Mckenzie River has been hot all year

This has easily been my best year ever fly fishing on the Mac. From spring until now, almost every trip has produced huge native redsides.

The attached picture sucks but it was a 21" redside caught between the golf course and Hendricks yesterday.

I like to fish a dry/dropper combo. The redsides seem to prefer the dropper but the cutthroat attack the dry visciously.

Fly Fishing with my boys is a always a challenge and yesterday was especially challenging due to wind. I'd have my boy cast to one side or the other and I would keep the boat next to the fly to limit the need for casting. We averaged about a fish every three minutes using this technique. When we found a pocket of fish we would anchor and pound the water until they stopped biting. Not sure how many fish we hooked but it was consistent all day.

Stats:

Fished from 12 to 5
Both rods were 5wt 9'6"
5x line and tippet
Dry was a golden stone
Dropper was a posse bugger off 36" of tippet
5 or 6 fish over 15"
The rest averaged 11"

Very nice, that fish looks like it has some thickness to it also.

Yes. It was pretty fat. Fought like crazy too. It had a little current helping it so it made some reel burning runs.

Wow, that is an awesome fishing report. That fish looks huge and healthy in your hand. What size posse bugger do you run? Are you imitating a specific species with it or just a generic, caddis-y looking pupa/larva/nymph?

Beauty! I'm glad someone is killin it, i haven't been out too much due to work but the few times i got out with the bug wand i didn't have much luck. I always bank fish and the holes i usually fish are LOW. Hooked into a couple of nice redsides but they unbuttoned :sad: You got that river down, great job!

Size 10. I'm not sure what it imitates but the fish sure like them.

"Wow, that is an awesome fishing report. That fish looks huge and healthy in your hand. What size posse bugger do you run? Are you imitating a specific species with it or just a generic, caddis-y looking pupa/larva/nymph?."

Most of our fish come out of the runs. I see bankies fishing the holes a lot but I don't bother with anything deeper than 3'. My biggest fish have come out of flats and runs near the middle of the river. We get bigger numbers of smaller fish on the runs near the bank.

hobster said:

Beauty! I'm glad someone is killin it, i haven't been out too much due to work but the few times i got out with the bug wand i didn't have much luck. I always bank fish and the holes i usually fish are LOW. Hooked into a couple of nice redsides but they unbuttoned :sad: You got that river down, great job!

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I use to catch huge redsides from hendricks to bellinger using a full worm threaded on a true turn hook and a small slinky like steelhead drift fishing. Awww the good old days.

Dead drifting a nymph in those runs is just as deadly as a worm. Give it a shot. The river is producing some beauties!

Yogidabear said:

I use to catch huge redsides from hendricks to bellinger using a full worm threaded on a true turn hook and a small slinky like steelhead drift fishing. Awww the good old days.

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jamisonace said:

Dead drifting a nymph in those runs is just as deadly as a worm. Give it a shot. The river is producing some beauties!

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Small Spoons and the bigger 2/5 oz spoons along with some size 3 and 4 spinners will catch those nice reds in that stretch too. Ohhh man, some of the best runs are in that part.