Outdoors
Rec
B
Saturday, May 14, 2022
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald
Looking west across Anthony Lake at the ski runs of Anthony Lake
Mountain Resort on May 8, 2022.
Gary Lewis/Contributed Photo
Fly-fishing guide Craig Schuhmann on the sticks with Larry Zeilstra on the Williamson River.
Months of the mayfly
Hunting the best mayfly hatches
east of the Cascades
GARY
LEWIS
ON THE TRAIL
A
few of the big
yellow mayflies
began to show,
struggling at the surface of
the dark water then, drying
their wings, breaking free
and flying.
I switched to a graphite rod on
which I had tied a 3X leader and
a big yellow parachute Hex imita-
tion. My friend Craig Schuhmann
handed me a Floating Hex Nymph
originated by the late Klamath tyer
Dick Winter. I knotted a length of
tippet material and fished the two
flies in tandem.
Late June and early July mark
one of the great bug events on the
Williamson River when that largest
of the mayflies, the Hexegenia,
throw their shadows on the water.
If the Hex hatch happens at all, it
happens at dusk.
A tributary of Upper Klamath
Lake, the Williamson River drains
about 3,000 square miles of south-
east Oregon. Connected to the
food-rich lake, the trout migrate
out to feed and then back to cool
off in summer.
A 5-mile float offers time for
reflection. We watched trains pass,
the cars flashing by on the tracks,
mirrored in the river. One image in
my mind is a four-pound rainbow
three feet above the surface, its
red-banded body reflected in the
water it has just burst out of at the
moment the fly came out of its lip.
In the last hour, trout boiled
along each bank. We cast to rise
rings. In a summer evening punc-
tuated by 21 grabs and a dozen
battles and five fish brought to
my hand, the hatch was a frantic
moment between dusk and full
dark when we measured casts,
lost track of our flies and struck at
sounds and splashes.
Fishing the hex hatch
The hexegenia hatch on the Wil-
liamson River might be the most
well known, but in June and July,
the big bugs can pop on Clear
Lake, Lost Lake, Timothy Lake
and Harriett Lake on the slopes
of Mount Hood. The biggest hex
hatch I ever witnessed was on a
summer evening on Clear Lake
when the rocks were yellow with
bugs and the fish plucked dries
lazily off the surface.
Carry two rods, one loaded
with a floating line and the other
with a sinking line and a 3X tippet.
Gary Lewis/Contributed Photo
A 20-inch Williamson River rainbow trout caught on a swung fly ahead of the
Hex hatch.
The dry is best matched by a No.
10-12 yellow Hex Paradrake or an
Extended Body Hexagenia.
The best fishing can be on sub-
stantial nymphs like the Red Fox
Squirrel Nymph, Beadhead Wet
Hare’s Ear Wet or Dick Winter’s
Floating Hex Nymph. Fish two
nymphs in tandem at first, then
switch over to a dry with a floating
nymph in tandem.
Green drake
Look at the calendar. If it says
May at the top, an angler should
be ready to match a green drake
hatch at any moment. It’s a short
window of opportunity, but it’s the
most important thing happening
that week in the eyes of Drunella
grandis and Oncorhynchus mykiss
gairdneri (the redband rainbow).
Coincident with the more well
publicized salmonfly hatch on
the Deschutes River, green drake
mayflies start to appear in May.
By June some trout will pass up
a bigger stonefly to chase down a
green drake. Green drakes may
be more prevalent on the Meto-
lius River in May and June and a
second hatch happens on the Meto-
lius in September and October.
The green drake is a sporadic
hatch on most western streams, but
it can be abundant on the Metolius
and a few others. It is a good idea
to carry dries to match this mayfly
when the adults could show up any
time.
Best bets include the Loop
Wing Green Drake, Electric Green
Drake and the CDC Green Drake
Emerger.
Callibaetis
The most reliable mayfly hatch
to follow is the Callibaetis which
shows up in May on rivers like the
Owyhee and the Powder and is
important in the mountains from
Anthony Lakes to East Lake and
Paulina through the end of August.
Once I saw so many callibaetis
in Diamond Lake, I thought they
would hold me up if I fell out of
the boat. The trout as fat as foot-
balls were so sated we had to
switch to different flies to get them
to eat.
One morning in July at
Anthony Lake, I caught 23 trout in
two hours on a Callibaetis Nymph
in tandem with a Rubber-legged
Hare’s Ear. Some of my favorite
imitations include Dexter’s Cal-
libaetis (tied with wood duck and
red fox) and Dexter’s Pheasant
Callibaetis tied with natural
pheasant, red Flashabou and rock-
chuck fur.
One of my new favorite dries
is Mason’s Mighty Morsel Mayfly
(from Rainy’s Flies) which takes a
traditional design and adds a foam
saddle for buoyancy, a poly wing
and a short sub tail imitative of a
nymphal shuck. The fly comes in
six different variations: Adams,
blue-winged olive, pale morning
dun, purple, March brown and
Callibaetis.
May, June, July and August,
these are the months of the mayfly.
If we are honest, this is why we
fly fish, for the moments when
the trout crash through the sur-
face tension to eat the fly. And the
reflections in between.
█
Gary Lewis is the author of “Fishing Central
Oregon,” “Oregon Lake Maps and Fishing
Guide” and other titles. To contact Gary, visit
www.garylewisoutdoors.com
A wintry walk
to start spring
By JAYSON JACOBY
Baker City Herald
The Toyota shuddered as
a patch of slush grabbed the
rear tires and I noticed, with
my peripheral vision, that
my wife had grasped the
passenger door handle.
I gave the steering wheel
a slight tug and the rig
straightened.
I also eased up a bit on
the gas pedal.
It was Mother’s Day,
after all.
I didn’t want to exac-
erbate Lisa’s instinctive
trepidation about driving
through snow on a steep
mountain road which has
a conspicuous absence of
guardrails.
And a conspicuous sur-
plus of slopes down which
a vehicle, freed from the
constraints of asphalt,
would careen in a series of
great leaps and bounds that
demonstrate the terrible
beauty of gravity.
We were driving up to
Anthony Lakes, planning to
strap on our snowshoes for
what might be the last time
until the first big autumn
storm.
May, of course, is sup-
posed to distill the qualities
that make spring a glorious
season.
The snow squall is not
one of those qualities.
Nonetheless it was snow,
rather than sunshine and
balmy temperatures and
fragrant blossoms, that
defined the first third of this
May.
And that was in the
valleys.
In the mountains, spring
has yet to put in even a des-
ultory appearance.
I was reminded, as I
steered our FJ Cruiser
around the curves climbing
into the Elkhorns — and in
one case around a pair of
multi-ton granitic boulders
that had tumbled off the
cutbank and landed in the
road — of how dramatically
different the alpine realm
is from the lowlands where
most of us live.
This is no revelation, to
be sure.
I can see the triangular
tip of Elkhorn Peak, the
second-tallest summit in the
range at 8,931 feet, from my
living room. That pyramid
of sedimentary stone bears
at least a trace of snow, vis-
ible from my sofa more
than a dozen miles away,
for about nine months of
most years.
This is not the case with
my backyard.
Or any other place in
Baker City or La Grande or
Enterprise.
Yet even though this
alpine world, where the
ground is beneath snow
far more often than it’s
exposed, is no great dis-
tance away, it struck me
during our Mother’s Day
drive that most Ameri-
cans can’t claim similar
circumstances.
Only those relatively
few of us, whose homes lie
so near to great mountains
that rise precipitously from
adjacent valleys, actually
can make such a journey,
from the temperate and the
arable to something closer
to a polar zone, in less than
an hour.
The transition tends to
be especially distinct during
the spring and fall.
In the latter season, early
storms that bring only rain
to the lowlands can pile feet
of snow on the peaks.
During spring, as the
snow line retreats, a similar
pattern emerges.
In the span of less than
two miles on our drive to
Anthony Lakes, between
the Baker Valley Overlook
pullout and Antone Creek,
the landscape changed from
scattered snow patches in
sheltered shady spots to a
solid cover better than three
feet deep.
It was deeper still —
five feet, according to the
snow-measuring stake in
a meadow across from the
Elkhorn Crest trailhead
parking lot — at 7,100 feet.
Conditions were very
nearly ideal for spring
snowshoeing.
The old snowpack, as it
were, was nicely firm. But
it was also covered with
about six inches of fresh
snow that, uncommon for
the season, did not cling to
snowshoes.
Slushy spring snow —
the sort that yanked at our
Cruiser’s tires on the drive
up — can stick to a snow-
shoe with the tenacity of a
psychotic barnacle, adding
a pound or two of ballast to
each clumsy step. This is
frustrating as only a tussle
with an inanimate object
can be, and exhausting
besides.
But at the higher eleva-
tion around Anthony Lake,
with temperatures more
typical of February than
May — it was 24 degrees
when Lisa and I, accompa-
nied by our son, Max, who’s
11, started walking — the
new snow made a soft and
powdery cushion atop the
icy, grainy snow below.
We traced the east shore
of Anthony Lake amid a
snow shower that drifted
off to reveal patches of blue
sky. There was scarcely a
breeze, and despite the sub-
freezing temperature we all
soon shed a layer.
Lisa and I chuckled at
the curious confluence of
conditions — we actually
sought the meager shade of
a copse of subalpine firs,
See, Walk/Page B2