fishing – Page 2

May 19, 2024May 19, 2024

From River to Market . . .

The Lower Deschutes is open to fishing year-round. However, as winter turns to spring, fishing improves. Run-off hasn’t started, but water temps rising triggers the metamorphosis in aquatic insects.

By the middle of the month insect activity has come full swing. Most anglers await the big stoneflies to crawl on to riverside bushes. This week we’re content to chase Blue Wing Olives and the Baetis hatch.

Salmon flies, a giant variety of stonefly, attracts more fishers than fish. It also marks a point when the rafters start to flood the stream and camp sites.

We try to get at least one trip to the Lower Deschutes during the big stonefly emergence, before heading to less crowded water.

At a favorite parking spot on the Lower Deschutes

This week was that trip. We had a blast. There could still be a trip to fish over salmon flies, but river spots are already getting a bit too crowded for us.

The real highlight of this week’s travels was a trip to a grocery store. Just half an hour north of Maupin, in the town of Dufur is a unique market.

Years back, while researching whole grain suppliers, JQ came across Azure Standard. At the time they offered local delivery of a limited variety of bulk grains. We ended up getting our wheat berries from Bob’s Red Mill, as it was easier and closer.

Jump ahead a dozen years, our lives have changed, but not a need for organic, clean products.

In that time Azure’s offerings have expanded and are being trucked nationally. Turns out one of a growing number of ‘local drop sites’ is a five minute drive from our house. We’ve become Azure Standard regulars.

A wide variety of grains and beans fill shelves in the market

This last week, JQ discovered the company operates a brick and mortar store in Dufur, Oregon . . . The Dufur Market. The Azure Standard catalogue is quite extensive, with some items we’d love to try, but on a smaller scale than the delivery order.

Mt. Hood as backdrop to a winter wheat field

Thus the trip to Dufur.

In case you’re ever in that part of Oregon, it’s worth a stop. And the sprouted corn tortillas were as good as the reviews said.

March 15, 2024March 30, 2024

This Might be Spring

It’s only been a week, but what a difference that has made.

We enjoyed clear sky and spring-like weather for the first time in months. Well, it seems like months.

This season has started to shift, bringing on a typical Central Oregon spring . . . that is, frigid mornings with warm afternoons.

It’s about time.

You don’t need to catch fish to enjoy fishing

We headed to the Crooked River, and while layers were still required attire, the camp chairs and picnic at river’s edge were a welcome change.

No fish were caught, but a good time was had by all.

Runoff has started. It will fill streams and hamper fishing, but the weather it seems will not interfere with our outings . . . at least for a while.

And with that we’ll get back out into the High Desert.

March 3, 2024March 15, 2024

Weather . . . again

Making paw prints in fresh snow is good fun

Don’t mean to complain about the weather . . . but . . .

Again this week we’ve been under mostly gray skies with a few inches of snow flurries thrown in.

One of the consequences of a wetter than normal winter is rivers are at or above capacity. Streams we frequent are running at April levels.

Un-fishable water is usually a product of run-off and right when ODFW opens the Upper Deschutes River as an alternative.

These dreary days mean we’ll fill the blog with more domestic tasks.

Oh there was activity, just mostly indoors and with fewer photos captured.

Not fishing doesn’t mean not thinking about fishing. Limited stream access just means more sitting at the desk spin’in feathers.

I even posted some of the patterns on Instagram. Winter is the season to refill boxes with patterns depleted last summer.

Books occupy another segment of daily activities. What an Inter-library loan can’t find, Hoopla and Kindle can.

Ken Forkish, owner of Ken’s Artisan Bakery In Portland, Oregon has written several books on bread. Evolutions in Bread and Flour Water Salt Yeast make for great reading.

There is always an eclectic mix of titles stacked on the living room table. This week that pile contained an inordinate number of cookbooks.

The other activity associated with dreary weather is cooking and we’ve done quite a lot of that. Soup Sunday returned this year and we’ve sampled and canned a couple of good recipes. JQ tweaked her chocolate pound cake recipe to perfection and fourth time seems to be the charm on finding a truly good chocolate chip cookie.

We didn’t get out much but that will change with the season. For now we’ll start a new book and wait for the real thaw.

February 18, 2024March 15, 2024

Time Flies but Still It’s Winter

As I’m writing this post the snows have returned.

Not as deep as before, but there is still some shovel work required. We understand it’s winter and yet days under gray sky seem more numerous this year than any in the past.

We don’t lament the inevitable and in fact look forward to a seasonal shift. It has been common in Central Oregon for snowy winter days to be followed by sun and blue sky. Usually in equal amounts.

Not this year.

The week didn’t start with snow on the ground. Mid-February started with a spring-like feel.

It’s referred to as false spring, but regardless, we took advantage and headed to Maupin to spend the day on the Deschutes.

Rivers remain swollen from January’s melted snows so the fishing wasn’t great.

However, the day was sunny and temperatures pushed into the fifties. We sat up chairs on river’s edge, enjoyed the day and waited for winter to return.

We didn’t have long to wait.

January 21, 2024January 21, 2024

Winter Activity

I’ve fished, mostly fly fishing, for more than sixty years. For fifty of those years any pattern tossed onto a lake or stream has been made in-house.

Fishing partners assess the Deschutes River.

This week I was reorganizing the space used to tie flies and pulled out a box of hooks that has been on hand from the start.

It may have been a week of cold weather battering old bones or this antique hook box, but either way this got me ruminating on my tying bench.

In this house winter doesn’t bring fishing to a complete halt, but it does limit time spent on the water. What replaces the actual fishing is fly tying. In all these years of stocking a bench, more gets added than is ever tossed.

A tying space is the equivalent to a garage work bench with its collection of old cans holding odd lots of hardware that might someday be useful.

The foundation to my tying bench is a roll top desk recovered from the Pastime Bar in Whitefish.

Though it has served in many capacities, the current iteration evolved from a couple of decades of reorganizations.

Every drawer and file slot holds fly tying materials.

On the slab of oak that tops the desk is a tying box my father built.

Above that are shelves with even more wooden boxes. All overflow with the bits and bobs necessary to craft trout lures.

The item that prompted this post was a tiny piece of wire sitting in a white cardboard box identified by Mustad-Viking Hooks in red ink and the number 94840 stamped in a different font.

A Sparkle Pupa pattern in Gary LaFontaine’s book “Caddisflies” calls specifically for this style of hook. However, you can’t find this component in most fly shops.

You see, Mustad isn’t the market leader they were when their signature cardboard box lined shelves in every shop.

In the years since I purchased these boxes, not only has the package changed, but the part number number has disappeared.

It didn’t matter to me nor would it to any tyer pulling a pattern from this book as fly tyers are notorious for making substitutions. Just like your father always had a bolt that would work.

LaFontaine’s Sparkle Pupa on a size 12 Mustad 94840

Fly patterns are intended to imitate a fish’s food sources which hasn’t changed.

However, the materials and methods are in constant motion, bringing new twists to ancient patterns. Tying a caddis pupa imitation to fish ahead of a hatch draws on hundreds of different patterns from years of knowledge.

My methods have evolved, yet still get pulled back to times when these old Mustad hooks were state of the art.

As winter sets in, I scribble out a list aimed to replenish boxes depleted over a summer of fishing.

This year a variety of streamers will be tacked on because Small Mouth Bass got added to the hunted species list.

I’ll spend the next month or so building imitations of aquatic invertebrates to match the variety of hatches we’ll encounter. Some will end up catching fish, others will catch a rock or branch and become part of next year’s winter list.

Every year the process gets reset like the cycles I’m attempting to replicate.