I had the opportunity to go to Oregon for a business trip this week. Luckily it was in Bend Oregon and very close to the famous Deschutes River. My friend Ben and I decided to book a float trip with Deep Canyon Outfitters. The target species for this trip was the famous "Fish of a 1,000 casts", Pacific Steelhead. We had a few different rod set ups, spey rods with swinging nymphs and 7 weights with two nymph rigs. We floated to a few of the guides honey holes and picked up a few red band rainbow trout on copper johns and stonefly nymphs. They put up a great fight and were as pretty as advertised. The left side of the river closed down on November 1st because of the Indian Reservation so we had to fish strictly from the right side which limited us a bit, also you cannot fish from the boat on the Deschutes so wade fishing is the only option.
After hours of hard nymphing we took a break and our Guide Mike cooked us up some amazing steaks on the river! Mike was super friendly and knowledgeable about the river and history of the area, also a super good cook! After lunch we hopped back into the boat and began fishing again. I hooked into a regular steelhead, not the native kind around 2pm. It put up a great fight and got my blood flowing for the rest of the evening. Around 4pm I got the strike I was looking for all day. The hog took me into my backing on the 7 weight! After 5 minutes of fighting I could finally see my leader out of the water but my dropper fly got hooked onto some algae and bam, off the pig went! I never got to see him but the feeling of actually hooking into one was well worth the trip. We ended up catching quite a few trout and also some White Fish that kept the float entertaining all day. I definitely would like to go back and hook into a Native Steelhead someday in the future!
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