Going Back to Go Forward - The Rogue River is Free Again

If you have ever fished the Rogue River in Oregon, you what a beautiful river it is......and yesterday, "The wild and scenic Rogue River has become even wilder with the demolition of a dam that had hindered passage of salmon and steelhead to their spawning grounds for 88 years."

Here's the full story from the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/10/us/AP-US-Rogue-Gets-Wilder.html

One more dam down, plenty more to go.....................

Early Autumn Bliss

A couple of friends and I fished Sunday afternoon and not only was the fishing good, the weather was mighty fine as well. Due to some technical diffculties, the posting of this report was delayed.................and also due to  those same difficulities my original text of the event has taken leave of this post.  (It is Friday morning, I wrote the original on Sunday evening......the time stamp is crazy....I'm very glad I don't rely on techno to fish.) So without further postponment, here is the report in an abbreviated form.  Hopefully, the photos will be worth a thousand words, or at least a few more than I have time to write here.

The river - low, clear, but cool and inviting.  Throughout the afternoon there was a steady hatch of tiny Blue-winged Olives and a smattering of October Caddis.  The trout cooperated and eagerly took a well presented fly.  In the faster riffles and runs, my October Caddis dry (see prior posts), was the ticket.  In the flat water and slower runs, a size #24 BWO thorax dry was the required imitation.

A typical wild brown trout taken on a BWO.

A decent sized brown taken on a size #10 October Caddis fished right up into pocket water at the head of a pool - the fly is still in his jaw.  The trout in these stretches were aggressive and the fly barely moved 6 inches after landing before it would be hammered.  Hooking these fish was difficult, but unless you pricked them on a missed set, they would continue to rise and you'd have another shot.

An October Caddis that decided to join the party at our house the night before.  He didn't seem to eat or drink much though.

My imitation as fished above...............you can see it in the trout's mouth.....I know, the thorax is light hare's ear.  It works better than if I use orange dyed hare's ear - go figure, or better yet, ask the trout why they prefer it this way.  It's one of the mysteries of fly fishing I hope we never figure out because it would stop being fun and delightfully perplexing.

Get out and fish before the falling leaves make it near impossble...............