Stalking Back Eddies

I’ve been on the Deschutes River 11 of the last 26 days. The majority of those days were spent fishing the Salmonfly hatch. The hatch is just a memory now, but that doesn’t mean the dry fly action is over. I floated from Warm Springs to Trout Creek on both Sunday and Monday. The weather was a little questionable, the forecast was for light wind and rain showers for both days.

Both days we got on the water around 10:30 and had fish rising right out of the gate. Fish seemed to be looking up all day and we had great success both fishing dry flies and Euro Nymphing.

The fishing reminded me of what it was like before the mixing station went in. Fish were staged up in the back eddies sipping whatever floated their way. We got a couple of fish with some sneaky approaches and bow and arrow casts under the trees. Stalking back eddies could be one of my favorite Deschutes past times. Playing the waiting game isn’t a bad way to spend the afternoon.

As the day progressed and the sun got too low to see into the back eddies we turned our attention to the riffles, where we were rewarded with lots of hungry fish eating Caddis and PMD’s.

Throughout the day when we pulled into a spot and trout weren’t feeding on top we had no problem getting them with the Euro Nymphs.

We had our best results with small cripples in the back eddies, Film Critics, and Quigley style cripples were the ticket. In the riffles, we did well with the Front End Loader, Balloon Caddis, Finfetcher Caddis, Tilt Wing PMD’s, and Hackle Stackers. We probably would have had more success if we had rigged up a dropper of an emerging Caddis, like Silvey’s Edible Emerger, but we were doing well enough that it didn’t matter. For the Euro Nymph setup, we did well with the Mic Drop and Peacock Perdigon in the dropper position and the size 14 Olive Sexy Walt, Meathead as anchor flies.

I can guarantee I will be back out there as soon as possible looking to repeat my adventure of this past weekend. I suggest you do it too. It’s a great way to get out of the house and practice physical distancing.