I headed up to the Middle Fork of the Willamette near Oakridge today to try my hand with the fly rod on some native trout. About 10 minutes into fishing, my nymph was tumbling through a prime feeding lane when my strike indicator plunged underwater as I daydreamed about where I where I would fish next. I missed the fish but took it as a good sign.
I continued to work upstream fishing as I moved along. Behind a boulder, the indicator went down again and I was into a decent sized native rainbow of about 13 inches. Unfortunately, everywhere except directly behind the boulder was Class III whitewater. Somehow, I managed to get the fish beneath me but as he thrashed around in the heavy current he came unbuttoned. Bummer. I kept heading up and eventually crossed the river at a shallow rapid.
There is a side channel that often holds a good fish in the summer so I tried my luck there. My first good drift through the tight quarters I saw a fish following my nymph but it was too late. I tried the run again and watched the fish inhale my #10 Golden Stonefly Nymph and I was fast into a 17 inch wild rainbow. I managed to land it and took a couple photos:
Our west side Cascades rivers are not trophy waters and this is definitely a very respectable first catch for the new Sage Launch 690.
I released the trout and continued to fish landing a 10 inch native rainbow that I did not deem photo worthy. I needed to get back to Thurston and so I headed back down river, fishing quickly. I missed a couple bites but after the first fish, it didn’t really seem to matter.
Not bad for a couple hours in February.
EXCELLENT work Mule! See- indicator fishing isn’t so bad! Beautiful looking fish, congratulations!
Thanks. It was pretty cool to actually see the trout take the nymph–I haven’t seen that before. We are normally fishing blind-you guys probably are too. I used both the thingamabobber and a standard poly-yarn indicator. I can’t say I’m in love with the indicator but . . . it was a pretty nice day of fishing.
What’s a thingamabobber? I primarily use yarn when fishing water that is deeper than 3.5 feet or so, less than that and I use a big dry fly. I like the Paralyzer, which is a stonefly imitation, but Andy Burk’s Indicaddis is the best indicator fly on the planet. Umpqua sells it, but I haven’t been able to access their website to order more (the Reno Fly Shop is out of stock). There is a picture of it on one of my early blog entries, titled “indicaddis”. Are the rainbows in the Willamette jumpers? How far from Eugene is the place where you fished? Most of my fishing is blind, but there are a couple of spots I’ve found on the Truckee and Little Truckee that offer sight fishing for trout in the 16-22″ range.
Thingamabobber is a very light soft plastic air-filled ball. It’s new this year I think. They certainly can be jumpers though this one stayed low and tried to bulldog me. Oakridge is about 35 miles from Eugene and the Upper Middle Fork Willamette offers the best trout fishing in about a 2.5 hour radius, imo. Not stocked at all, it is all catch and release artificial fly or lure only. The Mckenzie can be good but they stock the heck out of it in season and it really harms the wild fishery. There are huge trout to be caught on it but they are few and far between. There is a decent chance that youyr best fish of the day on the Mckenzie will be your average Middle Fork Willamette fish. It’s sad really. I check out the Indicaddis.
I had that 17-incher on last week, I’m sure of it. Or its twin. Smith River weekday run this week???