The Metolius River is down the road from us of course is one the finest fly fishing only spring creeks in the Pacific NW. I actually would call it the finest myself. Summer hatches are going well, and the trend is overall quite nice for finding fish on nymphs, dries and streamers.
I didn’t personally get to the river this past week (but I am going tonight!) However, I can rely on trusted reports from several of the awesome guys that work at the shop to know it was a successful week on the river for rainbows and fat bull trout. Gavin and Mattias put in some good time for bull’s and scored nicely on some big streamers!
Eric reported good afternoon action on PMD’s (#16) with an awesome dry fly session earlier in the week.
BWO’s are hatching later afternoon and early evening in the shadows. After the BWO’s (#22), a good caddis hatch (Tan #14-16, Olive #16-18) should occur on every warm evening. Caddis may be around mid afternoon in places, so keep an eye out for that. And at dusk, expect to see mayfly spinners back on the water to lay eggs. You’ll want Rusty Spinners in a #16-18 and Olive in a #20.
Have you tried a Purple Comparadun on the Met? I carry them from #12-20 and its a go to for many mayfly hatches there, including PMD’s which of course are yellow, so why a sophisticated trout in a spring creek would chomp a purple dry fly when we are darn sure they are keyed to PMD’s is one of the great mysteries of matching the hatch. And that friends is why fly fishing is cool.
There are 2 important stonefly hatches to look at now, Yellow Sally’s #14-18 and Golden Stones #8-10
I can tell you in years past, some summer evenings I’ve seen fish so keyed on Yellow Sally’s they didn’t want to eat anything else. So make sure you’ve got a couple of these in your box.
And of course, nymphing is more often than not going to be your #1 method of getting some good fish to the net and if you are a Euro Nympher, you have the advantage. It makes a difference.