Tag Archives: Owyhee River

Owyhee River Brown Trout

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I just got back from 3 days of fishing the Owyhee River in eastern Oregon with a fellow rod builder, Rick Robbins, from West Virginia.  Lots of big browns.  I chose a 8′  3″  5 wt bamboo rod for most of my fishing.  We had great success on  #22 Trico Spinners every morning, and matched them on Furled Leaders from Cutthroat Leaders in Boise, Idaho and 6X tippets.   Tan and/or black ants on 5X Tippets worked well in the afternoons and evenings.  Check it out.

Morning on the Owyhee River.

Morning on the Owyhee River.

Trico Spinners.

Trico Spinners.

#22 Trico Spinner Pattern.

#22 Trico Spinner Patterns.

A nice Brown that fell to a #14 Tan Ant pattern one afternoon.

A nice Brown Trout that fell to a #14 Tan Ant pattern one afternoon.

Fishing Bamboo Fly Rods on the Owyhee River

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Mary Ann and I got to spend a few days on the Owyhee River in Eastern Oregon last weekend fishing for big browns. The water levels were down to winter lows, which opened up just about the entire river for great fishing opportunities. We tried French Nymphing techniques our first afternoon and each managed to land a nice +20″ Brown in small pheasant tail nymphs. Here is Mary Ann’s nice fish (too bad it was on graphite):

Nice Brown!


The next two days we fished mostly dry flies with small nymph droppers, and were successful with several combinations. Small mahogany duns were hatching early mornings, with blue winged olives also hatching through the daylight hours. I was lucky enough to pick up this 25″ Brown on a #20 Blue Winged Olive dry fly one afternoon:

Big 25" Brown


Finally, here is a fun little video of a couple of fish:

Bamboo on the Owyhee River

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I fished the Owyhee River last Sunday for a few hours.  The water was a little high for my preference and very off-colored but the fish were cooperative.  I fished my 9′ 0″  5 wt  EuroNymphing Rod.  Using a French Style technique with “slinky” indicators and 5X tippets, I landed 8 nice brown trout on size 20 black Zebra Midges and Size 18 Pheasant Tail Nymphs.  There were lots of hoppers out and I might have been one of the only anglers on the river who wasn’t fishing dries, but I had great success on my small dark nymphs fished in the riffles.  The fish I landed were between 12″ and 20″…very fat browns!  Too bad I didn’t have a camera with me, but here’s a photo from a previous trip of one of the big Owyhee Browns.