The Crooked is fishable. It is running 55 cfs and we’ve had a mild week, so ice and snow is minimal. The river has not shown any signs of great fishing since the 10 cfs run in late summer. I suspect a fair number of fish have moved to deeper water down stream and will come back in the spring when irrigation begins and the water shoots up to 200+ cfs.
Is it worth fishing? It is probably worth fishing, understanding a lot of the fish are going to be 6 to 10″ trout, and bigger fish are going to be very rare.
Approach it fishing zebra midges, midge winklers, thread larva, scuds, skinny nelson, eggs and small purple perdigons on 6x or 7x tippet. Euro style or under a NZ Wool indicator.
Towards dark, from 3:30 ish to 4:30 in the flats lower down towards MP 12, 13 and 14 look for risers to midge pupa and adults.
If I was to rate the Crooked now on the scale of 1 to 10, I’d put it around 4 I’d say, but I’d sure love to hear from you all and see how you’re doing too. I read a weird news story on the Crooked River last week and there was some fish kill from low flows but it appeared to be very minimal according the Jerry George the Bend ODFW Biologist who was interviewed. BTW, Jerry has been awesome to work with when I have needed answers about other waterways last season, so it is exceptionally great that ODFW put someone so helpful, knowledgable and responsive in our local office.