Lower Deschutes

[atjohnson1111]

My girlfriend and I finally have the same weekend OFF and we were looking to go camping and fishing. I'm starting to have some steelhead withdrawls so we decided to hit the lower Deschutes. I'll set her up on a bobber and jig which will leave me with my fly rod I've never used on steel before. Any suggestions on how to fish around the state park? Not really going in expecting anything because I ended the winter steel season going 0-11 (figured out it was too small of a hook) but really want to enjoy the scenery. Any help is appreciated!
Tight lines!

 

[steelhead_stalkers]

I use size 10 hooks a lot for steelhead. I would imagine you had to small of hook for the line and rod you where using. Everything needs to be matched correctly. Good luck.

 

[Aervax]

There is lots of water within an easy hike of the state park, but mountain biking the rail trail is also an option for getting to some areas with more elbow room. It is not steep, other than the first little bit. The bike trail runs the first 16 miles of river. If you do bike, slime your tires. The goat heads there are horrendous. I tie my own jigs and live close to the D, so I am routinely experimenting with bobber jig angling there. Bites per hour fished are lowest on my jig and bobber set ups on that particular river. For your girlfriend I would consider bluefox vibrax spinners, little cleo spoons, or drift fishing corkies, or even drift fishing flies. My experience has been literally 10x take down ratio for those methods compared to jig and bobber. Everyone fishes different rigs with their own little twists, so you may find that it works fine for you. Just sharing my personal experience.

 

[ChezJfrey]

There is lots of water within an easy hike of the state park, but mountain biking the rail trail is also an option for getting to some areas with more elbow room. It is not steep, other than the first little bit. The bike trail runs the first 16 miles of river. If you do bike, slime your tires. The goat heads there are horrendous. I tie my own jigs and live close to the D, so I am routinely experimenting with bobber jig angling there. Bites per hour fished are lowest on my jig and bobber set ups on that particular river. For your girlfriend I would consider bluefox vibrax spinners, little cleo spoons, or drift fishing corkies, or even drift fishing flies. My experience has been literally 10x take down ratio for those methods compared to jig and bobber. Everyone fishes different rigs with their own little twists, so you may find that it works fine for you. Just sharing my personal experience.

Yep, seconded.

Especially the quirk about number of takes on gear other than spinners on that river. I completely understand why I don't get a lot of fly takes on a river renown for such activity, because I'm a relative newb to steelhead-on-the-fly, but was baffled about my spoon. I hook most of my steelhead that way and blanked a bunch of casts with them on the D. Switch to the same color scheme in a spinner, fish the same slot/hole, and boom! Multiple takedowns on a Blue Fox where my spoon was ignored. I am still miffed about that, because I refused to believe the hype about blue/chrome Blue Foxes on the D, LOL! But wouldn't ya know, that stupid spinner was indeed money...several fish within an hour.

 

[rippin fish lips]

I think it has a lot to do with water temperature more then anything on what a steelhead will take. I find that Bobber n Jig does really good early in the seasons when the water is at its cooler point. I like to fish hardware
(spoons and spinners) when the water started to warm up. Right now with the water warmer, a fish is going to want to save most its energy (in a way) do to less oxygen in the water. That makes for a great time to toss some spinners because of the fact that most of those spinners takes happen faster then you can count.