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09/09/09

fly fishing oregon:

drifting the mckenzie.

 

got up at four this morning to go down to eugene and meet my buddy grant to fish with him today. grant had been down at reedsport fishing cohos and crabbing since i got up here so i hadn’t had the the chance to fish with him. he was nice enough to cut his coast fishing short and come back to eugene to fish with me. harold and i rolled into eugene and got to grants house by seven. we discussed our options and decided to spend a day drifting a section of the mckenzie river. the mckenzie flows through springfield just outside of eugene. it is the river that i learned to fly fish on and i was very excited to get back on it. the last time i fished it was in 1996 so it was, for me, a fly fishing home coming of sorts. we took grant’s drift boat (which he built with a friend) and put in just below leaburg dam. the plan was just to see what was up and maybe fish some steelhead and fish for trout. on the runs known to hold steelhead we swung flies, we nymphed, even skated some flies through but the steelhead, well, were being steelhead. harold accidently snagged one and he promptly pulled his fly from it not wanting to tire and land a fish not fair hooked. grant hooked one with an egg and jig combo. the egg and jig combo is not exactly fly fishing, at least in my book, but deadly effective on steelhead. we got into some decent trout fishing, nothing real big but we all got some nice fish and missed some bigger ones. i missed out on one hot bite during which grant was hooking fish one after the other. i spent the whole time trying to thread a size 18 elk hair caddis on a 6x tippet... a bit trickier than getting fifteen pound through the eye of a number two claymantis… amateur maneuver. i kind of enjoyed the situation, though, and actually found it rather humorous. it was just one of those many fishing moments that teach you life lessons in patience and humility and make it all worth while.

i did manage a few fish out of that run and missed many more due to a rusty, too much slack line, dry fly drift. at the take out point we horsed around a bit and i introduced grant to the wonderful world of spey casting. i think grant might have seen the light deano, or at least has glimpsed its potential… we’ll see. we ended the day at maple garden on alder street near the university of oregon. where chef kenny cooked us up some of the most wicked beef chow fun and shrimp fried rice that oregon or quite possibly the world has ever witnessed. this was probably the best day of my trip so far. fishing and hanging with good friends on waters that i love.  waters that will forever be special to me. how can you top that?

 

grants drift boat and his other boat.  he and his friend built both of them.  i've fished on them both and they are marvels of craftsmanship.

 

the mckenzie.

 

harold and a mckenzie redside.

 

grant and a whitey... they look kind of like bones.

 

a majestic blue heron surveys his river.

 

thanks grant for another memorable fishing trip.  good times.

 

clay.


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