The wind through the Gorge last week was, to quote a local boardsports forecaster, “nuking!” While carp fishing from the boat wasn’t an option, I wasn’t about to stay home. I had to find some other ways to occupy my time. Here are a few of the things I got up to:
Number 1: Satisfying My Curiosity
For the past few weeks I had seen tiny fish leaping in the sheltered waters of the park near my house. The feeding activity corresponded with clouds of hatching midges, which is what I suspected the fish were leaping after. Last fall I had seen similar activity and managed to hook a bunch of tiny pike minnow on dry flies. I wondered if these were more of the same. Pike minnow are native to the Columbia River, but have grown to be a destructive predator of salmon fry. So much so, in fact, that the state issued a bounty on large specimens, and stories of anglers making not-insignificant sums of money appear from time to time in local news.
One evening I took advantage of a lull in the winds and walked to the park with my tenkara rod and a few flies. The fish were jumping just where I suspected so I climbed down the riprap and tied on a generic midge-like pattern. Right away I had some fish crash my fly in dramatic fashion – topwater action writ tiny, but it took a little while to figure out exactly what they were keying in on. I had to skate my fly along the surface a foot or two and then pause it for a beat. That really seemed to drive the fingerlings wild and I eventually managed to hook one.
To my great delight it was a juvenile salmon! I didn’t look closely enough to tell whether it was a Chinook or Coho, but it was definitely a hatchery-reared salmon fry, recently released to make its way towards the ocean. Of course I stopped fishing after that – only osprey are allowed to fish for juvenile salmon. Anyway, these hopeful little travelers will need all the energy they can muster to survive the journey ahead!
After I released the little fish, I tried to take a video to highlight their aerial acrobatics.
Number 2: Fishing for Carp Anyway
Not even “nuking” winds can keep me away from my favorite fish. One morning I fished the leeward shores of a small lake. The carp were super active, tailing, cruising, mudding, even clooping elm seeds from the surface, and they all loved the white and yellow glo-bug flies I had tied up. Aiming for quantity over size, I tried to target the smaller fish so I could get them in the net as quickly as possible. I landed twenty carp before I got hungry and went home for lunch. Most were less than five pounds, but number 19 was almost twelve pounds and made a few strong runs.
Number 3: Exploring Mountain Streams
One morning I drove up out of the windy gorge into the mountains in search of trout. Most streams don’t open until the end of May, but there are a few spots in Central Oregon that are open year round. This particular stream is apparently best to fish early in the season, before the ice begins to melt in earnest and the sediment from the glacier at its source clouds the water. There were small brown nymphs hiding in the rocks. I have never cared to learn much fishing entomology so I just tied on a small brown soft-hackle fly. The stretch of river I chose was new to me, and pretty rugged. I didn’t cover a lot of water but I did manage to find one wild rainbow that was holding in a small pool above a log jam.
The coming week looks sunny and calm so I expect to be able to get back to my “conventional” fishing habits. The water temperatures are in the low 50’s now, and I did see two carp feeding out closer to the river channel, both potentially exciting developments.
The Fishing Dojo 