Rainland Fly Casters

This year was my 5th club outing to Spray, Oregon to fish the John Day River for smallmouth bass. This years outing was attended by club members Tom Scoggins, Steve Siler, Sean Johnson and myself.

 

Our journey began on Tuesday July 18th. Tom and Sean picked me up at my house about 9 am. We loaded up my gear and then hit the road to Vancouver, Washington to meet up with Steve. From there we headed to Spray and the beautiful John Day river valley.

 

Our days follow a consistent patten, with coffee and breakfast and planning where to fish in the morning thru the early afternoon. Out of the house about 8am, we fish until about 3pm or so, then back to the house to rest during the peak heat of the day. Dinner about 6pm, then on the river again from about 7pm until dark. After a days fishing we are all pretty spent, but we managed to play a little cribbage every night. 

 

Conditions this year were pretty average, with warm water, and of course a little heat wave. Seems like ever year temperatures are in the high 90s and low 100s while we are there. The week before and after our outing temps were in the 80s and 90s. Still we enjoyed some very good bass fishing. Both Tom and myself landed over 60 fish each!  A new PB (personal best) for me. This was Sean’s first time fishing for smallmouth bass. Using both subsurface and top water flies, Sean enjoyed great success . Most of the fish were in the 7-8 inch range with a few bigger fish being taken in the 10-12 inch range, which is fairly typical. There are some big bass in the area we were fishing, but none were hooked on this trip.

 

On Wednesday evening, as we were all fishing a stretch of the river near Service Creek, we experienced a most interesting and beautiful event. There was a hatch of some kind of a very small bug going on. As we were fishing, some birds began working the hatch. After a couple of minutes I realized that the birds were in fact bats, 100s of them. At one point there were so many of them that they were colliding with our rods and lines. Along with some pretty good fishing this event made for a very memorable evening that none of us are likely to forget.

 

We used a number of different flies to entice the bass. I had great success using a red throated olive bunny leech, and Tom had similar success with a small brown/white Clouser minnow. I used one too and decided I need to add that pattern to my arsenal of bass flies. We also had success using purple Chernobyl salmon fly.

​

Every year Tom brings his Dancing Mayfly game. For the past couple of outings we have called it the Jed Memorial Dancing Mayfly game. Jed was Tom’s very good friend since they met in college. On Jed’s last trip he brought a unique belt to be a prize for the winner of the game, which I won. After Jed passed away I thought it would be nice to honor Jed’s memory by giving the belt to whoever won the game the next we got together in Spray. Last year Tom became the second winner of the belt. And this year he became the first two time winner. Congrats to Tom.

 

We only fished for two and a half days, but by the end of the last day I was ready to go home. The four day outing is just about right. And while I am ready to be home, I am already looking forward to next year. For club members who have not done this outing I encourage you to think about coming along next year. And looking ahead to next year, and keeping to mid-July, we will be looking at four days somewhere between the 15th to 24th. We always have a great time fishing, enjoying each others company, seeing some beautiful country.