Outdoors

By Bill Barker

For the Gazette-Times

Any scent of wetness, during the long dry of August, triggers thoughts of fall fishing.

Like the first trickle of fresh water into bays and estuaries urges returning salmon to start their last, long, journey home, late summer rains cause some of us to look forward to annual migrations toward fishing and hunting areas.

Why? Because rain drops temperatures, begins cooling streams and rivers, and provides higher oxygen levels; thus more food biting energy for fish.

Fall signals spawning urges for Brown trout. They start getting really nasty and aggressive about protecting their territory from intruding flies. This aggressiveness usually sent me and my Dad on at least one fishing trip, up the North Umpqua, to a stretch not far above the end of the fly fishing only area, where reaching the river requires a controlled slide down a crumbling, rocky slope to the edge of Fish creek. If you're lucky, you'll manage to stop before hitting water. Then it's a waist deep journey through the pool at the confluence of the two streams.

There's only about a mile of area to fish, upstream, before reaching sheer cliffs and falls. The mile was loaded with lots of dark holes and pockets containing big browns, and hefty rainbows. We always took a good supply of Bucktail Coachmen, Muddlers and Bucktail Caddis on these ventures. There are lots of fly-eating rocks, and bushes, lurking in the cliffs close behind.

The herds of hungry trout made it a perfect spot for me to experiment with different fly patterns when I'd landed enough denizens to slake the initial eagerness. Sometimes I actually invented, or stumbled onto, a different pattern which really worked.

One such fly, a steelhead pattern, is the Golden Demon. It's a wet fly that features a gold tinsel body, golden tail ( feathers from a Golden Pheasant), bright orange hackle, and brown bucktail. I'd tied my offering on a size 8, 3x long shank hook, theorizing that rutting browns would be offended by such a gaudy intruder.

Dad just chuckled when I showed him the fly. "That thing will probably scare any intelligent fish in the river," he snorted. "Good thing we've already fished most of it."

Ah, my own Father showing such a lack of confidence in his only son's judgment. Well, in his defense, he had seen some of my other experimental models turn previously bountiful waters into barren, fishless, wastes.

Ignoring his muffled snickers, I cast toward the head of a deep pool. The fly hadn't traveled two feet when my rod developed a heavy arc. "There's a stupid one!" I shouted, quickly taking up slack as the heavy trout dove, accelerating toward me. After a good tussle, I slid a 17 inch brown into the shallows.

"Well, what do you think now?" I asked.

"I think it was an accident. Let's see you do it again."

I did.

"How many of those things did you tie?" The thinly veiled hint meant I'd better chough up a couple for my Dad.

I did. He found they worked for him too.

The things worked so well that fall that I could hardly wait to try them the following spring and summer, in other brown trout waters.

On my first spring voyage to the Deschutes, I snickered as I tied on my secret weapon and began fishing. It was like wading through a nuclear-spawned wasteland. Nothing struck. No luck until switching to a Muddler. Same results that summer in all streams I fished, even our secret spot on the Umpqua.

Not until late September did the Golden Demon do anything but cause premature migrations in fish populations. When Fall arrived, the thing once again proved irresistible to cantankerous browns - everywhere I tried it.

If you are going for browns in September and October, take a few Golden Demons to try. I've found they work best in larger rivers with heavy current, especially when fished fairly deep. They'll also lure brookies in lakes, during this part of the year, when they are more aggressive with approach of spawning season.

Steelhead fly? Hah! Haven't caught one on the thing yet. I'll keep trying.

Bill Barker can be reached at billbarker@comcast.net.