Rob Lyon returns to some old stomping grounds, Oregon’s Deschutes River, to chase summer steelhead (and something even more elusive). Read Part 1 here.

 

Oh man!  I was fired up, flying down the grade in the wee early AM with bird song in the locust and basalt crunching under the tires.  I had my rod stuck down the front of my waders and an old ski pole thrown over my shoulder.

It felt angelic to cruise.

There was so much awesome water downstream, and I wanted to fish it all that morning.  It was like the joke about the old bull and the young bull sitting on a hilltop watching the heifers grazing below.  The young bull pipes up:  “Hey, want to go down and tupp one of those beauties?”  The old bull says:  “Hell, let’s go down and tupp ‘em all!”

I was looking to tupp ‘em all myself that morning as I skidded to a stop above Virginia’s Run.

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Rob Lyon returns to some old stomping grounds, Oregon’s Deschutes River, to chase summer steelhead (and something even more elusive).

“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?” That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains…” —Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

We parked the rig in the loading zone and threw on the flashers.

It was Sunday afternoon and Pearltown was in high gear. Streets were plugged with bikes and cars, sidewalks with people, and the handsome brick Deschutes Brewery Public House on the corner was packed with sidewalk tables and patrons sitting elbow to elbow. The place was crawling.

While I went inside the brewpub to hunt down the manager and load up the two pony kegs we’d be hauling in the rafts, the guys found an outdoor table by the rig and ordered up lunch. It was the 20^th of July and we were on our way to the Deschutes.

If you watch any football at all these days you’ve seen the Corona beer ads about finding your beach. Neat concept. Your beach may be standard sand and water.  It might be a rock concert or a mountaintop. But it’s a sort of a shrine and a place we go to lift our spirit. The Deschutes was a major beach of mine back in the 70s and 80s, and I revisited it this last summer with some friends.

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