Owyhee River, OR

Outing Information

Fish Caught

Brown Trout

Weather

Other Patterns Tried

• #16 Pale Yellow CDC Comparadun
• #14 Black Flying Ant
• #8 Black Woolly Bugger BH
• #8 Gray Zonker
• #18 BWO CDC Comparadun
• #18 Pheasant Tail

Fishing Partners

Waypoints

No waypoints were saved with this outing.

Notes

Perhaps the slowest trip I’ve had to the Owyhee. Zak and I arrived at the flats I normally fish and there were occasional dimples but the sun was still on the water. We got ready and by the time we made it down to the river part of the flats were in shade. I fished above Zak below the mini-island with a CDC PMD comparadun with a #14 black flying carpenter ant as the dropper. I think I may have had a splash on the ant but nothing I felt. We both fished for awhile and saw occasional fish rising but neither could hook anything. I tried various spinners and CDC emerger patterns without success. As the wind died down, so did the rises surprisingly. Zak walked upstream and returned around 9pm and there still weren’t many consistently rising fish. I switched over to a #8 bead head black woolly bugger and had a bigger fish on for a few moments. I switched to a Zonker and walked downstream a bit and had a couple hits but hooked nothing.

Zak started fishing above the island 10-20 yards and began catching fish consistently on a #18 parachute Blue Dun. I don’t know why that fly worked but it did. I switched back to dries and mainly fished a CDC PMD comparadun and switched the dropper between a CDC BWO comparadun, rusty spinner, black spinner, small pheasant tail, and had zero success with any of it. There were a few fish I was fishing directly to and had good casts to these fish but never had a rise.

It was around 10pm and getting dark and I switched back to a #20 black clear wing spinner dropper and started moving upstream in an attempt to find more (a few) rising fish. I had my first fish on a dry fly momentarily, then moved up to the island where there was a fish rising 15’ off of it. I made one or two casts and hooked the fish, a nice 20” brown. My only fish for the evening.

Zak continued catching fish until dark and finished with 9 fish total – 5 on his parachute Blue Dun and 4 on a #14 white Wulff? It was a predominantly white fly, hackled classic dry fly style. I’m not sure why but Zak had good success tonight with light-colored patterns. I don’t think my CDC patterns were colored correctly or making the correct impression in the water for the trout. I don’t know what they were feeding on, either. Zak’s big fish for the day was well over 20”.

On the way home we had our 4 boots laying on top of Zak’s soaked waders in the roof rack basket of the X. I stopped at one point to check on them to realize 3 of the 4 boots were missing. :) We drove back and found the 3 boots about 3 miles back. Pretty surprising we found them at all, considering we had driven 40 miles or so from the Owyhee. Weird things happening tonight.