Plan B fly fishing at home

I hope you read last week’s post about fishing our home waters the Metolius River. We continued to fish the river last week, but forest fires in the area have changed our plans this week. In fact, the road below Allingham Bridge is closed, including all the campgrounds. They were evacuated this weekend.

The high wind forecast did materialize, but didn’t move the fire towards the river.

We woke up to blue skies (Tuesday morning) and are thankful for no smoke. BUT it sounds like there is devastation in the Santiam Canyon and along the McKenzie River.

Yes, the upper river is open and we could fish there, but we’ve decided to give it a break for the next few days and hope the fire danger subsides. Only time will tell.

We did fish the river on Friday and found a few rising fish willing to eat our flies.

The image below shows one of my size 16 Improved Sparkle Dun BWO.

But I didn’t catch the fish with that fly!

It was my lucky day. I hooked this Rainbow Trout twice. I remember seeing the red stripe and I set the hook, breaking off my fly. About an hour later, I hooked and landed him with a different fly AND retrieved the first one!

And here is the fish I hooked twice.

It still makes me smile when I think about the story. I’ll try to keep that fish in my thoughts as I spend time at the vise this week filling a couple of fly orders and provider box for us.

Perhaps I’ll start with a few Improved Sparkle Dun BWO flies in sizes 16 and 18.

Enjoy…go fish, stay safe!