Owyhee River, OR

Outing Information

Fish Caught

Brown Trout

Rainbow Trout

Crappie

Weather

Other Patterns Tried

• #20 Black Parachute Midge Emerger
• #20 Olive Parachute
• #18 Adams

Fishing Partners

No fishing partners were saved with this outing.

Waypoints

No waypoints were saved with this outing.

Notes

I reached the Owyhee around 2:45pm and drove up to the regular hole trying to find a spot, but there were fishermen everywhere. It was the busiest I had ever seen the river, especially for early on a Thursday afternoon. I had stopped and seen some rising fish at a hole maybe 1 mile below the tunnel so I drove back down to it only to find that a fisherman was now fishing it. I drove back up to the big pool by the tunnel where i had seen some sippers in close to shore and stopped. In the time it took me to get dressed and rigged up the wind started howling and didn't stop for the 15 minutes I sat there cursing the water. Finally I left and drove up to the pipe hole since I thought it would be more secluded.

There were some nice fish rising at the tail of the long run ahead of the pipe, so I stealthily crawled on the rocks to get close to the bank. I was able to seen the browns underwater, rising occasionally. I made some casts with a #12 mahogany comparadun with a #20 black PME and the fish mostly ignored both patterns. I did get a snip, but not a full rise, to the comparadun but that's it. I switched the dropper to a smal parachute BWO, a spring-creek BWO with wings, a small adams, and had no luck with any of them. There were both mahoganies and BWOs on the water so I was surprised that I didn't get any rises to any of the bwo patterns. I put on a brown clear wing spinner and started walking upstream, no longer stealthy, and caught a 15" on the spinner. I continued walking upstream and caught 2 10" browns and had several other rises to both the spinner and comparadun. Around 6pm I left and went up to the regular hole.

There were still people fishing the head and the halfway rocks so I focused on the bottom flats. Fish were rising everywhere despite the wind and I quickly hooked into a 13" rainbow on the spinner. I missed a fish or two then caught a 21" brown on the spinner. I had placed a foam indicator on the line between the comparadun and the spinner because I could not see the flies, and I think the indicator allowed the spinner to occasionally sink and act as a nymph. I had a few fish take it underwater, and I think the 21" brown did so. I saw the indicator move and set the hook without seeing much of a rise in the wind wakes.

At dusk I switched to a woolly bugger at the halfway rocks and caught 5 crappie with several other hits.

My future recommendation is smaller mahoganies - the browns liked the #18 spinner and only the smaller fish hit the #12 comparadun, so I think a #14 or #16 brown comparadun would do well. The fish seemed to be ignoring the bwos at the pipe hole. A frustrating day considering all of the fish I saw rising early on and the fact I caught 3 fish over a 3-hour span early on.