Fly Fishing the Upper Middle Fork Willamette River Solo

I spent an afternoon getting to fish solo on the Upper Middle Fork Willamette River near Oakridge Oregon. I know a lot of people don't really want to share their spots or give direction on where to go and that's not my intent here. Honestly, if you want a more guaranteed day of fish just head to the Middle Fork Willamette below Oakridge and you'll find some great water with good sized fish. For this video though, I did want to show off such a beautiful spot on a local river that sometimes produces fish and sometimes is not that great. Today though, it was great.

I had a ton of fun catching these lake hold-over fish in the bottom of the river system directly above the reservoir. The thing that is hard about this location is that it doesn't hold many fish, and they're not there year-round either. But when you time it right it can be a lot of fun.

The river is very accessible and you can get to both sides pretty easily when needed. I hiked about 1.5 miles downstream from where I parked before I found the fish I was looking for. They were really just in one spot and after I caught a few they stopped going for flies all at the same time. A couple of these are stocked planters and the others are native fish even though they may not actually be natives. The stocked fish eventually move up the river to spawn and produce some really bright silver rainbows that are not fin-clipped and become some sort of fake native strain of fish in the river. I wish that ODFW would stop this all together but I'm one of the few that wants that.. So many people just want to eat their catch and so I end up targeting some hold-over planters and non-native natives. Still very fun fishing when you get to this point of the year. Ever fish was fat, picky, fought hard, and it was all in small water with nobody around. The fun part of it too is that I could hike up there tomorrow and get completely skunked with no fish to be found. I've spent much more time in this area wasting my time casting to empty water than I have had days like this.

Fishing a messy chernobyl (my creation based on the popular fly everyone knows). It has a bright tail, wider body with dubbing brushed out a bit, shorter wings, and ribbon style rubber legs. Also fished an October caddis pupa under an indicator. Shallow water for the most part so never fished a two fly or hopper dropper rig. 4x/5x leaders and tippet. 9'5w for the indicator setup and 8'4w for the dry.

I would love to know if you prefer this style of video with minimal talking, no music, and just the natural sounds or if you like it a bit more produced with some music and me showing my face a bit. Leave a comment to let me know.