Pumpkins and Cutthroats

Tiffany and I had a great time today taking the boys to the pumpkin patch in Preston and then retreating to the Cub river for a picnic and fishing. I only got to fish for about an hour, but hey, it was an hour more than the last two weeks combined. The Cub River is a beautiful little cutthroat stream in its upper reaches about 10 miles southwest of Preston. It is pocketwater that has decent little cutts in almost every pocket and seam in the river. The fishing was pretty good, fish were rising to the trusty P.A. and I landed about 5 and missed several others. I did get some pictures though thanks to Tiffany of the river and how beautiful it is this time of year. No fish pictures though, sorry. For anyone that is interested I did pass through both Black Canyon on the Bear River and the Onieda Narrows in the past few days. AWESOME. The water is perfect and the fishing looked great from what I could glimpse of the river. I saw plenty of rising fish in the Narrows in the foam lines and the water below where it is usually to fast to wade was very fishable. Check out the link to Oregon Trout's blog for pics of our Deschutes adventures.

The Elusive Deschutes Steelhead

I have never caught a steelhead before. My trip last weekend led me to the lower Deschutes River in Oregon around the town of Maupin. Maupin is a cozy little town with a few fly shops, restaurants, motels, an eight man football team and not a few steelhead fishermen. Luckily when we arrived at the river after our 1 1/2 hour drive from Gresham at 7:00 AM we found relatively few people on the river and some willing trout on our nymph rigs. I caught 4 of the 5 first fish of the day between the three of us, in the first 1/2 hour and then only two others the rest of the day. Nate got into 3 really nice trout in a row 18, 17 and 16 inches in that order and fat. The fishing slowed considerably by 10:00 and we were working for only the occasional hit the rest of the day. Nate and I fished a section about 1 1/2 miles downstream from where John was and we had no luck. We wandered around for a while and then decided to go find John. When we found him he immediately had a story about a steelhead that he had just hooked but had released early. We thought, "right". Not 30 seconds later John was into a decent steelhead and we were feeling more than a little sheepish. John played and landed the 7 pound steelhead like a pro on a 4 weight rod. That was, in fact, my first and only look at a real steelhead. Oh well, maybe next time, it was still a great time.