish-A-Long will be held Saturday October 21st on the Deschutes River in Maupin.
The plan: meet at Paul Brewer’s place in Maupin between 8am and 9am. Coffee and doughnuts will be provided. We will then hit the river! Most likely we will travel down river to the area of Beavertail. There is ample parking and a nice area to fish.
Please email ponzdog@icloud.comif you plan to attend so we can get you a map to Paul’s place and also so we can get a head count.
Gear: 4 to 6wt rods with matching reel & floating lines. Indicator nymphing rigs with small glo- bugs and/or standard nymphs like Pheasant Tails and Hair’s ears. Swinging for steelhead is a possibility too but reports indicate steelhead fishing has been really slow. Waders with felt or cleated boots and layered clothing (can be cool in the morning).
Lunch: The club will provide lunch. Come to the meeting on the 16th to find out more.
This is a great time to fish the Deschutes River for trout as they will be concentrated below schools of spawning salmon and fishing can be excellent! This is also a great fish along to make an overnight trip. There are many campgrounds and I may host dinner as well. If interested in staying in Maupin come to the meeting on the 17th so we can measure the interest.
This month the fish along will be a Laurance Lake. This is a beautiful lake that sits on the north side of Mount Hood and provides you with a view of the mountain that you don’t always see. This lake is known for fly fishing and is a new place for our club to visit.
We will meet on Saturday morning in the main parking area. There is a $5 fee per car for using the park so you may wish to look at carpooling with other members.
The lake is large (127 acres) and contains rainbow, cutthroat, and bull trout. There is bank access but it is best fished from a floating devise such as a float tube. If you do not have a floating devise the club now has a small fleet of float tubes that you can use, so don’t use that as an excuse to not get out and fish!
The best fishing is at the top of the lake close to the inlets. It is probably best to use an intermediate lake line. As for flies a leach pattern works best….callibaetis nymph, seal bugger, woolly bugger, and chironomids fished sub surface with an indicator. There is the possibility of a callibaetis hatch as well.
We will talk about this at the next meeting so come for the details. If you just can’t wait please call Paul Brewer at 503-635-3156 for more information.
This months Fish-A-Long was a huge success with warm weather, good food and fun company. We had a strong turnout and everyone got into fish.
Special thanks to Lane Hoffman for cooking dinner Friday night, Phil for Saturday breakfast and Paul for grilling burgers for Saturday lunch.
Some of us arrived Friday evening. The wind was calm and there was a good chironomid hatch going on. Fish were rising all over, some only feet from the shore in less 2 feet of water. It was hard to sit and watch but technically our fishing did not start until Saturday. We enjoyed a few libations on the deck, told lies and enjoyed a tasty chicken & dumpling dinner prepared by Lane.
The sun is up early this time of year so to get on the water at first light the early risers were up at 4:30 and on the water by 5am to target some of the big cruisers on the main lake. Lane had good action early on Seal Buggers and the rest of us caught a few.
The upper lake had been freshly stocked with trout; some real big ones! They were hanging around the boat ramp. It didn’t take long to figure this out and since space at the ramp is limited we took turns catching fish.
The lower lake was uncrowded. Dave and Phil ventured down there and had steady action for most of the day. Dave caught a 25” rainbow on a Green Devil streamer.
The water temperature was around 60 degrees with about 4 feet of visibility. At this water temperature you expect to see the damsel migration going. While there where good numbers of adult damsels out, only a few fish were caught on damsel nymphs; not what you’d expect if the fish were looking for them. Later in the afternoon Lane and Nancy tried some blue damsel dry patterns; this didn’t produce fast action but the strikes were vicious and worth waiting for.
The Rocky Ridge lakes have lots of quality fish in them and fishing is good right now!
