Wow, where does the time go? It’s been a couple of weeks since we were fly fishing the Lower Deschutes River from Warms Springs to Trout Creek. I thought this post would have been completed already, but I must have lost track of time. On to my report.
We last fished the lower Deschutes in May 2023 with our friend Eric. In 2024, we didn’t fish the hatch because we had an opportunity to travel in Iceland for a photography tour and added a couple of days to our trip and fished the highlands. And in 2025, Eric had to cancel the annual trip, so I was really looking forward to this year’s trip. All the stars aligned for a successful trip as we once again found ourselves chasing Salmonflies and Golden Stones fly fishing the Lower Deschutes River.
This year we planned to float the river from Warm Springs to Trout Creek on two consecutive days and stay with our RAM Promaster campervan at Deschutes River Fly Shop and Camp along the banks of the Deschutes River. It’s a great location with quick access to the Warm Springs launching area.
Key components of a successful fly fishing trip, at least the catching fish part, is when insects are hatching and weather cooperates.
The insects were cooperating. I found lots of Salmonflies and Golden Stones on the streamside grasses.
The weather on the other hand…I’ll come back to that.
Our day 1 float began at the Warm Springs ramp.
We found quit a few fly fishers in the upper river section and had to float awhile to find a spot to fish. Pulling over to the shore by an overhanging tree, we observed several Salmonflies swimming in the water.
There were a few fish rising to eat them as well. I hooked and landed one, but of course, the first fish which was bigger, rose to my fly but popped off.
My fishing partners had a little action too and I continued to move downstream where I observed a few fish rising. Dancingtrout followed and captured this image.
While walking closer to take the camera, she startled a large bullfrog. I’m not sure which one was more surprised! I must say, I haven’t seen one of these in quite some time.
After a little more action, Eric joined us an I pointed out another rising fish. It wasn’t long before he hooked and landed this Rainbow.
We packed up and moved on, searching for more fish.
Stopping at the next island, we all walked upstream and fished a seam next to fast water. I wasn’t paying much attention as I was casting along a good-looking seam, but I saw Dancingtrout playing a strong fish. It was the first image in today’s post, but here is a closeup of a healthy, fat Rainbow.
The longer we drifted downriver, the fewer fish we saw rising.
Late in the day, I was able to coax this nice Rainbow to eat one of my Clark’s Lady Stones.
In retrospect, we should have spent more time in the upper section of our float, as we observed more insects and active trout.
As we reached the end of our drift, the canyon walls are stunning. We fished a run with this rock wall as our backdrop.
After loading the driftboat and returning to camp, we discussed plans for the following day. Initially, we planned to repeat the same drift.
BUT…the extended weather report showed a high probability of thunderstorms during Thursday afternoon or evening on the second day drift. We might beat the storm, but launching mid-day and fishing till somewhere around sunset was too close to the storm in our opinion, so we opted to cancel the second day.
Eric told us we were the poster kids of “plan B” and to think about floating on Sunday. If we chose this, we had a couple of days to kill.
We had planned to drive to Maupin for the annual Trout Fest on Friday where Dancingtrout set up a Casting for Recovery booth for the Saturday event and I tied flies in the background. While there, we decided to take Eric up on his offer and reserved another night at Deschutes River Fly Shop and Camp and were able to get our second day on the water.
Thursday was “storm day” and we decided to fish around the boat launch area at Warm Springs.
There were still many stoneflies in the grasses and we hoped the fish might still be anticipating finding them floating down the river.
In fact the fish were willing as Dancingtrout hooked and landed several Rainbows.
We even ended up with a double!
Many of the fish were caught with Clark’s Lady Stone – Salmonfly.
We returned to camp in the afternoon, wondering how bad the incoming storm would be. It rained hard that night and we listened to thunder and lightning lit the sky. The camp offered some protection from the wind, but I could tell we were in the middle of a storm. The weather forecast was right!
At home in Sisters, we heard about several hours of thunderstorms and rain. In fact, total rainfall was around 2 inches over 6 hours. In addition, we read where there were around 19,000 lightning strikes in Deschutes county!
Friday found us back at the same island. I checked the grasses again, but found very few insects. I wondered if the strong winds blew them into the water the previous night. Fishing was slow as well.
We returned to Deschutes River Camp on Saturday night after attending Trout Fest in Maupin and prepared for the next day float.
The three of us settled on a strategy to spend more time fishing the upper section of the float. Here is Dancingtrout waiting for rising trout. They didn’t cooperate at the island that morning.
We fished other islands in the upper section, hooking some nice fish, landing several. One memorable fish I had got away after almost netting him.
I landed this willing trout on a Rogue Foam Stone.
It was sitting behind this overhanging bush and I placed an upstream cast close and watched it quickly attack my fly.
The farther downstream we went, the fewer fish we observed, just like our last Wednesday drift.
The exception was this run where a fish or two ate our flies.
You can see Dancingtrout in the shadows fishing the seam.
Thanks Eric for a great trip!
Enjoy…go fish!
