While I expected to post a few more fishing days by now, the weather has been no less than horrendous here in Central Oregon.  In order to fish Lake Billy Chinook, Scott Robertson and I need his boat.  But snowy icy roads prohibited us from taking the 75 mile each way trips.  Instead, we lounged around the house watching the wind and snow.

Saturday the weather broke, but that was the day I did my full day of seminars for the Fin & Fire Fly Shop. The event was a blast and made up for a missed day of fishing.  I gave four talks and dressed up a few Cliff Fly Boxes including this one with our elusive bull trout!

Today the clouds and cold returned but Scott and I went fishing anyhow.  We had Scott’s son Russell join us which was a blast.  Russell has a family and doesn’t get out much these days so it was fun for he and Scott to fish together.  Despite our tough fishing last week, there has been an area of Billy Chinook that’s been reliable fishing.  We went directly there and sure enough, the bull trout were on.

I best not exaggerate.  I say the bulls were on but that’s mainly because we took an immediate run to our hot spot.  The fish were there but mostly smaller 15–17-inch bulls.  We caught a bunch on streamers and it was a blast.  Russel landed the one and only chunky one but it was indeed a beauty!

After we wore out our welcome at the hot spot, we hit the open lake.  It was slow – very slow.  But as I always say, you keep your fly in the water and good things can happen.  I lucked out into one more nice one.  We’ll give it a try again tomorrow.

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing