Owyhee River, OR

Outing Information

Fish Caught

Brown Trout

Crappie

Weather

Other Patterns Tried

• #18 Pale Yellow Parachute

Fishing Partners

No fishing partners were saved with this outing.

Waypoints

No waypoints were saved with this outing.

Notes

I arrived a little early and tried streamer fishing a little below the upper riffle with no success. After awhile I moved downstream to just above the mini-island and tried streamer fishing with a woolly bugger, zonker, and black ghost with no luck. The sun finally dipped below the canyon wall but the wind was still blowing so the surface was unsettled and fish weren’t rising. I nymphed for a little bit in the slow water with no success, then climbed out and walked back upstream.

I walked out on the giant rocks that are the midway point of the smooth run and couldn’t see any rises. Every now and then I would hear something that sounded like a small rock dropping in the water, and finally I did see a couple rises in the windy riffles where trout were barely sticking their noses out to take a stillborn or cripple. With the wind the rise was almost imperceptible. I didn’t have my rod and vest with me so I went back downstream to the car and returned back to the rocks only to find nothing rising and I couldn’t hear any rises anymore.

I walked back downstream and found a nice fish on the road side of the mini-island rising pretty consistently. By this time is was probably 9:15. It was great because he was only in 2’ of water or so, so when he would drop down after a rise you could still see the general darkness of his body. I climbed down to the river behind him and moved up to within 10’ of him and made a couple casts with a #18 Parachute PMD with a #20 black clear wing spinner dropper. He rose to the PMD on my second cast to him but refused it. I made a couple other casts and he stopped rising altogether. Another fish made a couple rises out a little ways so I made a few casts to him but he stopped rising as well. I stood there for a bit watching a couple muskrats swim past before my main trout started rising again. One cast later, he rose to the clear wing spinner. He didn’t fight a whole lot because he was somewhat trapped in real shallow water. He was fat though and measured 20”.

After releasing him I walked upstream a bit and saw a pod of trout rising out in the middle. I waded out to them and made a few casts before I hooked into a nice 17” brown. I was able to bring him in quickly but missed netting him a couple times and that woke him up. He then fought and fought and somewhat ruined the hole for the rest of the rising trout, and also took valuable dusk time away from fishing to other fish. After landing him, the other fish were down so I waded back out and upstream to the halfway rocks. By this time there were lots of fish rising through the deeper water. I made one or two casts to a rising fish maybe 7’ in front of me and hooked into an 18” brown. Again, I missed netting the fish early and it woke up and fought for at least 5 minutes. This was bad because there were lots of rising fish but the light was getting borderline as far as being able to see your fly. I finally landed him and released him.

I was still able to cast to a few fish and had a couple rises where I ticked the fish’s mouth but didn’t get the hookset. But it was quickly too dark to see where my fly was or if a fish rose to it. As I stood there in the twilight looking downstream, a MONSTER brown rose in the slackwater behind one of the big rocks. The fish’s dorsal and tail fins came out of the water slowly and they were large. A minute or two later he rose again. Breathtaking. I put a couple casts back in the slackwater with the dries but he didn’t rise again. I switched over to a bead head woolly bugger which was a pain because I couldn’t really see to tie the knot, and in a few casts hooked a crappie. But no monster brown. I finally gave up after mosquitoes continued to attack me and I could barely see the ground to walk up to the road. That brown was at least 24”…

Hatch: BWO cripples/stillborns trapped in the surface film