Little D report

While the word Deschutes conjures up images of a strong river in an arid scrub landscape, those of us in the South Sound have a fond spot in our fishing hearts for the little D. I hadn't fished it yet this year; when I had time, flows were too high, when flows were low, I was too busy. But on Sunday, my time and its flows meshed perfectly. I introduced my friend Mike from Seattle to fish a section of the upper river. Our start was a bit flawed when Mike noticed as we geared up at our parking spot that his rod case had only 2 of the 4 pcs of his 3 wt rod. I understand that he later had a discussion with his son who had borrowed the rod previously concerning the proper way to put gear away......

In any event, we decided to trade off in using my 5 wt, which Mike had built for me almost 20 years ago on an Sage RPL blank. It actually worked out quite well in retrospect, as part of the reason for the trip was an opportunity for us to get caught up and we acted as gilly for each other as we worked our way upstream. If we had two rods we would have hopscotched pools and spent less time fishing together - silver lining.

The fish were cooperative and looking up. We saw a few golden stones flying around, caddis flitting in the bankside vegetation, and some large yellow mayflies (about a size 12!!) that hatched during the afternoon. We saw the occasional rise, and the fish were willing to come to the surface for flies. The cutts weren't too picky about flies - bless their little fishy hearts; we had success with golden stone dries, yellow humpies, CDC caddis, and caddis emergers. Mike remarked at the acrobatic leaps of these Deschutes cutts. Mike got to experience the "one-shot" rule for larger Deschutes cutts; if you miss a fish or if it refuses your fly, that was your one chance and it isn't coming back to look at another fly any time soon. Flows were perfect, water temperature was cool for late June, and I noted several changes to the stream from winter flood levels. It was a nice day of small stream fishing.

Steve