Using the right fly can mean catching a large fish on rivers like the Metolius

By Gary Lewis / The Bulletin

We parked at the bridge and worked our way down to the mouth of the creek. It was late September. Kokanee were suspended in and around the gravel bars in shallow water.

Where the river split around an island, we split up. Ryan chose river right and hit the jackpot. We met up at the bottom of the island. He had hooked two in the slower water at the outside of the bend.

After resting the hole for a few minutes, Ryan walked back up and made another cast. Moments later, he came around the corner, his rod arced, tight to a bull trout that peeled line off the reel.

One-hundred yards downstream, the fish would not give. I waded out and slid my hand down the leader to the fly. There, a big bull, still strong in the heavy current. His head was long and broad, his flanks olive, stippled with red and yellow spots. The fish, close to 30 inches long, spun and used the leverage of its tail to throw the hook and splash water in my face.

Next time I’d bring a net.

With an abundant population of bull trout, the Metolius and Lake Billy Chinook are the last, best places to fish for bull trout. The fish are both resident in the river and migratory from the reservoir to spawn in mid- to late August.

The kokanee spawn puts both species in the river at the same time. And the bull trout are the winners. Pre-occupied, the 12-inch landlocked salmon are easy prey for sharp-toothed bull trout that can range up to 30 inches or more.

In November, I returned again with my friend, Robert Campbell. This time, we’d use the same style of streamers but alter the tactics to imitate the kokanee in its final stages: dying, dead, decaying.

We stopped by the Camp Sherman Store to pick up breakfast and a handful of flies. Roger White handed me a pink, brown and white cone-head bunny leech.

“Bunny leeches look just like a decayed, busted-up kokanee and you can double up the tactics on the same cast. Make it drift like a chunk of flesh and skin rolling downstream. At the end of the drift, strip it, twitch it and make it look like a whitefish. A bull trout is like a cat. Sometimes you put that little tuft of fur out in front of them and they don’t pay attention till you start twitching it.”

Downstream, we rolled through the gate at House on the Metolius. A quick movement caught our eye, a coyote, a big male in winter pelage. He put some distance between us. He stopped to look back when I barked, a predator making a living on squirrels, mice and bunnies. Just like the sharp-toothed bulls we hoped to tangle with in the river.

Like a cat or a coyote, the bull trout watches for weakness. Erratic behavior means the prey is distracted, lame, lazy, limp. Bleeding and feeding are other indications that the prey is vulnerable. When a whitefish is in formation, close to the bottom, it is hard for a predator to nab it, but when it spots an emerging caddis and charges up for the grab, its defenses are down.

Just upstream from the mouth of Jack Creek, Robert connected with a bull trout that grabbed his six-inch bunny leech as soon as he started to strip it at the end of a drift. I had a net this time, but should have brought a bigger one. The fish’s tail hung over the rim.

From above, the complex currents are hard to penetrate with polarized glasses. But the fish are there. Rainbows and whitefish hug tight to the bottom and let the currents wash down the food. Bull trout hang back to watch the action. Perhaps it is this threat from behind as well as the danger from winged predators above that makes the river more difficult to fish than other Central Oregon streams.

As the kokanee carcasses become harder to find, bull trout that stay in the river begin to focus on bugs. Streamers and flesh flies can provoke a grab, but a dead-drifted nymph can pay off as well.

Tie on a heavy stonefly like a No. 6 Kaufmann’s. To the bend of the hook, knot a section of tippet no more than 10 inches long and add a smaller fly like a No. 16 Flashback Pheasant Tail or Copper John. Cast upstream and drift it down. The big fly takes the little one right to the bottom.

A trout may move out of the way to let the big nymph go by, but the tiny tasty is easy to pick up with no waste of precious energy.

Better bring your big net.

Gary Lewis is the host of “High Desert Outdoorsman” and author of “John Nosler — Going Ballistic,” “Black Bear Hunting,” “Hunting Oregon” and other titles. Contact Lewis at www.GaryLewisOutdoors.com.