The Crooked River is back in shape after last weeks planned flow bump increase to encourage steelhead smolt to migrate to the fish trap at Lake Billy Chinook. I have opinions on this subject but will save that for another blog and focus on the trout and whitefish fishing on the Crooked now. The river levels today are down at 112 cfs. The reservoir has filled to nearly 60% (!) and a good flow keeps coming to continue filling Prineville Reservoir. Someone said there is a still a lot of snow to melt in the Ochoccos and that is awfully good news for redband trout and whitefish in the Crooked River. 
Because the reservoir is filling up on to banks that have not seen water in quite a few years, it is muddy as heck. Some of that is washing downstream at the dam making the Crooked turbid. This is not bad for fishing so on days it seems worse, go up a fly size, use a bright beaded fly or fluorescent bead, a flashy rainbow warrior or lightning bug, and definitely swing either a black wooly bugger or an olive wooly bugger in the deeper runs (it doesn’t have to get real deep, you’re just looking for runs that don’t have weed beds so shallow for this technique)