Rediscovering and Relearning the Owyhee River

by: Benji Sorenson

A welcome sight, a fish putting the bend to the old 5 weight.

Oregon’s Owyhee River has been in my backyard for most of my life.  I grew up in Vale, Oregon within an easy 45 minute drive of the river and now live about an hour away in Caldwell, Idaho.  I used to fish this river back in the days when it was an unknown commodity to the rest of the world, and I had the entire 12 mile stretch of river along the road below the Owyhee Dam to myself.  I could show up on the river at any time of day and be assured I could fish my favorite spot, and even if I didn’t show up until the evening I could be sure that I was still the first one to fish that stretch that day.  Those days are long over on the Owyhee River.  It is now jammed with RV’s and campsite at every possible turnout along the river.  Big sweeping bends in the river often have 4 or 5 campsites, all filled.  Not many runs go a day without getting fished.  And if you go, get used to the idea that you will probably be fishing to trout that very recently have seen another fisherman’s offerings.  I lament the loss of solitude but I must confess the quality of fish has improved greatly from my first trips there.  I used to be happy to catch 13-15 inch brown trout, now those numbers would be considerably below average on this river.

Now just because I live close to this Blue Ribbon gem does not mean I have made many trips out there.  In fact I had not been back since my high school days until I made a trip last September.  In that outing I remember getting frustrated by finicky, feeding fish I could see in nearly every pool slowly waving their body from side to side, then with no real sense of urgency they would rise up and gently sip a small bug from just below the surface, and just as deliberately descend again.  They appeared to be the happiest fish one could possibly imagine, like there was no real stress in their life.  Their slow deliberate dance seemed to say that if they didn’t want to, they wouldn’t need to be here gulping bugs down right now, because here in their river there will always be another epic hatch on which they can gorge themselves right around the corner .  Meanwhile no matter what I threw their way that day they simply ignored it.  Possibly laughing to themselves, “this guy thinks that with all these bugs in the water I am going to be the dumb fish that bites the one with a hook in it, FAT CHANCE!”  It was exciting to see so many fish feeding all day long and yet very frustrating to have every offering ignored.  When I fished the river back in the days when the fish never saw a fisherman, you could have probably caught them with a hook through a stick.  Now these fish see so many artificial enticements that they have become quite adept at ignoring anything that looks “fishy.”  So just last Saturday I decided it was time for me to put my skills to the test again and attempt to relearn how to fish the Owyhee River. 

I hit the river at about 8:00am and took a quick scan of what was happening on the water.  No visible fish and no bug action near the surface.  This quickly narrowed the choices of flies down for me to streamers or nymphs.  I started out with streamers.  I had one take a nip at a big brown bunny leach pattern but it was obviously not that serious.  That was the only thing even remotely resembling a strike for my first few hours on the water.  I worked the run again with a different streamer pattern with no luck, and then tried a double nymph rig only to again be shut out.  All this time the area I really wanted to fish in this run was not accessible due to what appeared to be a channel much too deep for wading that I would need to cross to get to it.  So I decided it was time to move on and try another spot.  As I climbed the bank to head to the truck I looked down and got a bird’s eye perspective of the run.  From there I saw an area where bottom of the river was visible all the way across meaning it was probably shallow enough to cross.  From water level I had not seen it, so I decided it would be worth it again to go down and wade across.  As I fished my newly accessible area I again started by throwing a streamer up under the willows hanging over the deep slow moving channel.  Again nothing.  Frustrated I decided I would give the stretch one more try with my nymph set up and see what materialized.

At this point I was almost going through the motions.  When one goes fishless for their first few hours on the water a discouragement can set in, which can make you feel it is hopeless and you probably won’t catch a fish all day.  You tell yourself that it is ok, you are just glad to be out here breathing the fresh air, and hearing the slurps and gurgles of the rivers current but deep down you are disappointed at the prospect of being skunked.  I was almost there, resigned to the thought that I was just here to enjoy nature and not really to catch fish.  But a part of me knew what these fish where hungry for.  They had to be eating something and there weren’t any bugs to be found on the surface and my streamers weren’t getting any action.  Nymphs had to be the answer so I rigged up with the double nymph rig again and made my first cast slightly upstream.  As the indicator drifted past me and came near the end of the line it slowly disappeared below the surface.  I lifted the rod and instantly felt it, FISH ON!  After landing a nice 18 inch brown I again cast into the same area.  At almost the same exact spot the indicator went under again.  Hardly believing that there could be another fish in that spot that hadn’t been scared out of there by the struggle the previous fish had put up, I lifted the rod tip, expecting that the fly had snagged on the bottom pulling the indicator down.  Nope, it was another fish.  It was a slightly smaller fish but even more feisty.  In the span of five minutes my outlook had went from “Oh well, it’s just nice to be out on the river”, to “Wow, this is unbelievable!”    After lunch I came back and figured what could it hurt to throw another cast into that same spot, and wouldn’t you know it I caught a solid 20 inch fish.  I have always had a hard time believing that you could catch multiple fish on consecutive casts on a small river like this because I figured the fish fighting on the end of the line would scare any others in the area into hiding.  Later in the day my lesson learned was proved again when I landed four more fish and hooked and lost another three fish in another short run. 

From this trip I took a new appreciation for a river rediscovered. The Owyhee is a far different river than the one I fished as a teenager but this weekend it taught me a couple valuable lessons I hope will make me a better fisherman down the road.  One, keep at it even when you don’t have early success and  two; always, always, always make a few honest casts into a hole you just pulled a fish out of.  In the end it will pay off.  I look forward to many more lessons on the river.

The first fish of the day.

 

The smallest fish of the day but it put up one of the toughest fights.

 

It is hard to tell here but this was a very nice fish.  It was over 20 inches as when stretched out it actually was longer than this net including the handle. 

 

Another silvery brown.

 

Underwater shot.