Topics
Fly Fishing For Bass
Fly Fishing Oregon Lakes
New Stearns Float Tube
Why We Love the Deschutes
Fly Fishing Nippers & Snippers
Sandy River Watershed

Fishing along a shore line from a pontoon boat or float tube can be very productive.  However seeing the bass you are fishing for is always a distinct advantage.  The higher stance and longer range of the pontoon boat makes it the perfect craft for bass fly fishing.

Some lakes are best fished from shore.  Often the best results can be obtained by two anglers working together.  One will hike the shore and gain elevation to direct his buddy who casts from a pontoon boat.  This teamwork works with both floating and sinking flies.  The shoreline angler can get many shots also. 
 
Bass often lay suspended where they can be coaxed to the surface with a well placed popper or hair bug.  Bass-bugging with a fly rod is an explosive, visual sport.  It is also a tactical one.  

Bass are territorially aggressive ambush fish.  Bass society is not a democracy.  The big boys get territory of their choosing.  They may not wish to share it with a smaller fish or a noisy, splashy, arrogant, fancy painted popping bug.   Big bass love to grab and crush things with their big bony, raspy mouths. 

Each bass is different.  Some are more aggressive than others.   Most can be goaded into striking.  Many bass that ignore or run from the first presentation, can be harassed into striking with successive presentations.  Sometime you can "pump a fish up" by presenting smaller and smaller flies until the fly matches the confidence level of the fish.  One time I started on a bass with a #6 hard body popper, but after several fly reductions,  took him with a skittered #14 Parachute Adams.  
(to be continued in 06/04 The Fly Fishing Shop "Insider")

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Up-to-Date  INFORMATION on Local Lakes at a glance.

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From edge of a large back eddy and the shade of streamside alders I survey the Deschutes. Upstream there is a short riffle. Here the river slows over rough cobble. Ten feet from the near shore there is a slick where the currents are broken by a large barely submerged flat boulder. Over hanging brush and tall canary grass protrude from a high bank, providing afternoon shade for a trout and a handicap for any right-handed fly caster, such as myself.

The big "Redside" is six pounds, twenty-three and a half inches long, and seven years old. He is in perfect physical condition and is the dominant fish in this riffle. His home was taken in combat, by driving out all previous occupants and succeeding interlopers.

The big trout rests in his lair. . .in the slick behind the boulder. This is the prime hold in many acres of water. Even though his living room is only three feet deep the trout is nearly invisible from above. There are perfect escape routes to either side, into rushing water that will instantly hurtle him away from danger.

The Deschutes rushes by. The trout's home is a calm tunnel amid the raging torrents. Long filaments of blue green algae wave with the flow, further concealing the trout in his home. The boulder is a chunk of basalt, recently discharged from the rim-rocks. It anchors the algae. The surface flow breaks into a cascade, which plunges a thousand oxygen-laden, silvery-green bubbles deep into the river. They mix with the long trailing algae and bounce off the gravel bed like an endless procession of transparent rubber balls. In the suction behind the boulder is a tiny eddy, which traps food and pulls it deep into the water.

Food, oxygen and safety is a hard combination to beat.

There is a narrow weed bed along the shore. It forms caves and funnels and tunnels. Several small trout flit about in the caves under the weeds, capturing many of the hapless dwellers as they are washed from the foliage.

The big trout needs not waste energy by flitting among the foliage in search of prey. The river brings him an endless smorgasbord and deposits it in the tiny eddy inches in front of his pointed snout.

I quietly peek over the streamside vegetation. Several small trout are visible along the edge of the weed bed. One is directly below me. It rises splashing to the surface and dispatches a small yellow stone fly.

My binoculars disclose other stone flies upon the riffle but no other trout rising to them. The rest of the riffle seems barren of fish. My view rests momentarily on the slick behind the boulder. The visibility is unusually good but the seamy, boiling surface is hard to penetrate. Yet there is a grayish-red cast to the streambed in the far edge of the slick. At first I think it is a fish. Then I am not so sure as the image seems too immobile and too large.

A tiny yellow stone nymph leaves the gravel upstream from the boulder. It struggles to the surface and the pressure within its body splits the exoskeleton from the top of its head to the center of its back. A viscous, bleached version of the adult insect emerges through the rend in the skin. First the crumpled wings appear and then the back of the head and finally the thorax, feelers, and legs. Last to leave the nymphal shuck is the abdomen. Finally, the stone fly rides the choppy, undulating meniscus as a fully developed air-breathing adult. It rides the surface only a short distance and is pulled under by the spill behind the boulder. It pauses struggling briefly near the bottom. There is a short, swift movement as the trout lunges forward and the stone fly disappears into the giant maw.

Standing crouched on the bank, I see the movement and for an instant the trout is fully visible. A shot of adrenaline shoots up my spine and lodges in the base of my skull. The primal hunter is aroused. The quarry has been detected. Briefly his camouflage has failed.
~Mark Bachmann~
(to be continued in 06/04 The Fly Fishing Shop Insider)       
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Sandy River Fishery Information Bank
Daily Fishing Report
Watershed Over-view
Sandy River Book
Biology Etc. 
Watershed Council Web Site

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