The Metolius River is one of the best places to fish in March with many good stretches to apply your multiple skills and techniques, including streamers, indicators, euro nymphing and dry fly fishing. It is truly a wonderful time to be on the river and the 1st three techniques will certainly be the most consistent, and dry fly action is the ultimate gift for those of us in the right place at the right time.
From Allingham Bridge down to Bridge 99 and even a bit below you can count on seeing a lot of caddis and mayflies hatching most afternoons. Stoneflies and midges might get overlooked a bit, especially from a dry fly perspective but as nymphs they are quite important.
A recommended nymph selection for the upcoming week would include tan and olive fat ass caddis #14-16, orange caddis pupa in #8 through #12, zebra midges in black and also red #18-20, green drake nymphs #8-12 (the jig twenty incher and the rio flies GD jig are awesome), golden stone nymphs #8-10, orange girdle bug #10 (this is a super crossover fly as I think trout will eat it as a stonefly or an october caddis), sloan stone #14-16 to imitate the yellow sally nymphs and absolutely a good assortment of mayfly nymphs in brown #16, olive #18-20, black #18-20 including matching your perdigons to this size and color range. Eggs, Walts Worms, red copper john, red lightning bug and soft hackle PT’s are also very important flies now.
Look for dry fly opportunities mostly from noon to 3 this week, but with temps in the mid-70’s it won’t be a surprise to see some evening hatches of BWO’s and Cinygmula’s around dinner time, and tan caddis are a real possibility then too. If you are going to stay later and fish towards dark, consider swinging a soft hackle just under the surface. A great evening on the Metolius could include a walk down river swinging a soft hackle through the beautiful runs. It’s methodical and relaxing and should give up a fish or two. This is a great place to play with a little 3 weight Trout Spey too.
I don’t know exactly when ODFW will release the salmon smolt from the hatchery, but it is in the spring and it can make the Bull Trout go wild. Add a few bigger olive/white streamers to your bull trout box for the next 6 weeks to coincide with those releases.
I would also hit the river with some jig streamers with a tight line method or on the floating line with an indicator. Set up your indicator system with a Rio 10′ 3x or 4x INDICATOR leader, cut off 2 feet of the tippet and add 2 feet fluorocarbon tippet to the leader. Why this leader? It has a very short butt section and a thin mid-section to the tippet which offers a much better sink rate and way better drift of your jig streamer (or nymphs) than a “normal” leader. Little things that make a difference are things like this. Another thing you can do is go with 2 feet of 15# nylon to a tippet ring, and then a straight piece of 4x fluorocarbon tippet (7 to 10 feet as the fishing conditions dictate). The indicator is placed on the butt section and has 2 feet of adjustability, and the long straight tippet offers an amazing sink and drift rate. In the lakes we call this a chassis leader and I have used it a lot in rivers too.