Last year Jeff and I had a ton of fun on our September trip to the Deschutes and Yakima Rivers so we decided to do it again this year.   Once again the trip was hosted by Louis Cahill of Gink & Gasoline and guided by Jeff and Barrett of Fish the Swing.

We departed on Monday morning for the fairly long drive down to the Deschutes, leaving a bit later and deciding not to fish along the way this year.   We ran into The Dalles to get a license and arrived at Heritage Landing just in time for the 2 p.m. pick-up.   Of course, everyone else was late due to a flight delay so we got to sit around the landing a bit and chat with Jeff and Barrett.    Once the gang arrived we jetted about 4 miles upriver to our camp at Wagonblast, one of the better steelhead runs on the lower river.

Once we got our gear unloaded into tents we had a short meeting then geared up for fishing and headed out.   Funny enough a young guy at camp had an Aussie Labradoodle, Ralph, that was a black version of Lira so I had my dog fix set while at camp.   Jeff and I teamed up with Louis and Jeff Hickman for the first two sessions and we headed upriver to the Powerlines where Louis got dropped off while Jeff and I fished the easier run below.   Louis did awesome, he got two steelhead that evening.  Back at camp Dave got two fish also, the rest of us got skunked but it was only the start of the trip.

The next few days were the Dave show pretty much.  Everyone had grabs, me included, but only Dave seemed to be consistently catching steelhead and this was only his second ever steelhead trip.   I had two grabs right out in front of camp on Tuesday so on Wednesday I fished it through lunch in hopes of finally hooking up the fish that kept whacking my fly but to no avail.  That afternoon Jeff, Dave and I headed out with Barrett and fished some great water at Bedsprings and Hot Rocks but nothing the whole time except a very large sucker I got at Hot Rocks.   With less an hour to go of daylight we dropped Jeff off at the camp water and headed down to Grasshopper.  There I worked the middle section and Dave started above me and managed to get a fish that I had fished over, geez, this guys luck would just not end.   Barrett took me over to the other side of the river and said we had enough light for two casts – one short and one long.  He told me where to make the short cast.  The fly swung around to the rock below me and wham!  Fish on!   Finally, and literally on the last cast of the day I hooked into a 6-7 lbs wild hen and after a few minutes and some wading downstream landed the fish.   The fish took a #7 Streetwalker on a dry line using my  Z-Axis switch rod which made this one all the more fun.

One morning left on Thursday and we decided to stick it out at Wagonblast that morning with Jeff as the guide.  We worked runs with a dry line early then when the sun hit the water we had breakfast and switched to sink tips.  I took the water just below camp and Jeff took the water down at the camp downstream.   I worked my butt off on this water and had one more grab and that was it.  The good news though is that Jeff hooked up with a very nice fish that ran all over the river and finally came to shore, a nice 10 lbs wild buck.  Mission accomplished, we both got a steelhead on the trip and, in fact, all but one person in the group caught fish.   Jeff also managed to land a couple of smallmouth bass and a sucker on the last day so he got the species count award.   We saw some wildlife on the trip too – a flock of turkeys, some sheep, some mule deer, eagles, herons and even a beaver hanging out below camp.

We finished up around 11:30 and had a quick snack, packed up and headed out of the river back to the car at the landing.   Jeff and I then took off for Red’s Fly Shop and Canyon River Ranch in Ellensburg where we would spend the next day and a half.   Once we got to the lodge we unpacked and geared up with our trout rods to fish some on the property there.   Within a few casts I had a solid rise and was into what would turn out to be the nicest trout of the Yakima time, a 15-16″ rainbow that took a #10 Yellow Stimulator.

We walked back to the lodge spooking a whole flock of wild turkeys on the way then had dinner at the lodge before crashing hard for the night,  I slept 9.5 hours!   In the morning we headed into Starbucks for breakfast then back to the lodge to get ready for our float that day with Leif.   We ended up floating from Ringer all the way back to Red’s which was a cool float since we pretty much saw the entire upper half of the canyon along with quite a few Bighorn Sheep and one lonely Mule Deer.   We caught trout, quite a few, but they seemed to be mostly on nymphs and in the faster water.  No huge fish except one big whitefish but we had pretty good action all day and I managed to waypoint several turkey areas for next spring.

All in all another really fun trip with Jeff.  We got to see a lot of good water on the Deschutes and we both got better at spey casting, more on my crazy casting lesson in the next post.