FISHING THE WILLIAMSON RIVER, SOUTH CENTRAL OREGON. SEPT, 13

Its 6:00am and I’m watching a blood red sunrise (because of a nearby forest fire) over miles of marsh land covering the north end of Klamath Lake. Corinne and I are getting ready to fish the Williamson River with Randy Rigdon our guide for the day.

The Williamson is a spectacular and totally unique river. Its 50 miles long and flows into the north east corner of Klamath Lake. Half way down the river is a large marsh and during the dry months, the upper river dries up completely. The main source of the Williamson is a huge spring at the marsh which comes straight out of the ground, gin clear and 44 degrees. The day we fished, the air temp was in the 90s and the water temp barely got above 46 degrees. The river bed geography is also like nothing else I’ve ever seen, sections of clear gravely bottom interrupted by volcanic outcropping which would form wall like dams you could barely get over with a drift boat, behind which were holes too deep to see the bottom. You could move the boat 20 feet and fish thigh deep fast moving seams, another 20 feet and be prospecting a deep dark hidey hole and another 20 feet and be fishing gentle flat water to rising trout in a back water. In short nothing like any other river I’ve fished and a mind boggling array of structure and holding water.

And the fish! The trout are a species of native Red Band Rainbow that I’m told are genetically a land locked Steelhead. The average size of adult fish in the river is between 5 to 12 lbs and they live a life not unlike their coastal cousins moving between the huge, rich water of Klamath Lake and the river.

The fish are notoriously spooky and without the color from the upper river, the river is fished this time of year with intermediate sinking clear camo lines with 14 foot leaders, 5x tippet and very small flies. Randy was an excellent guide and worked hard to put us over a great many fish. Corinne and I both missed big fish right off the bat. The technique was to cast downstream, mend and feed slack to sink the fly and then start a short teasing retrieve. This was effective, however the thing that took me the better part of the day to understand was that you were feeding very light tippet to extremely large fish with no slack in the system. My first hookup I straightened a size 14 hook and lost my fish. The next two, I just plain broke off when I set the hook. With smaller fish, when you set a hook there is usually slack to absorb the shock and you can simply move the fish as well to take the shock. With these fish, there was no slack and 5 to 12 lb fish don’t move when you strike. I lost a number of good fish until it finally got through my head to be gentle.

After losing several fish in the upper part of our drift, we reset above some flat water and watched fish rising to take dries. Randy rigged a dry line with a size 14 dry fly and had me cast above where the fish were and feed line down to where they’d been rising. As we watched, a rise the size of a seals head (I exaggerate a little, I guess) sucked down my fly and I struck but no hook up. Randy handed me his polarized glasses and as we drifted past the hole, I could clearly see a dozen fish 5 to 12 lbs holding in the flat water. What a remarkable river and fishery.

Our day was for whatever reason a very slow bite (maybe night feeding by the full moon) and again Randy worked very hard to put us on fish. As the sun got high in the sky he went to his bag of tricks and setup Corinne with a floating line and a big ole Muddler Minnow and had her cast over some soft water and then skate it over where he thought fish were holding. Once again a huge boil that just about had Corinne go overboard, but no hookup.

My one fish came from a nondescript section of water later in the day with absolutely nothing to suggest fishing it except that Randy knew fish sometimes held there. I finally got my adrenaline under control and managed to set the hook without breaking the fish off and got it to the net. The fish was about 3 lbs and 22 inches, bad news was it was actually small for the river; good news was it was one of the larger trout I’ve taken. All in all a very cool day. Randy says the first time you fish the Williamson is for fun, the second is for revenge. Corinne and I are already planning our revenge.