This past weekend Lunker Vision took a drive to Oregon’s Owyhee River. Fist we loaded up the campers and headed to Boise to stock up on gear, beer, and food. Stopping by a local Boise fly shop, Idaho Angler, we were kitted up with all the flies and recent reports we needed. The staff was friendly and the shop was full of great gear.
The Owyhee Tunnel
The drive to the Owyhee is not to long from Sun Valley coming in at just over three hours, winding through farmland and then finally entering the wild canyon land below the Owyhee Reservoir. Not knowing where to camp we started up river searching for the perfect spot. The canyon was beautiful with amazing rock formations and an epic mixture of green foliage and red rock. We finally came upon a spot right on the river and the fishing access was perfect.
Lunker Vision camp on the Owyhee
After catching a break in what was supposed to be rainy weather, we were able to set up a dry camp and start preparing for a full weekend of fishing.
The next morning we were up early ready to rip lip. A short walk up or down stream from camp and we were into some fishy water. After a few casts and trying to figure out what the fish were eating, we were catching nice brown trout.
One of the many sizable Oywhee Browns from the weekend.
The fishing was great over the whole weekend, we were catching fish on numerous flies, including woolly buggars, zebra midges, caddis dries and of coarse the dirty san juan worm. We saw many bugs on the water as well, some callibaetis, midges, BWO’s, caddis, and even some yellow sally shells on the rocks.
The rocky terrain had crazy colors.
The river was flowing at 135 cfs so it was perfect flows for fishing there were big flats and some good little riffles where we caught most our fish. We were pretty sure the weather man was having a personal day on the water because there was minimal rain and wind contrary to the forcast. It was even starting to get hot, we saw numerous lizards and we were surprised to not come across a single snake as it seemed to be very snakey terrain.
An Owyhee lizard takes advantage of the sun.
All in all it was a great first look at the Owyhee, and we will be back as soon as we can! Video to come soon!
Looking for Lunkers
-Jeremy Black