In search of stoneflies: A fly fishing trip to Oregon
Columnist Spencer Durrant holds up a trout during a recent fishing trip with friends to Oregon.
In this undated image, Spencer Durrant fly-fishes in Oregon.
Fly fishermen are the most superstitious group of people I know. From standing on the exact same boulder during a stonefly hatch in Oregon as you did last year to a box full of “lucky” flies, the fly fishing world is full of superstition.
And spring is when that superstition begins to put itself on full display.
As soon as the weather warms up enough that properly-sized blue-winged olives are hatching on most rivers, most fishermen I know are guilty of indulging a few superstitious whims.
I’m definitely not exempt from that group.
Every year, my best fly fishing friend Mike and I (whose wife, by the way, is incredibly supportive of his fly fishing habit) head to Oregon in search of a certain stonefly hatch that we have yet to hit at its zenith.
This year was no different. We invited my good friend Bill along, left Thursday after work and arrived in Oregon well after midnight. The tent was pitched, and we were asleep within moments, waking up to a gloriously overcast Friday morning. The heavy cloud cover and high temps got both Mike and myself talking all through breakfast about how this would be the year when we’d finally see the stonefly hatch we’ve been hunting for years now.
We were just like every other fly fishermen, delighted at the first fluttering glimpses of spring that occur when February ends and March begins. This time of year, fishermen across the country chase bug hatches with a zeal bordering on that of late-night televangelists. Every year, without fail, they’ll make a pilgrimage to a certain water body, awaiting a swarm of mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies, tricos or any other aquatic insect to burst from the water and set trout into a feeding frenzy.
And most years, those truly legendary hatches rarely occur. Regardless, we keep returning, going through the same routines, the same motions, the same carefully tied patterns, convinced that we’ve done everything right and it’s nature that’s once again getting in the way of a great day of fishing.
This is the reason I’m convinced fly fishing isn’t difficult because trout are smart. Rather, it’s a cumbersome sport because nature is such a devilishly tricky thing to properly imitate.
In a world where mounds of information on any kind of aquatic bug is literally at our fingertips, fly fishermen cling to our superstitions, our traditions, the stories dad and grandpa told us about salmon fly hatches so thick the highway had to be shut down, or blanket hatches of mayflies on the Green River.
This past weekend in Oregon, that’s exactly where Mike and I found ourselves. This Oregon trip was Bill’s first to our secret little water, so he was exempt from the usual rituals.
Mike and I rigged up at the usual hole, with the usual flies, and began casting to the few brown trout we could see that were breaking the surface for small bugs.
I hooked up first, then Bill, then Mike. As the day grew warmer, Mike and I stared at the rocks that lined the river, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stoneflies crawling from the rocks. That would signal the start of the stonefly hatch we so heavily believed our strict rituals would conjure.
Friday passed without a single stonefly showing itself. Saturday arrived with 30 mph wind gusts, which all but spelled the end of any hope of the stonefly hatch we’d surreptitiously been expecting.
Resigned to the fact that another year had come on gone on our secret Oregon river with the stoneflies just not cooperating, Mike, Bill, and I loaded the truck up and began the drive home.
That’s when I noticed something. As we drove the winding canyon road, I saw a few large dark bugs buzzing in the air. I hollered at Mike to stop the truck. We got out and stared at the bugs. They were the stoneflies we’d come to chase.
The rest of the afternoon was spent chasing the hatch all the way down the river, until the canyon ended and farmlands began. The hatch itself wasn’t noteworthy — the fish were still incredibly picky about the proper drift and size of fly — but it was enough to make me think that maybe there’s something to all these fly fishing superstitions after all.
Spencer Durrant is a fly fishing writer from Utah, and author of the soon-to-be-published YA novel, Learning to Fly. He writes the Trout Bum column for the Standard-Examiner, a monthly fly fishing column for KSL.com, a bi-weekly column for Fishwest and a weekly column for Trout Life. Spencer contributes regularly to the Orvis Fly Fishing Blog, Hatch Magazine and On The Fly Magazine. He’s also a member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America. Connect with him on Twitter or Instagram, @Spencer_Durrant, or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/spencerdurrantauthor.
