A couple of things this week, Steelhead and seasonal fruit canning.
If you’re a regular on this blog, you might recall we’ve combined trips for Summer Steelhead on the Lower Deschutes and orchard visits before.
Well, it’s that time of year again. Fishermen refer to Steelhead as a fish of a thousand casts. It can take that many or more to actually catch one.
In simple terms, this is a Rainbow Trout smolt that spent a few years in the ocean and then comes back to the fresh water river of it’s birth to spawn and repeat the cycle.
Late summer on the Lower Deschutes offers a chance to add to your cast number in pursuit of large fish. Mostly, I’ve been trying out fly patterns, improving my casting skills, and a little more.
This week I did manage to hook up a large fish, but lost it before a positive identification. In a week, I’ll try again. The Lower Deschutes Canyon in late summer is worth the trip.
August and September are huge canning months as farms and orchards overflow with new harvests. We eat “seasonally” which requires the preservation of some of what you are enjoying at the moment.
Stone fruit have started to show up at the Hood River orchards so that is what we gathered extra of this week. Peaches, plums and some crabapples are getting sliced for breakfast today and loaded into jars for meals this winter.
Tree ripened fruit from the farmstand outshines anything you’ll find at the mega-mart. It is always worth the trip.
You make me hungry! I love tomato jam and have a recipe for tomato, bacon jam that’s like candy!! I’d be glad to share if you want it.