Owyhee River, OR

Outing Information

Fish Caught

Brown Trout

Weather

Other Patterns Tried

No other pattern information for this outing.

Fishing Partners

No fishing partners were saved with this outing.

Waypoints

No waypoints were saved with this outing.

Notes

Since I lately have not had any luck in the early evening fishing my normal spot, I decided to try fishing about 100 yards down from the rock tunnel. The water is shallow and riffly at the top but then gets deep for a long run. The insects were really hatching out of the riffle but not many trout were rising to adults when I arrived at 7:15pm. I think most of the adult feeding had probably happened earlier.

From the look of the hole, there was a slower seam on the far side of the river that I thought might hold sipping fish. I waded through 3’+ water to the far side and saw occasional snouts plucking insects from the surface film. I initially had on a PMD emerger and a black ant dropper and on my first cast to a rising fish I hooked a nice 16.5” brown on the ant. Unfortunately the hook was a ways back in the brown’s mouth so I just cut the fly off. I then mixed and matched various BWO patterns to the rising fish. I missed several rises before landing a feisty 15” brown that went on several long runs and forced me to follow him downstream a ways. After releasing him I waded back to the seam and although there was an occasional rise, the evening was already at 9:15pm and the fish were not rising in the hole like I thought they would. At this point I jogged back to the car and headed up to my normal hole.

I arrived to the sight of lots of fish rising in the shallow flats. I hurriedly reassembled my rod and ran down to the river. I hooked an 18 ½” brown on one of my first casts. I then hooked another brown within a few casts that got off. A little more wading and a few more casts and I caught another 18 ½” brown. At this point I had put down the fish in that area so I walked upstream to the halfway rocks. It was also pretty dark at this time. There was a brown rising about 5’ out from the rock and I hooked him on my first cast. I played him too hard in an effort to get him in quick and the #20 spinner pulled out. At this point it was too dark to really see much so I switched to a Bread. Unfortunately it didn’t float since my version didn’t have the wood beads. So, I made a few casts and started steadily retrieving the fly when a wake formed underneath it and I of course set the hook too soon. Another cast, another wake, but this time I hooked and landed the 15” brown. I called it good at that point since I couldn’t see much.