Oregon in October

We were up at 5:30 am to meet my cousin, Alex, who would act as our guide. We launched his drift boat around 6:30 at a dark and empty boat launch on the Rogue River in southern Oregon. It was a cold 36 degrees but at least it wasn't raining. Terry, my fifteen year-old, sat and watched the boat while we ferried Alex’ truck and trailer down to the take-out. An exciting day got off to an early start when we got back and heard Terry’s story.


“While you were gone, a cougar came down to the water across the river from me. He was making lots of hissing sounds and hunting a black housecat that hid in the rocks. I was trying to decide if cougars ever swim across rivers and whether I should be worried when it ran off...”

Leave it to Terry to have an animal encounter.

“Did it catch the cat?”

“No, that’s the funny thing. The little cat snuck out the back door when the cougar wasn’t looking.”

After meeting face to face with a bull Moose (twice) in Idaho in August this year, Terry decided he might be the victim of bad outdoor luck. After all, he and I were the ones actually charged by a Moose in Yellowstone six years ago.

Now he’d had a near encounter with a cougar. These things make for great stories as long as you’re around to tell them later...

I expressed amazement and quizzed him all about it as we shoved off. Light was in the sky now and we fished yarn puffballs on heavily weighted lines. I had tied up a couple dozen glo-bugs, or egg flies as I call them, and rigged two together with a Utah bounce rig used for nymphing with a couple large weights at the end of the line. Casting out ten to fifteen feet, I let the weights go to the bottom and tick along the gravel while I waited for that moment when something might stop my line.

Alex had a heater set up in the front of the boat for us lilies from Seattle. I didn’t mind a bit. Everyone could call me whatever they wanted to. I was warm on a day that was very close to freezing. I was wearing a couple jackets, ear muffs, and gloves and the heater topped it all off, keeping me pretty warm, relatively speaking. At one point between holes I turned to Alex.

“Terry’s hot. Do you mind turning off the heater?”


Alex was chuckling.

“Sure, give me a minute to turn off the propane tank.”

Terry wasn’t going to give him the chance.

“No!” he said quickly and firmly. “Leave it alone. I’m just fine.”

It had been a couple years since I'd come to Oregon for the Steelhead so it took me a while to get the hang of ticking those weights along the bottom and, in fact, it was more than two hours before I really got the technique down properly. During that time I’d snagged and broke off multiple sets of flies and at one point was beginning to feel like I would spend my entire day tying flies on my leader instead of fishing. I complained to Alex.

“You know, when we launch tomorrow I think I’ll just pull two flies out of my fly box and throw them in the river to get it over with.”

Alex was laughing at me.

“Do you think two will be enough?”

_______________________________________


The Rogue River is one of those mythic rivers, made famous by people like the author, Zane Grey, who fell so hard for this fishery that he moved here and bought a house on the river in 1926. The Rogue is known for Salmon and Steelhead. Alex has boated 50-pound Salmon here but this trip would be about the smaller Steelhead, known locally as "half-pounders." Since my family is from this area, it is tradition to fish for the half-pounders in the Fall. These are obviously not the biggest Steelhead you can target but they are special. The smolts, like most Steelhead, move out to the ocean in the Spring when they are about seven inches long. But what is different about half-pounders is that they don’t wait the typical two or three years before returning. They are back that same Fall and average 12-16 inches in length. These fish are not sexually mature and may stay in the river, feeding like trout, for the next year before returning to the salt. Others will head down in the Spring and come back again the next Fall. The river generally holds fish from different stages, ranging in size from half a pound up to the low teens.

On this trip my best moment came on the Pump Hole. My line was pointed directly down over the side of the boat as we drifted over ten or twelve feet of water. I could tell by the steady tick-tick of my weights that the bottom was covered with small gravel, the favored lie of all half-pounders. When my line hung up I lifted and immediately felt the fish on the other end. I stood up in the boat and began stripping to tighten the line against the fish. For his part, the Steehlead came up off the bottom and when he came within sight, maybe five feet below the surface, he began throwing his head back and forth in an attempt to dislodge the fly. Then we watched as he did a series of barrel-rolls. This big guy was giving me a rodeo ride.

I was able to get him next to the boat a couple times but he ripped off line each time the net came too close. Eventually I got him tired enough to plane alongside and Alex slipped the net under him.

I was excited and asked Terry to grab the boga grip while I slipped the hook out of his mouth. Alex held up my rod to get a measurement and then I weighed him. He was 28-inches long and almost 8 pounds. Wow. That’s a nice fish for the Rogue. Half-pounders can go into the teens but most are on the low end of the scale and four pounds was the biggest I’d caught in previous years. This was a record buster for me. What a great place.