Lower Deschutes Camp Trip

We have been doing some personal camp trips down to mouth the last couple weeks and the fishing has been super tough. B.J., Rich and I headed down this last weekend in the hopes of bumping into a few fresh fish and like my June trip we fished are asses off combing every good piece of water we got without so much as a sniff for the first two days. We tried floating lines, sink-tips, big flies, small flies and everything in between and we couldn't even buy a light grab. It didn't help that the wind during most of the trip was sustained 25 mph with gusts to 40 mph making good casts near impossible. With the dam counts the way they have been you would think we would at least see fish moving through the river but we saw no signs of life. Rich managed to pick one fish up on the last day right before the wind shut us down thus saving the trip. The fish was a beautiful thick shouldered wild hen that went staight into the backing and then proceeded to cartwheel from one end of the river to other. A spectacular fish for Rich's first Deschutes experience and he was impressed. It was as hot if not hotter than many of the fish Rich guides his clients into on the North Umpqua. You can tell by his shit eating grin in the photo below. The row out was hellacious with the wind never letting up. My shoulders are aching.

Amy and Harley launched on Sunday and experienced about the same thing with each them hooking one fish on the last day of the trip without a sign of life anywhere else. The wind was also a challenge for them.

My guess to why the fishing has been so slow is that the water temps in the Deschutes river are really warm. We were getting morning temps between 63 and 67 with evening temps between 67 and 70. The water certainly got warmer towards the mouth. The Columbia is still running at about 64 degrees, thus there is no incentive for fish to move into the Deschutes when they can stay nice and cool in the Columbia. All we can hope for is the Columbia warms up and the Deschutes cools down so the fish start seeking refuge in the Deschutes. Here are a few pics from my camp trip.