Brook Trout Break From Steelheading

Yesterday, we took a drive up to a high lake to fish for some brook trout; while checking out some gorgeous stops and mushroom hunting for chanterelles. The weather was nice before last night's rains came in, and the fishing was silly. You can see hundreds of brookies swimming around everywhere, and giving a slow strip retrieve to a wet fly was the hot ticket. The fish were totally gorgeous with their fall spawning colors, and many of the males had crimson bellies. They were like little painted trout.

Brook Trout are Fun Scrappers on many of Oregon's High Lakes

I had never caught brook trout in Oregon yet, but I did grow up on the East Coast; where I caught them as a child. After a couple of hours on the water, I caught enough brook trout to make up for the lack of catching them since my childhood. It was a pleasant surprise to see what scrappers these beautiful little fish were. I assumed that they would be more sluggish like a brown or a cutthroat compared to a Oregon rainbow trout, but they were solid scrappers. I could say that these brookies fought very well, and they were super aggressive. At times we were catching them over and over, and then it would turn off for a few minutes; only to turn back on again with fish rising under the film to emerging flies.

This Brook Trout Has One Awesome Paint Job!!

Not a bad way to spend an afternoon after witnessing Nikki hook 2 steelhead and land them both, and I landed one steelhead also. Fall is too fun, and there is way too many good fly fishing opportunities abound. What a good problem to have!!

Late Lava Lake Fly Fishing Report

This is a report from last week, but I wanted to let you know about it regardless. We went up to Lava Lake for a little while, and got to wet a line for some trout. We started out going deeper with a bugger pattern, and a nymph dropped off of it, and had some follows, but it was not the ticket to catch fish when we were out there. I then started to throw a double wet fly rig towards the bank, and I stripped the flies back with quick finger retrieves. Right away a very nice rainbow came up from the depths and crushed the fly. Basically we were stripping damsel like nymph patterns and the fish were keyed on that.

Lava Lake

We caught a several fish, and enjoyed our short float while visiting Lava Lake. The best ticket for the day was stripping the flies shallow in the water column, and it was interesting that the fish took the damsel pattern every time. When you cut off the other fly, the presentation was ignored, but with two flies on the action was consistent.  The average fish were decent in size, and had very nice body shape and coloration, and they were very healthy fish. A fun way to spend a lazy afternoon!