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Putting Summer in Summers: Steelhead Fishing in July on the Deschutes, Part 2

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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). 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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I leaned the bike against a rock and walked down across the grass flat to the water.  I walked upstream carefully so as not to spook the fish, started at the head and worked it through.  An angular run, you start out in the riffle with three feet of line and end up hauling for all you’re worth.  It was easy wading and fluid to fish but had none of the geometry I was anticipating downriver.

Up to the grade again, back on the bike and cruising downriver.  Next stop was the Park Camp.  The run in front of camp is about as ho hum as it gets, unless, of course, you’re catching fish.  The place, though, is etched indelibly in my memory.

I was working on the river as a roustabout in the early eighties.  It was late in the afternoon in late October and very cold.  I was fishing straight across the river from the camp, where a drift boat was pulled in, and four guys were out in front, fishing.  Suddenly, one of them hooked up. Then another.  Then a third.  I couldn’t believe it!  I watched and waved and hoped something was swimming up my side of the channel.  It was pretty cool to witness this, but it was the after party later that night that blew my mind.

I was in camp and had just finished washing the dishes, when I noticed flames reflecting off the water, upriver.  We had some bonfires back in the day when it got bitter cold, and I didn’t think that much of it.  But I hiked up to investigate anyway and sat down on an icy grass hummock, mesmerized by what I saw.

Across the water, the guys who’d had the triple were celebrating. In the shadow of a short line of trees along the river bank, backlit by dancing flames, the dudes were capering around the fire, scotch bottles and beer cans on high and whooping to beat the band.  I knew right then and there that THAT was really what I was after out here—that rarified realm of shared Jovian largesse—in other words, a successful expedition with my buddies.  As much as I dug the one-on-one aspect of steelhead fly fishing, I could dig this even more.

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The scene seemed North African, somehow, a successful small hunting party on a Tanzanian plain with a zebra haunch on a spit . . . primal and gritty.  Around the glow of a raging bonfire some righteously celebratory fishermen toasted and jigged.  I must have remained for an hour sitting in the wet and cold, watching.

Park Camp was less exciting this day, however, and I got back on the bike and pedaled down to the Bend, a quarter mile arc of obscure rim water that has produced some extraordinary fishing for guys in the know.

The bend is walled-in by steep columnar basalt.  The Harriman camp blasted here to put the railroad grade through at the turn of the century and the shards of basalt on the river bottom make excellent holding water.  I noticed the effect of it upon the currents as I fished and enjoyed the subtle movement of line and fly.

I reeled in after a little while, climbed up the steep rocky bank and mounted the bike.  I glanced across the canyon to note light cleaving ever closer to the river bottom as I pedaled hard for the False Tail Pool.

I am chasing shadow by this point and find it, one last swath of it, at the end of the bend and the rim of cliff that creates it.  I probably have twenty minutes before the sun makes an appearance.  It is lovely, ultimate water and I am so into it that a fish might nearly have been an unwelcome interruption.

What makes the water here click is a kind of fluid geometry to the flow, a type of liquid precision that I’ve likened before to a river running through a flooded Greek ruins.  It occurs as a result of crystalline basalt columns, laid horizontally in the river bed.

When you fish summers, you’re standing in the river casting in ambient light.   The river draws her robe around herself and the surface becomes oblique and two dimensional.  We don’t get this perspective in full daylight, when we can see deep underwater.  And just like humans are often sexier, and always more mysterious, when they are partly clothed, the fishing takes on a certain mystique in the half light.

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In the wee light hours it is all about the dynamic veneer of the water’s surface.  Colors molt from liquid gold to copper to burnished bronze.  The contrast of the track of line and fly is accentuated, and if I am fortunate to be fishing through these basalt ruins then, the feeling comes over me like a Chopin nocturne.

I finish the pool and wade down along shore to a brisk, shallow, sheeting run. It’s like rinsing in cold water after a hot shower, so fast that it eats around my gravel footing like a wave at the ocean.  I have only hooked one fish here in years past.  It is fast, sweeping water, each cast is zip, zip, and suddenly I feel the sun upon my back.

I make a final cast, feeding out a ton of line as the sun glares down upon me.  I finish the swing and turn around, flipping the rod up onto my shoulder, and reel my line in backward as I wade to shore.

I felt nearly sated from this day’s fishing.  I had yet to touch a fish on this trip, three days in, but it was, honestly, a small thing.  I say small because, frankly, if I had hooked a fish I might have packed away the rod.  That said, I was trying hard to hook one on the Tenky and figured I would stay with that, now, until I did.

I bushwhacked up to the grade and found my bike, only to discover the front tire was flat.  I had no pump and was a good couple of miles out of camp.

Oh well.  I could have stashed the bike and picked it up when we floated by on the way north, I suppose, but it was just a bike, and I pushed it along with me.  It wasn’t too bad.  I found a groove and settled in, wincing at each sharp rock I hit, glancing down every now and again to see if I had destroyed the tire, yet.  Ah well . . . I broke out a Clif Bar, sucked on the apricot bits and went along.

About half way back I spotted someone hiking down the grade toward me.  It was Robyn.

Someone had told him there was an outhouse a couple of miles downriver and he was hiking down to find it.

“You seen it?” he asked me.

“Yeah,” I said with a big grin, and pointed across the river.

“You’re kidding me . . .”

“Nope, that’s it.”  I gave it a three count and said,  “But hey, I’ve got an emergency TP stash in my vest.”  He was happy to hear that.

 ***

A couple of nights later, full dark with a moon shining early,  I returned from fishing, turned off my headlamp and dropped down off the flat trail into camp.  Everyone else was sitting in front of the kitchen where Amanda and Seth were prepping dinner and Steve, it appeared, was holding court.

It was unnaturally quiet.  I stashed my gear and went over, filled my pint cup at the IPA keg and listened in.  Steve was recounting the landslide disaster at Oso earlier that year.

I’d heard the account from him already and knew what an extremely empathic experience it had been for him.  As the Director of Public Utility for the county in which it happened, Steve worked the front line at a command post in the slide area for several months, interfacing with the people who lost homes and loved ones, everything.  It was a deeply moving experience and I was glad he was telling our friends his story.

By the time he was through you could have heard a pin drop.

I got up quietly walking around and firing up the lanterns in the central open area of camp, then called out:

“Fricket, anyone?”

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If you’ve been in a coma recently, this is a great river game—out of Boulder, I believe. Get a large disc, like an ultimate or freestyle disc and four poles (bamboo works well) Plant two poles at one end like gates, about a foot and a half apart, and place the other two about forty feet off, same deal.  Drop some pint sized plastic beer cups upside down on top of the poles.  Each team of two stands by their set of poles and takes turns trying to throw the disc between the poles, or goal, at the other end.

Score a point if you throw it between the poles and a point for each cup you knock off.  If the other team catches a flying cup, though, you don’t get the point and they do.  It’s as simple as that.

Steve had played it a few days earlier on the coast and brought four bamboo poles along with him.  I wondered how it would go over.  We had it set up in the middle of the grove with camp chairs and the keg alongside like a chill Wimbledon.

Total hit!

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We had boat loads of jocks along and they got after it.  Vaughn and Steve and Zack were the best.  I could throw well but I couldn’t catch the cups for beans.

Only thing was that I’d brought sharp-edged golf discs along instead of the bigger, rounder ones, and we played with them until the carnage could not be ignored.  There was a ton of collateral damage going down, errant shots to legs and body.  The golf discs were brutal.  Zack came back sporting a huge bruise on his shin for a week and no doubt Amanda sported a polka dot bosom.  But with the beer and excitement we didn’t register the damage we were taking.  It evoked fond memories of playing football.

It wasn’t until the last evening before we packed up to float to our final camp that I finally had success with the Tenky, tying into a beast of a fish that I had on long enough to feel the love.

With nothing more than the spring of the rod and 20’ of line between us I was battered with every ounce of energy the fish spent thrashing in frenetic terror, and I reverberated with the echo of that violence for days afterward.

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We struck camp the next day and everyone was happy to get back on the water. The lower reach of the Deschutes is a beautiful float through a broadening canyon with distant palisades and increasing evidence of early settlement.  I jumped ship at Wash Out rapid just above Kloan.  As our people pulled in to scout and run it, I hiked up a steep black scree slope up onto the east bank trail.  I hiked a short ways down to scope our camp options from the vantage of the old railroad grade, high above the river.

As luck would have it, I arrived as another  guy popped up from a trail leading down to the riverbank.  We introduced ourselves.  He was Peter Crow, GM at Smith Optics.  What’s more, he and I knew each other from a project eight years earlier, but had never actually met!

“You’re looking good, Rob,” he said.

“You too, Peter.”

“Except for the glasses,” he added, grinning.

We laughed.

I’d lost my best pair of glasses in our pond at home just before the trip and had a beater pair along, and told Peter as much.

“Try these,” he said, and handed me his pair.

“Whoaa.  Colors pop right at out at ya! What’s with that?”

“’ChromaPop, baby . . . that’s what the techs call it, anyway.”

Those techs, I thought; pretty sweet shades, though.

We chatted as the rest of our crew floated in, trading notes on life changes, projects and such.  Peter had just arrived and so had no fishing report.  He had biked up from the mouth with a trailer and set up a spartan camp scene, planning to stay for several days.

I scuttled down the trail to catch up with my friends while Peter hiked down the grade a short ways with his phone to the old boxcar to check his mail.

Peter may have had Kloan dialed, but for us it was a mistake.  The steep 4WD grade on the bank behind us destroyed the mood, or my mood, in any case.  We could see three or four rigs parked there, camped in the scorching mid-day heat even, no shade at all, and all of them were fishermen. It might have helped if we’d caught fish here, but we did not.

What I did like about Kloan was the history, the evidence of the old river crossing leading into the interior of the state.  The legendary fishing runs we competed for as guides are named after the toll keeper’s homestead:  The Cabin Hole and the Bathtub Hole.  There was a feral apricot orchard up on the slope and an old Italian rock oven with a single keystone in the roof built at the turn of the century.  And the bridge abutments still lie in the middle of the river where they blew down or blew up (no one knows for sure) in the late 1800s.

We watched Peter put on a clinic across the river that evening.  Dave was impressed, said he’d be putting Plan B into effect and biking up with Dawn in September.

It wasn’t very late but I was bushed; I think everyone was.  I took my beach chair down to the water. Camp was pretty quiet except for Dave’s guitar from farther up river.  The river was murmuring in front of me and the wind blew up vagrantly.  I threw up my hoody.

I like to process a day’s experience before I duck under all of it to meditate, so I hashed over my thoughts and feelings about the trip, which were many and confused.

It‘d been a good trip, I thought, in spite of the spotty fishing.  Amanda and Seth had dedicated themselves to providing excellent meals for everyone.  Ordinarily our cook is out having so much fun they can barely get food on the table.  These two ran it like a commercial float.  Dave was sorely wishing he’d gotten into some fish, but he’d had his way with trout.  Vaughn is hard to read, but has a groove, and even without a fish this time I think he dug the chance to get after them.  Zack is a concept guy and his one fish was enough.  Steve had nothing to complain about, and Robyn was always happy just to be on the river.

But my own feelings were definitely mixed.

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I’ve guided long enough to know how the emotional investment in getting your guys into fish can backfire when they don’t, but it was more than that.  Something else was bugging, some old demon demanding its due.  I could feel the reverberation, still, from the steelhead hooked on the Tenkara and knew it was tied in with that.

I’d seen this coming, frankly, a long way out.  Ever since the day I’d woken up with a steelie on the line and me emotionally flatlined.  Up until that time, in the heyday of fishing/guiding here in the eighties catching wild “summers” on a fly was like finding the Holy Grail.  But a few too many fish and a few too many nights staring into the campfire and dreaming of wilder places and wilder adventures had taken some lustre off the rose.  But it wasn’t so much about becoming jaded, I think, as it was about wanting to reconfigure the experience.

My new perspective came about naturally with a shift in lifestyle.  I’d quit guiding by the mid-eighties, followed the river to the sea and hung a right, eventually settling on a quiet plot of land in the San Juan Islands where I’ve gone relatively native over the last couple of decades, living more of a nouveau-peasant, neo-Bohemian lifestyle of quite literally chopping and hauling wood, stoking fires and discussing the mystery of Mind with friends while playing disc golf, and not in the least, writing my thoughts.  As for fishing, we eat what we can catch ourselves, or buy from commercial fisherman friends, locally.  Salmon is our basic fare and I harvest bay mussels in the winter.

And in a kind of fishing ‘intensive’ I undertook half a dozen epic, solo kayak treks where I packed along my fly tackle and took the game to what I consider to be the ultimate, integrated venue:  living off what I could catch while trekking alone through a wilderness seacoast for months on end.  This, I realized, was exactly what I’d been dreaming of!_MG_6419

So, now, coming back to the Deschutes to try and catch a fish that will only have to be released, and only then if it was lucky enough to survive the ordeal, wasn’t looking so attractive.  Frankly, I’d put the trip together with the interest of my friends at heart, who were all excited about catching a steelie on a fly.  As for myself, after hooking up with the Tenkara, and viscerally registering the trauma I was causing another sentient being just for kicks, I was done with the whole C&R thing.

I was like the cat, now, I figured, who foregoes toying with his mouse and gets right down to the matter of catching and eating it.

If I had a Corona I would have tipped it to the beach that was, that night.  I could see how beaches were a function not only of space, but time.  While the Deschutes may no longer be my beach for fishing steelhead, I might be back in a few months time to hunt the wily chukar partridge, and the river was still a card carrying beach for that.

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