Early Season Trout, Spring Steelhead

If you are going to fish for trout this spring in the Pacific Northwest, be prepared for high water.  The above average snow pack along the spine of the Cascade Mountains will keep water levels high in many streams throughout Central Oregon & Washington.  This is the best news lake & reservoir fishers have had in years.  Chickahominy, Rock Creek & Pine Hollow Reservoirs come to mind as places that produce good catches of trout early in the season (now).  Anglers fishing the lower Deschutes River this spring will find the flows very high.  Many

anglers will whine and give up.  That will make it a lot easier on the rest of us.  There are

advantages in every situation and although few anglers would vote for the flows we are going to have this spring because of the higher water velocity, trout will be concentrated in the soft spots along the shore line.  Most fishing will be conducted from the bank with a really short line.  This situation is especially advantageous to anglers who never learned how to cast very far. Much angling can be accomplished with only the leader extending past the rod tip.  Last week Patty and I caught lots of trout with Glo

Bugs and Worms.  A split shot or two put the flies in the strike zone. For this kind of fishing longer rods of nine or ten feet are an advantage.  The flies need to be fished absolutely dead drift.  Strikes can be very gentle.  Some purist might turn up their noses at this kind of fishing, but eggs and worms a large part of the natural food chain when the river is high and off color. 

Fishing continues to be productive in the local rivers for bright steelhead.  Both winter and summer steelhead are being caught.  Brand new summer fish are now available in good numbers. Summer levels in regional steelhead rivers will be the best in several years.  Expect the Sandy, Santiam and Clackamas Rivers to fish well into July. Water levels could be conducive to bring Spring Chinooks into areas where they can be reached with flies.  Total Chinook run sizes are not expected to be large, but water conditions might be good enough to tip the balance in your favor.

When it comes to delivering long, accurate casts or dropping a fly on a dime, nobody in the world does it better than the G. Loomis Director of Research & Development, Steve Rajeff.  Rajeff has dominated the world of competitive casting for over three decades.  He has no less than 29 national and 13 world All Round Championships on his casting resume. Steve holds the current National single and two hand fly distance records at 238 feet and 295 feet respectively. Steve will demonstrate his competative casting power at the Sandy River Spey Clave, May 14, 1:30pm to 2:00pm, when he attempts to cast 300-feet.  This show has been a big draw for the last three years.

You might remember that Steve Choate of Kalama, Washington won the 2002 International Open Spey Casting Championship at Broadlands on the river Test River in England with a single Spey cast of 50 yards.  This cast was performed on moving water as a "fishing cast".  Steve perfected the "Spiral-Single" spey cast and has been one of the major cornerstones of the Sandy River Spey Clave since its beginnings in 2001.  Ed Ward has fished nearly the entire native range of Oncorhynchus mykiss (steelhead).  He is universally respected for his highly refined two-hand fly rod fishing skills.  He lives very close to

the Skagit River in Northern Washington and has been very instrumental in developing the "Skagit Style" of Spey casting, which enables an angler to fish with very large, heavy flies with sinking tip lines.  Ed Ward along with Steve Choate assisted Steve Rajeff in the design, testing and perfection of the new Roaring River Series of G. Loomis Spey Rods.

The Roaring River Two-Hand Series

Fish long & prosper !!!