Fly Fishing the Upper Columbia River at Black Bear Lodge

When opportunity knocks, you open the door. That’s how we ended up fly fishing the Upper Columbia River at Black Bear Lodge. The opportunity to catch fish with Green Drake dry flies was something we couldn’t pass up. I’m subscribed to The Evening Hatch newsletter mailing list and read on a Friday there were two cancellations they were trying to fill 10 days later. To say we are sometimes spontaneous is an understatement!

We were last minute additions to a group from The Portland Fly Shop hosted by Nick Wheeler. Here is the group…Judy & Kirsten and Rial (our guide from 2017) with guests Steg & Nick (far right).

There are three “seasons” to fish the Upper Columbia River. Late winter/early spring you’ll be fishing single or spey rod tactics. In June and July, tremendous caddis hatches can be found along with great hatches of Green/Brown Drakes, and Yellow Mayflies. The last season is late summer/fall where October Caddis, Baetis, Yellow Mayflies, and terrestrials will be seen.

Yes, we were interested in the Green Drake hatch!

We fished the Upper Columbia for the first time back in July 2017. It was an amazing experience, fishing for and catching BIG rainbow trout in 150,000 cubic feet/second (cfs) with Green Drake dry flies.

This year, the water was a lower, only 115,000 cfs when we arrived and dropped to 105,000 cfs the last day.

Our guide Justin Hotchkiss told us the fishing had been off the charts the last couple of days due to thunderstorms and cloudy weather. We were hopeful it would continue, but I never like fishing with big changes to the barimetric pressure. Only time would tell which way the fishing would go.

We spent our 3 days fishing out of Justin’s boat.

Justin was a wonderful guide and we hope to return next year to fish with him. He was knowledgeable of the river, having fished it for 40 years.

Here is an image of Rial’s sled. We fished with him back in 2017. Steg and Nick are on the right. These sleds are great fly fishing platforms on the Upper Columbia.

We had seen videos of the fishing on the Upper Columbia before our first trip from Catch Magazine’s YouTube videos Todd Moen had produced. They are spectacular to say the least. Here is one:

Guided fly fishing trips on the Upper Columbia River are a little different than most guided trips. You get a later start, but fish until dark, which is between 9:30 and 10 pm just after the summer solstice. The rest of the clients planned to depart the lodge just after 2 pm. We told Justin later was just fine for us. Our departure a little after 3:30 pm aforded us enough fishing…a good 6 hours.

Each of the three days, we launched at the public boat ramp a short distance away and motored upstream near the Canadian border which was about 11 miles. It took us around 30 minutes travelling 22 mph. It’s a beautiful area.

Believe it or not, this is a HUGE eddy we fished every night at dusk. The fish would begin working, eating Green Drake dry flies.

Here is one area we fished each day, only a short distance from the US – Canadian border. Fish could be seen eating dry flies on the surface.

Because of our late start to the day, lunch was about 6 pm in the boat, with dinner served after returning to the lodge around 11 pm. They called it “Argentine hours”.

Most of our fly fishing was using the dry/dropper method on our 3X leaders. We used variations of a Film Critic or Quigley Cripple with a soft hackle dropper.

We were lucky enough to land some beautiful fish, most between 18 – 25 inches long. I’ll start with the big one Dancingtrout caught the first evening shortly after 9 pm in 82 feet of water.

Here are a few more from the first day.

A few from day 2…

Lastly, a beauty from day 3…

Not only did we catch Rainbows, a few juvenile Chinook salmon found our flies.

And of course, a few “bloopers” for your enjoyment…

Finally, the last fish of our trip.

As you can see, we caught our fair share of fish, all on the dry flies or dropper shown above. Several more popped or broke off our 3X tippet.

I should mention the “flyby’s”.

F 18’s consistently are seen in the middle of the day from Black Bear Lodge. I was told these are training missions from Widbey Island.

And the naturals…

It was a great place to celebrate our 36th wedding anniversary while fly fishing at Black Bear Lodge on the Upper Columbia.

Thanks again Justin for making our three days on the Upper Columbia special. We’d fish again with you anytime!

Enjoy…go fish!