The Metolius is usually where I like to start, after all this is our home waters and the river of our dreams. Upper River golden stone hatch is progressing nicely, plus you can mix in pale morning duns, caddis, yellow sally’s and rusty spinners to that dry fly mix. Euro nymphing from Gorge up to The Blue Hole is money. This is truly where you’re going to have the most success.
The Middle River form the Canyon Creek area to the Bridge 99 area is a great spot for technical dry fly fishing in summer, and now is no exception. Oh sure, you can nymph, you can streamer fish for trout or for Bull’s but you hit the pools and eddies through here and look for the multitude of hatches that occur on most days and it is really a hatch matchers play ground. What to look for you ask? PMD #16, BWO #20, Caddis Tan #16, Olive #16, Black #18, Rusty Spinners #16-18, Olive Spinners #20, yellow sally’s #16 and keep an eye open for isolated hatches of golden stones. Evening fishing is a worthwhile effort in the summer, especially in July. But you should see hatches and hopefully rising trout from around lunch time to dark on and off with the cycles of the different hatches. Sometimes during a heat wave, there will be very good early morning dry fly action too. It’s worth a look especially if you’re camping on the river now.
Lower River, at least from Bridge 99 to Candle Creek is also good and all the same things from the middle river are hatching there too.
Bull Trout fishing is good and as we move in to the 2nd half of July and early August more lake run fish will enter the stage too.

Our guide team and a few good friends have been having great days on the Lower Deschutes, especially on Caddis (pupa and adults and some egg layers) with #18 Black and #14-16 tan caddis being the 2 most common caddis at this time. Pale Evening Dun hatches towards dusk is a real deal summer hatch not to be overlooked. They are big and tannish-yellow and usually a size #14 but sometimes a size #12 too.
We’ve been having great success on the euro rigs and also tight lining or swinging streamers.
Soft Hackles are a great way to expand your fishing day too.
I know our guide Steve just had a fabulous day with a client and they mixed up the nymph game with indicator techniques as well as euro nymphing. Tonn and Troy just got home from a 3 day trip from Trout Creek to Harpham and had a ball, with all the ladies group having great fishing and camping and food and all are ready to add a euro rod to the quiver.