Idaho Fish Report

The Lower Deschutes from Warm Springs to Trout Creek is good. Is it easy? No. But euro nymphing will certainly increase your catch rate during a lot of the day, and staying late will increase your odds for a good dry fly session. It is definitely worth fishing and enjoying the river right now. Plenty of caddis, some PMD’s & PED’s. Purple Haze, Rusty Spinners, X Caddis, Iris caddis, Fin Fetcher Caddis, Sparkle Duns, Comparaduns and Parachutes are great dries to have now. Blue Perdigon is a great one, but my goodness there are so many good nymphs to use including perditions with natural body tones and mixing up bead size to achieve the right depth and drift is a skill you need to have on any river.
Have you tried a Jig Crayfish?
Swinging soft hackles is effective at times.
Caddis Pupa are a staple now. Look for smaller pupa and adults to be more important for the next few weeks as we are in the time of the year when glossosoma caddis emerge along with many of the summer staples like spotted sedges.

Lower Deschutes Steelhead opens tomorrow 8/15/22.

Are you going? How will you approach it? I love that we have the opportunity to fish for steelhead again this year, but again, like I said in last weeks report please limit your catch, use a net to minimize handling (seriously use a big net with a rubber/silicone bag), fish barbless, up your tippet size to 12# maxima, use a 7 or 8 weight and fight fish quickly. In other words, honor the fish and care for the wild ones like they were your best friend. Photos with a wild fish above and out of the water should result in a karmic retribution that will make your waders leak something fierce in the crotch on a cold day for years to come. I wrote this on Instagram this morning on the Wild Steelhead Page:
I wrote about that in my blog/fishing report last week. I asked my readers to consider would one fish a day be enough? How many for the season is enough? Would you step up your rod size and fish a stronger tippet to play fish faster? Would you use a net to minimize or eliminate handling steelhead at the release?

I hope we are not fishing for the last steelhead anytime soon. I also hope that the mentality from anglers will change relating to the fact these are really special fish, and connecting with them is important, but to limit the “let’s hammer them” feelings and create a ritual for honoring the entire day surrounding the experience.