Opening Trout Season on The Lower Deschutes

All I can say is, "hell yeah"! We put five guide boats on for the day and saw only two others. Did a bomb go off somewhere that we didn't know about?? Sure the water was a bit high and a touch off color. And? So we went deep and slow. The Bow's were on fire.....and so were the smolt. Even though we lifted a ton of smolt from the D, we still put dozens of healthy Deschutes Redsides to hand. There was a descent hatch of March Brown's in the early afternoon and a smattering of Caddis throughout the day. We stuck with a variety of stone nymphs and any number of mayfly nymph patterns would have produced fish. The "Guides Choice", "Copper Jon", and the "Copper Twisted Sister" all in size #14 was what worked for me. We tried fishing dries, but the smolt population was first to the hook....give it a couple weeks and they'll be moving down river. If you missed out on the opener, no worries the river still flows north.