McKenzie Trout Fishing Was as Good As It Gets! 6/29/2011

McKenzie River Rainbow Trout - Taken on Dry and Dropper - June 2011

This past Wednesday, I was running a "Split Full Day Special", and the first part of the trip was for steelhead, and the second part of the trip was for trout.  The steelhead part of the trip was not so good, because the water was literally as crowded as it gets. There were more anglers around for the river to be able to hold. Everywhere you looked was a driftboat or a bank angler. It was a sight that would horrify those who seek solitude. Unfortunately, that is a factor that comes with good anadramous fishing. We were so frustrated with the crowd factor, and we had one brief hookup with a steelhead unbuttoning itself in a flipping cartwheeling areal. The weather was really looking promising though for the trout fishing that we planned on for the second leg of the trip.

A fine Rainbow Trout caught on the McKenzie River

It turns out that the fishing was as good as it gets for the McKenzie River. They were taking fish left and right, and one everything we tied on. The outfits we fished had either a dry and dropper or double wet flies. Both setups really crushed fish all day long, and it was literally a matter of what we decided to fish with in the given spot. The best thing about the day was how violently the fish were destroying the dries for the dry and dropper setup. One rod had a Chubby Norman with a prince nymph and the other rod had a the same dry, but with a possie bugger instead of the prince nymph. They took many fish on the dry and both the prince nymph and possie bugger cleaned the underwater area of all fish too.

The other two rods had wet flies for subsurface swinging, and that worked very well. Green caddis wets, yellow softhackles, and red butted softhackles were all taken fish with regularity. It was one of those days where I was having the best time possible as a guide watching my clients roping fish after fish with cheers of joy!