Great Fishing with Friends Old and New

This past week and a half have been just crazy. We’ve been in the middle of a move and I have thrown a lot of good fishing in the mix with a bunch of great friends old and new. The week started out with driving out to eastern Oregon to pick up a friend to come help with the move. So, since I was there already of course we had to go fish the fabled Grande Ronde River for some summer steelhead in the dead of winter. And dead of winter it was, there was about two feet of snow on the ground and portions of the river itself had begun to freeze over. However there still was just enough water and flow not frozen that we had good opportunity to find some steelhead.

Unfortunately, no steelhead were brought to hand. We had one grab that felt like steelhead, and a few nice incidental Bull Trout that were safely released.

Then it was time to head west back to the Portland area for the move. We managed to mix in a few good days of fishing and floating on the Clackamas River. We were joined by a few other guide buddies and friends over each trip and met some great new friends in the process. My friend from out east managed to get into plenty of fish on the first float, even a nice 15-pound buck!

The next float it was me who got lucky and I landed a nice little hatchery to take home for the smoker.

 

And the final float on the Clack we took out two boats and proceeded to fish out every good piece of water we could find being that the water was getting low and clear at that point. We didn’t manage to find any fish that day, but boy was it a good time still.

                    Such an awesome day with some great folks

Now it came time Mahlon (friend from eastern Oregon) needed to be getting home. Darn we thought…we’ll have to go fish the Grande Ronde again. I mean…since we’re out there anyway… This time we headed for the town of Troy Oregon knowing from watching the levels and weather that the river was going to be just perfect. And it was. Mahlon being quite the angler on his home waters showed me up again and landed another nice wild summer steelhead of about 8 pounds. Unfortunately, no camera was handy during the landing and safe release of that fish, but it was nice and bright with just a hint of trout coloration to her. Beautiful. The next morning, we awoke to find that our perfect water had blown out from somewhere high in the system and muddy swiftly churned and flowed down the river and dashed our hopes of finishing such a great week with just a couple more fish. So, we packed up and headed home to Mahlons for some much-needed chill time and fly tying. And most importantly tons of rest!

2018 has begun on a great high note. Keep all your fingers crossed the weather continues to give us good windows of good water and calm days and this winter should shape up to be one for the books…at least compared to the last winter season of 2017 that is of course. We all remember that mess. So, get out there when you can and just maybe you too can have a great start to the winter season. There’s plenty of fish continually coming in so give me a call and let’s get out for what’s shaping up to be one hell of a winter for steelhead!     

See you on the water

Bryan