WASCO -- Brad Staples stopped in his tracks. But it wasn't the band of two dozen bighorn sheep ewes and lambs grazing a few yards away that caught his attention.
"Rattler, I think," he said, peering intently into the grassy slope above the gurgling
. "I'm pretty sure I heard it. Let's step over there."
The sheep headed back uphill, we headed back to Staples' boat, and (we assumed) the snake continued on its path through the thick riverside vegetation.
Vegetation waving in a stiff upriver breeze. Vegetation that is home to millions of insects (including ticks, by the way). Vegetation cooling the riverbanks, shading submerged boulder fields and undercut shorelines.
The lower Deschutes River, best known for its run of summer steelhead (from mid-July through November), offers far more than a world-class seasonal fishery.
For the rest of the year, when anglers can get to them, the 20 or so accessible miles from the Deschutes' mouth at the Columbia River is also trout country.
The rainbow trout are a peculiar strain of the famed Deschutes redsides found in great abundance farther up the canyon all the way to Warm Springs.
"They're not abundant like they are upriver around South Junction and Trout Creek, but they're here," said Staples, who lives in West Linn but guides anglers exclusively on the Deschutes River from a second home in The Dalles. "They're different, too. They've got more silver to them, bigger teeth and really strange purple fins."
My catch of the day, about 14 inches and also with deep purple fins, also had a red throat, which in any other river would have moved it from rainbow into cutthroat trout classification. But not on the Deschutes. Staples said even those are still considered Deschutes redsides.
The red throat was missing from Allan Warman's 18- to 20-incher, landed and released after a bruising 10-minute battle during which the rainbow acted more like a steelhead while Warman also coped with a light leader and precarious footing.
"Second-largest trout I've ever caught," said a happy Warman, who lives in Portland and is the director of key consumer groups for PGE.
Across the river, his partner, Cassie McVeety, vice president of college advancement at Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham, squealed with delight as she caught a wild trout on a fly for the first time.
Fishing has improved
Trout fishing along the lower Deschutes has improved significantly since the riverbanks became public more than 25 years ago, Staples said. Cattle are gone, and most of the shoreline is heavily covered with shading alders and dense, insect-rich brush.
But Staples said the trout population can never match that from Mack's Canyon upriver past Warm Springs.
"They don't have as much spawning gravel down here, and it gets a lot of siltation from White River (draining Mount Hood's glacial fields)," he said. "There also is no salmonfly hatch to speak of, but there's a lot of other insect life."
Lower Deschutes trout seem to also prefer much faster water to feed, Staples said.
"They're out there where you wouldn't expect to find fish, not like up above," he said. "Sometimes they're right up at the head of the riffles (below bends in the river) as if they want as much oxygen as they can get."
Boat and bank anglers share the lower Deschutes.
An old railroad grade on the east side offers a good trail upriver nearly 20 miles, easily hiked or mountain biked. The trail on the west shoreline is more for hiking and extends a few miles upriver from the mouth.
From June through September, powerboats are banned in the lower river from Thursday through Sunday on alternate weeks. The ban, leaving the shorelines open only to hikers, bikers and rafts and drift boats, will be in effect for the July 4 weekend.
On powerboat days, there also is a pass-through zone -- boats cannot stop to drop off anglers -- from the mouth upriver about two miles to Rattlesnake Rapids.
It's best to carry a wading stick and wear an inflatable lifejacket in the lower river's swift, treacherous waters.
Staples fishes almost exclusively with wet flies, mostly bead-head nymphs below a strike indicator. Sometimes, he said, the trout will work caddis hatches, especially in the fall with the river's famed hatch of large October caddis.
Deschutes trout fishing is open all year, with only artificial flies and lures allowed. Although regulations allow two per day between 10 inches and 13 inches, Staples and his clients release all their hard-won trout.
"It's a tough fishery, no question," he said. "But you know the best thing about it?
"There's no one else around."
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