Now that Mary Ann and I have moved into our new house in Sisters, Oregon, we’re getting the chance to get out on the local waters to fly fish.  There are just way too many places to fish around here…it’s hard to pick sometimes.  We got out the last two days on the Crooked River near Prineville.  The Crooked is a wonderful tail water fishery that offers great rainbow fishing with countless small mayfly and caddis hatches throughout the entire year.  But, I tried throwing a #8 Golden Stonefly Nymph (one of my favorite patterns) in the evening when the mayfly surface activity quit.  I’ll bet I was the only angler on the river using big stonefly nymphs because the river isn’t known for much if any large stonefly populations.  But, I hit paydirt and successfully landed about ten larger rainbows between 12″ and 17″.  Sometimes you really don’t need to “match the hatch”.  Here is one of the beautiful fish that took my stonefly nymph, and the pattern that worked:

A Crooked River Rainbow

#8 Golden Stonefly Nymph