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Putting Summer in Summers: Steelhead Fishing in July on the Deschutes, Part 1

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Rob-Lyon-100x100Rob 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 20th 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.IMG_5811-001

It had been many years since we’d run the lower Deschutes in prime season, let alone late July. Upper river stonefly floats in spring, and lower canyon floats in October when the bird season opened, were common enough, but a high summer, pure steelie focus was a trip we hadn’t run in twenty years. After umpteen years of fishing “summers”—summer run steelhead—in the chill throes of early winter on rivers like the John Day, the Grande Ronde and the Deschutes, it was time to put summer back in summers.

We hired on a cook, as we always do, yet another amazing young island woman (double degree, honor’s program, head screwed on like a Mason jar lid). We got the cook’s consort, too, as it turned out, an experienced river guy—cook and shlepper, two for the price of one.

We had a fly fishing focus for the most part, but it was a hot sun, cold water, river canyon getaway in general terms, and people were looking to hike, explore and run some white-water, and of course we had those two kegs of Deschutes River brew to deal with.

We hauled a cat, an IK and a packraft down from the islands and picked up some gear rafts locally from my friend Nick at Deschutes U-Boats. First night in we stayed at the Imperial Lodge, per usual, to make the transition civilized, and floated past road’s end into remote, desert canyon early the next day.

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It was a long haul on the water that first day.  We were running for a camp set in the most remote stretch of canyon with sweet fly water surrounding, some twenty miles distant.   An hour into the float we were strung out all through the canyon.  People were stopping to fish or check out a side canyon or arrange a load, or whatever, and our radios were only keeping us in touch with the closest boat, upriver or down.  We relayed messages as needed but everybody was cued to watch for our boat pulled in at camp.

We floated between tall lava cliffs, past rolling sageland with deep golden bowls and narrow side canyons with rim rock jutting gray and boney.  I heard a covey or two of chukar in the distance and wished it was fall already.

The river runs briskly, even through quiet stretches, and the short dramatic bits of whitewater are refreshing.  It feels good to be back on the water again.  The rush and roar, murmur and hiss, the thumpingness, the deep river greens and snow white foam.  I make a lousy passenger and crave the sticks; Steve’s cool and lets me have them.

I love the state it puts me in:  body poised, mind active—find the line, be the line.  Strokes, angles, speed, the ride—performance aspects of running whitewater are crazy fun.  Sweet spot for this old rat is upper Class III, lower Class IV.

Color me a metaphor junkie, because I see the trick with running white-water—synch with the current and stay alert—much like our next evolutionary step, and river running is a good simulator.

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We were in luck that day and found the camp we were shooting for late in the afternoon.  We called it the Pick Pocket Camp after a trip years ago when Ken Morrish and I hiked upriver in pre-dawn darkness to fish the sweet, arrow straight run there and found a sleeping drift boat camp and some not so sleepy fish.  Three to be exact, and our whooping woke up the troops.

The mercury had climbed to 114 degrees in the canyon a week earlier, and finding a camp with shade on classic fly water was a stroke of luck.  It was early in the season, and that probably made all the difference.  This one was deluxe, with a large, sandy, hard pan floor, young alders scattered around and several clearly defined rooms in our river ranch rambler: kitchen, dining room, rod closet, bedrooms around the perimeter.  Best of all was our roof—the canopy of leaves overhead that rustled in the warm breeze.

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The summer fly fishing drill on the Deschutes is brutal.  Steelhead will only come up to the river’s surface when the sun isn’t shining directly into the canyon (this is pretty much gospel).  So if you’re really serious about catching fish, that translates into a pre-dawn alarm set to get you on the water as first light slips over the canyon rim.  At the other end of the day, you’re standing in the river until you can’t see what you’re doing.  Clockwise, that’s four or five in the morning until you hit the sack at about midnight.

Most of us tried to meet that schedule the first day, but I noticed the effort fell off after that.  Steve was hooking steelhead every time he went out, but the rest of us were not having much luck.  I think I woke up to the fact that my social milieu had morphed from the heat-seeking missile, hardcore fishing bum type that I hung with early on . . . to a more grounded and centered, less extreme personality.  We all wanted to hook a fish, sure, but getting psyched up to the level where it was shrine and savior just wasn’t happening.

It was late one morning, with the sun just up but the Pick Pocket run still in shade from a towering bank of alders along the bank in front of camp and Steve was showing Zack how to cast a switch rod.

Zack picked it up fast and fished on down the run in front of camp with his new technique. Five minutes later we heard him yell,  “Fish on.”IMG_5849-001

We scramble to take a look, make sure it’s not a big trout.  Nope.

It was Zack’s first steelhead, and he handled it like it was his 100th.  By the time he had it by the tail everyone in camp had trailed down to the end of the run to watch.  It was pretty cool.

That had us all hard on the water the next session, and Steve hooked up a couple more times—boom, boom, right in a row—upriver in the fast water that we like. Each time we had a little success I hoped it might take off like wildfire, but it did not.

In addition to my regular tackle, I’d brought a pair of Patagonia’s new Tenkara rods along with the express idea of hooking a steelhead on the bigger of the two.  There is no reel on these things, just a line attached to an elegantly tapered, telescoping tip.  I parked the smaller rod in camp for people to use for trout and whitefish, and it was a gas to fish with, a regular wizard’s wand that weighed mere ounces.

I spent the first couple days fishing the big Tenky (as I had affectionately taken to calling the rods) exclusively.  I set it up with a length of line sufficient to cast a #6 steelhead fly an acceptable distance and had been fishing the fast water along the bend just up from camp.  Used to a faster action stick, I had to slow way down to form a tight enough loop to drive the fly effectively.  I noticed right away, though, how fluid the rod is, feeling like an extension of the line, rather like a bullwhip. As a result I felt more connected with each cast, the sweep of line and fly, than I ever had before.  On the other hand, the rod tired  the wrist when held horizontally, and I missed the counter weight of the reel.IMG_5919-001

That night I decided to give it a rest and take my regular fly rod with me on the morrow, our third morning in the canyon.  Plan was to fish through the long two-mile flat of stellar fly water in Lockit.  I’d take the mountain bike up onto the grade and get after it!

I’d once written a concept piece when I was working on the river here about optimizing steelheading success, entitled, The Greyhound. A bit like a biathalon, it was more than just fishing, or even fishing fast.  It was not a race to see how fast you could fish, but a race to tickle as many steelhead as possible within the meager, couple hour window we were afforded.  We figured since the fish were inclined to take on the first or second swing, it made sense to give them that and keep moving.  It gave the sport athletic chops.

I was up well before dark the next morning with plans to do a little greyhounding.  I fired up the JetBoil and stirred a triple instant into the big cup, while I got into my waders, boots, grabbed a couple of Clif Bars, an apple, a working radio, and stuffed an emergency 8oz Kleen Kanteen full of water into my bulging wader pocket.   We had decided the cook could sleep in as it was just too brutal to have to get up at this hour unless you were fishing.   Everyone else was asleep, anyway.  I took the cup to the river bank and sat down with it.

People were still in dreamland as I wheeled my bike up out of the alder grove onto the flat.   I have a thing about waking people up—I don’t.  I passed a snoring hammock and several tents and rolled out across the dewless path in the straw grass at the head of Lockit, climbed up onto the old railroad grade and pedaled north, a smug grin cracking my parched lips.  I picked up speed and threw up a cloud of dust.

Part 2 of “Putting Summer in Summers” is available here.