Ethan Nickel Outfitters

Though it is true that on average I don’t catch as many steelhead per day this time of year as I do in the fall, these spring steelhead are well worth the effort. There is no such thing as a “dark” summer steelhead currently in the Willamette Valley. The fish that have arrived in the McKenzie and Willamette, as well as the North and South Santiam are two-tone chromers. This fish is a prime example, caught by Matt Stansberry while fishing with me a couple of days ago.

All indications point to 2010 being a great summer steelhead year on the Willamette and all of its tributaries. The numbers of fish moving past Willamette falls are very encouraging. We already have decent numbers of fish in our local waters, with more on the way. The fish that are here now are the vanguard of the run, the bulk of which will show up throughout May, June and early July.

The avid steelheader in Oregon gets very little respite. Just as the winter run peters out the summer fish start to arrive. It is an endless season that helps to make western Oregon such a great place to live.

Yesterday I guided a couple of guys from the Portland area on the lower McKenzie River. The hatch was relatively sparse, but the big news is that the green caddis hatch is just getting started. Though the surface fishing was sporadic, over the course of the day we ran into some really nice fish.

I saw maybe a dozen naturals make their way to the surface, bounce around trying to dry their wings, and get gobbled by trout. The hatch hasn’t been out long enough for the fish to be really keyed into them, but as it progresses over the next couple of weeks, it will make for some very exciting fishing. This bug emerges actively and often out of heavy water. You will regularly see nice trout jump out of the water chasing these bugs as they emerge. This is my favorite hatch of the year and should linger throughout May.

The dry fly fishing during the green caddis hatch can be outstanding, but a variety of methods can be very effective. I fish emergers wet fly style, swung down and across the current, often with great results. I also fish a dry fly/ emerger combo, where the dry fly does double duty both as an imitation and a strike indicator. Two dry flies fished in tandem is also a great way to go.

The early summer steelhead that show up in the Willamette and its tributaries are impressive. These fish average 7-10 lbs., are mint bright, agressive biters, and fight like crazy.

Yesterday my buddy Kyle and I fished one of our favorite stretches for a few hours in the morning and came up with a couple of chromers.

Light precipitation and low snow pack this Winter have led to low water conditions here in western Oregon. Many years, though the fish are here in April and May, we don’t get a lot of opportunity to fish for them because of high and cold water. This season, however, the water is already relatively low on most of the Willamette tributaries, and has warmed up to somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 degrees.

Steelhead will respond well to a swung fly in 50 degree water, but because this is still on the low end of the optimal range of temperature, I have had most of my success swinging various leech patterns on different sink tips, varying the weight of the fly and the density of the tip to effectively fish water of different depth and speed. As the water warms up a bit more (into the 55 degree range) the fish will become more agressive, and will be more inclined to chase smaller wet flies and skaters fished on or near the surface.

This is going to be a great steelhead season here in the valley. I think one of the things that makes people hesitant to book a steelhead flyfishing trip is that they think that the likelihood of catching a steelhead on a fly is only marginally better than the odds of catching a leprechaun or bagging a unicorn. While it is true that successful steelheading often requires persistence, the people in my boat get skunked very rarely. In fact, if I have a trip scheduled and for whatever reason I don’t think the fishing will be very good, I will always reschedule the trip for another date. I do everything I can to maximize the likelihood of your success while helping you improve various skills like water selection, casting (single-handed or spey), and how to fish a swung fly in various water types. Please send an email or give me a call to schedule a trip.

Many of Oregon’s most storied summer steelhead rivers, like the North Umpqua or the Deschutes, generally don’t get good numbers of adult summer steelhead returning until early July. The Willamette River and its tributaries; the North and South Santiam and the McKenzie, however, often have fishable numbers of summer steelhead by sometime in April. This year is no exception, and despite some recent rain and cooler weather, most of our streams are still relatively low and in great shape for swinging a fly.

This season promises to be a great one for summer steelhead in the Willamette Valley. As of April 13th, there were already about 2,150 summers counted coming over the falls at Oregon City. If this trend continues, we might have adult summer steelhead returns rivaling those of the 2004 season, when we had a total return of over 33,000 fish.

I have been out several days this past week looking for some early summer chrome. While the fishing hasn’t been red hot, I have hooked bright summer steelhead on every outing. I have been fishing a few different leech patterns on various sink tips, wading through some of the runs fishing with a spey rod, and using a single hander in other spots I prefer to fish out of the boat. As we move into May, we will have a lot more fish around, and I anticipate very good opportunities for the fly angler to target these fish until the end of the season.

The word has gotten out to some extent that there are some fish around. Yesterday on the river I fished there were a good number of boats out, but very few fly anglers. The Spring season, when there are both bright steelhead and chinook swimming upstream tends to be relatively busy, but the pressure tapers off as the season wears on.

The areas I fish offer a nice mix of opportunities. Some of the spots are best fished out of the boat with a single-handed rod, which allows for very good coverage as I slowly work the boat down through the spot. Wading opportunities also abound; there are a lot of runs, pools, and tailouts which fish beautifully with a swung fly and are ideally suited to the spey rod. Whether you are a veteran steelheader or a neophyte, the Willamette valley summer steelhead streams have a lot to offer. I am an expert spey caster and spey casting instructor. If you want to learn about steelhead flyfishing, how to properly swing a fly in various water types, or how to effectively cast and fish with a spey rod, I am your guy. Give me a call or email and book a trip. It is going to be a great season.

This past week was a very wet one here in western Oregon. Though I had to cancel a couple of guided trips because the river was out of shape, all this rain and snowfall is a great thing, and will go a long way to offset a very warm and dry Winter. A couple of weeks ago, the lower McKenzie was fishing well while the flow was just over 3000 cubic feet per second. Today the river is running a bit over 7000 cfs at Springfield. Many fishermen think this is too much water, and in some instances they are right. If the river is high and rising, or the water is off-color with less than 3 feet of visibility, the fishing is seldom very good. If the water is clear and the flow is stable or dropping, however, the lower McKenzie can fish very well even when it is quite high.

Yesterday, though the river was running high and a little off color, I decided to give it a shot. We found some nice redsides nymphing. In the afternoon when the weather was calm and mild, there was a good March Brown hatch which brought some quality wild fish to the surface.

This period of high water has been a nice break for the fish. All Spring the water had been at summer levels, with a good deal of pressure on certain days. As you get ready to head out there and fish the river at this higher flow, keep in mind that the river fishes differently when the water is up. Many of the spots that were fishing well earlier this Spring will no longer be very productive, but there are a lot of spots on the lower reaches of the McKenzie River that will only produce at higher flows. The weather authorities predict that this week will gradually dry out and warm as it wears on. As the volatile weather passes and the water begins to stabilize, the fishing on the lower McKenzie should be great.

Another thing to keep in mind: the ODFW put this year’s batch of spring chinook smolts in the river this week. The hatchery summer steelhead smolts, though I haven’t seen any yet, generally go in the first week of April as well. The smolts can be a real annoyance whey you are trying to fish for trout. Hopefully they will quickly migrate downstream with this high water.

The spring grannom caddis hatch on the McKenzie is an odd one. When the hatch is light, it can make for some good dry fly fishing. On sunny days when the bugs come off in profusion, however, they make for some very difficult fishing conditions. Why you ask? Because there are literally billions of them on the water at a time. Yesterday between noon and two o’clock, there were mats of these bugs on the water, with multitudes more hovering over the surface, appearing from a distance like fog. Basically, it is a drought of abundance, there is so much food available to the fish that there is no compelling reason for them to pick your fly out of the horde.

Often during this hatch, I do better fishing attractors like a small Royal Wulff or Royal Trude than I do using an imitation of the caddis itself.

Weather always influences the relative abundance of different hatches. The cloudy days this week have brought good mid-day March Brown hatches and very good trout fishing. The sunny days, however, have provoked fish and angler-choking swarms of the small caddises. Fortunately, this caddis hatch is usually fairly short-lived, and hopefully the brunt of it is over. I anticipate that we have got maybe another week to ten days of the March Brown hatch to look forward to, after which smaller and paler mayflies will take center stage.

Yesterday was 65 degrees and sunny and the caddis came off by the billions. I was guiding a couple of guys from the Salem area. After an unimpressive start, I decided that we would be best served by nymphing through the caddis swarm, an approach which yielded a good number of big wild rainbows.

This season is shaping up differently than many: we have very little snow pack here in Oregon and unseasonably warm temperatures. So far this Spring, the usual succession of hatches has been a couple weeks ahead of schedule. I expect this trend to continue. Most years, late May is when you start to see good numbers of adult salmonflies and golden stones distributed fairly well up and down the river, and consistently good dry fly fishing. This year, I anticipate that these oversized stoneflies will start their crawl to the river bank and emergence earlier than usual. I think that this season there will be some very good fishing by the middle of May on the Lower Deschutes, and that some of the best dry fly fishing of the salmonfly hatch will happen in late May.

I base this forecast is on trends that I have observed over 14 seasons of guiding the salmonfly hatch on the lower Deschutes. When we have heavy snowpack and cool Spring weather, the hatch can stall out, with the adult stoneflies and good dry fly fishing lingering until late June. When we have low and warm water and hot weather, however, the salmonfly hatch is often largely played-out by the second week of June.

If you have never experienced the salmonfly hatch on the lower Deschutes, it is a spectacle, and while every month of the season and every hatch has its charms, the big stonefly hatch is my favorite time to fish for trout on the Deschutes. Every year during the salmonfly hatch there are magical periods of time when the fish are so keyed in to these bugs that I see some amazing stuff: multiple fish competing for a dry fly, big trout chasing the dry downstream to gobble it, times when the wind will disperse the bugs all over the river and violent rises appear from bank to bank. Hungry wild trout and oversized dry flies make a winning combination.

I still have some salmonfly dates available for this season. I am offering a 10% discount to groups of 4 anglers or more who are interested in booking a 3 or 4 day guided and outfitted trip on the lower Deschutes to experience the salmonfly hatch. The fishing that time of year generally ranges from fair to outstanding, and this year I believe that these late May dates will offer some of the best of the fishing. For more information on th multi-day Deschutes trip, click on the “Deschutes River” tab at the top of the page, or contact me.
Thanks, Ethan

After some heavy rains late last week, the weather has improved markedly. The flows on the McKenzie and Willamette jumped. The lower reaches became very turbid below muddy tributaries, like the Mohawk. The trout fishing over the weekend, however, ranged from good to outstanding, as the March Brown hatch continues. The bugs always come off in the afternoon. Today the greatest profusion of March Browns emerged around 2:30pm. Both the McKenzie River and Willamette Rivers are fishing well.

The hatch always comes off best on cloudy days. Today we had some intermittent sun, with waves of bugs making their way to the surface when it disappeared behind the clouds. There were good numbers of nice fish feeding on the surface. We did well fishing dry flies to rising fish. Wet flies fished on the swing were also very effective.

It’s a great time to get out and enjoy what the river has to offer. The Spring is the best time of year to fish the lower McKenzie River. With daily hatches and a healthy population of wild fish, it’s an amazing resource.

Over the last couple days, I took a group of fisherman out on the lower McKenzie River fishing for trout, followed by a day of winter steelheading closer to the coast. One of the most satisfying things about my job is watching people in my boat improve as fishermen with coaching and instruction. Even though these guys weren’t veterans, we had a great time and they caught some beautiful fish.

The trout fishing on the McKenzie was very good, with decent numbers of March Browns hatching in the afternoon. The fishing on the surface was good from just after lunch until late in the day. Early and late in the day, we did a good deal of nymphing, which yielded some of the best fish of the day.

Though lately the weather has seemed more spring-like than wintery, it is still winter steelhead season in Oregon, and March is when many of our rivers get their best returns of wild winter steelhead. It wasn’t easy, but we managed to find at least a few fish who wanted to bite a fly, and brought a couple of those to the boat. On the rivers I’ve been fishing lately, many of the fish are showing some color. It’s late in the season and there are fewer chromers out there than there were earlier, but there should still be some fresh fish showing up before the end of the month.

One more fish photo: me with a skinny hen taken on the swing recently.

The March Brown hatch is maybe the most anticipated emergence of the year on the McKenzie, and it is certainly one of the river’s best hatches. The hatch is important to people who fish the McKenzie for a variety of reasons. It makes for some great surface fishing, but maybe more importantly, it heralds the end of winter and the beginning of the Spring trout fishing season. Before the March Browns start to show, the surface fishing is more or less limited: you will see fish rising at times on Blue-Winged Olives, but these fish will be small on average, and the surface action sporadic at best. The advent of the March Brown hatch, however, will bring the McKenzie’s biggest trout to the surface to feed.

March Browns, and mayflies in general, prefer overcast, cool and rainy weather in which to hatch. It is on these nasty days that you will typically see the biggest numbers of bugs. Yesterday we had the ideal conditions for a good hatch. By the time we put the boat in the water around lunch time, there were already a few duns riding the currents, and a number of fish rising in pursuit. The hatch is always most intense mid-day, and yesterday was no exception. By 1:30 yesterday afternoon, duns and cripples littered the surface, and there were fish rising all over the McKenzie.

We had most of our action yesterday on wet flies (emergers) fished down and across the current and swung. Various March Brown wets and attractors, like the coachman, fished very well.

The next three months offer the best trout fishing of the year on the lower McKenzie River. Now is the time to get out and enjoy what the river has to offer. I am still running the spring special on half day guided fishing trips, which is a great value. This shorter trip is the perfect way to get out and enjoy the fishing that the March Brown hatch offers, and to get instruction on the various techniques we employ this time of year.
Ethan