Fall Fishing in Oregon

By most accounts, Fall in the Willamette Valley offers the best fishing. Guides, shop owners, club members, old timers, toddlers, liars, and the occasional bartender will tell you how they caught the best fish when the leaves changed color, when the rains rolled in, when the mornings got a little too brisk for dawn patrol, and when late afternoon sun brought October caddis out. Their eyes gleam when talking about late September through November. If you listen closely, you might hear a catch in their voice as they combine their love of fishing with mushroom hunting. There will be talk of big redsides fattening up for the winter. There will be mention of chanterelle mushrooms found in hidden glens that no one (which means at least someone) knows about. Someone will inevitably bring up the Fishtober steelhead bite—a portmanteau that has hooked more steelhead opportunists than actual fish. Over time, this amalgam of nostalgia and optimism has assumed its own narrative agency. Embellished reportage has become a myth challenging the imaginative fancies of even that venerable hidalgo himself, Alonso Quijano.

I am not innocent of these charges. I, too, have seen the windmill of late-October rains and tilted at them on my rickety nag turned valiant steed. I, too, have taken the inevitable shortening of days and turned it into a courting of sluggish trout who have grown into the irresistible Dulcinea del Toboso. I have embellished my conquests. I have enhanced my triumphs. In a concerning turn of events, I have made a fabulist’s reality for myself. And frankly, I don’t give a damn about coming down from my castled clouds anytime soon.

Let’s take my last three fishing trips as a case study. By all measures I went out in perfect fall weather. The nightly temps were dipping somewhere in the low 40s. The daytime highs were reaching about 60-ish. I didn’t faff over early launch times. In all cases, I was more or less fishing with some intent by 10:30am. On the two boat days, I brought a smattering of fishing rods including: indicator setup, dry, dry dropper, and streamer rod. On the wading trip, I committed to the swing and the dry fly setup. The details of the floats are no secret: Deerhorn to Hendricks, and Hendricks to Bellinger. Both are defined by great water on the McKenzie. The wade trip, while not secret per se, will remain cryptic because when I see people within three miles of me in this area, I think things are crowded and then I get cranky. So, fuck off. I am not telling you where I go wade fishing on a guide’s day off. Let’s just say it is in Oregon. Lastly, I didn’t get too weird with techniques and flies, choosing instead to fish the equivalent of a solid Protestant missionary.

Over these trips I fished about 24 hours. Both boat days I pushed into dark. I hit all the reliable spots, back rowed a few runs. I overcame boat-itus by anchoring and actively wading juicier sections with both a dry and a spey rod. I tied on different flies. I went with old stand-bys and I even matched the mahogany dun hatch. My efforts yielded four fish. Four. Calling two of my catches a fish is a borderline insult. Hell, one of the two fish was maybe six inches. Counting a six inch fish on the McKenzie is kind of like saying you made a real connection with someone at the strip club. Trust me, Chablis is paid to like you.

Simple math tells us that four fish (and yes, I am still counting that six inches of bullshit trout because I caught the damn thing on a skated dry in fast water) in two days of fishing is 2 fish/day. Comparative analysis tells us that one fish every 4.5 hours during the legendary fall bite calls into question the validity of “fall is the best time to fish” that I and so many others have come to preach around here. Where are all these fat redsides? Where are the numbers? Where are the native fish exploding out of a riffle to take my October caddis with all the hate and vengeance and grace and power that I have come to expect of fish on this river? What about the tug? Where are those fish that allegedly pull the trout spey from my lazy, daydreaming grasp as I swing a run with tempting soft hackles? Have they left the river? Are they already bedded down for the winter? Where they ever there to begin with? Did their shift end and they are counting up their profit sharing revenue from Simms, Fishpond, Echo, and Farbank? Maybe I’m just bad at fishing. Maybe I’m a sucker. Maybe I’ve hit the Tom Brady ceiling and I should start spending more time with my wife and less time on the road. Maybe fall fishing in the Valley has always been a self-fabricated deep fake—so deep that fly fishers don’t realize the folly of their own faith.

Tom Brady analogies notwithstanding, I still believe in the Fall bite because there was that third trip. The one where I went off in search of fish and solitude and a reset. This is the trip where I didn’t even bother to count the fish because I shattered my 4-fish record over the last two trips in the first twenty minutes. This is the trip where the river gave me a gift, the trip where I saw October caddis and caught fish on a cheap imitation, the trip where every trout I swung up was at least sixteen inches, the trip where the last light of the day caught the autumn ridge line and humbled me with its expanse.

I can think of hundreds of reasons and factors as to why my third trip was more fishy than the first two. I don’t care to attempt a list here. It would cost me too much wonder. But, what I will say is that third day the weather was no different than the first two. My time on the water was roughly equivalent across all trips. Yes, I did fish a different watershed when wading. Yet, the difference between the two is marginal, making them more-or-less part of the same bioregion. On the third trip, I hiked over 9 miles, the bulk of which were along the seams and edges of a river’s current. While that distance is roughly the same as my floats, the pace was different. Rather than drifting, my fishing was spent standing in the river. Wading immersed me in the environment. I paid closer attention to details around me. Water temperature and wind and insect activity and sunlight and reflection and refraction and hatches and rises were all more palpable. Time and the swing slowed. My dry drifts were better mended and longer. When swinging a confusion of currents I understood the consequences of my choices because I was there, in the water, feeling the differences. What I will say is on that third trip I was more present—I was a better angler. As a result, I had one of those epic fishing days that give credence to all fall fantasies.

Thank god for fantasies. They not only keep Chablis employed, but keep me coming back to rivers even when I should be at home doing chores.

One of the great literary questions about Don Quixote is whether or not its titular character knows the difference between fantasy and reality. If Don Quixote has no idea that his fantasies are fantasies, then we are left with a story about a mad man. If, however, Don Quixote knows his fantasies are fantasies, then we have a story about free will and imagination. While agreeing with the former is far more pragmatic, I have always felt the latter to be the more beautiful one.

Choosing to live not only as we want to live, but choosing to see the world—at least for the most part—as we want it to be makes the humdrum of life a little less dull; it makes the waning of days a little less dark. What’s more, there is a kind of freedom that comes from knowing the fantasy we live is not a reality and still not giving a damn besides. Granted, we can’t live like that all of the time. But, every now and again we can live like that for some of the time. For me, Fall provides just that opportunity. It’s the season where I tilt at windmills with a mind all my own.