The Lower Deschutes in the Maupin area is a great place to be fishing this week. Watch for ticks on you and your dog! It is March madness season so score some on a March Brown with hatches just getting started you have about a month of solid action ahead with these chunky mayflies coming out.
Blue Wing Olives are also a likely hatch that will be important now so a #18 Film Critic, Sparkle Dun and Comparadun will cover it.
There is a lot of action on Black and Golden Stonefly Nymphs as the hatch is coming up fast. I am betting on early May to see salmon flies this year. The nymphs are going to be very crawly (a super tech term haha) and when they are, they often end up in the drift. Often this is on purpose to redistribute themselves downstream prior to the hatch so in their upstream mating flights they lay eggs far enough up that the natural biological drifts down river have space to occur over the time they mature. For the big salmonfly nymphs that is a 4 year life as a nymph! These nymphs also will crawl across the bottom of the river to hold in different places in the winter than they might be holding now, and they do that to take advantage of food created by sunlight penetration with a lower angle of the sun in the winter. It is fascinating the life of these aquatic insects and how important they are to the health of the trout we love.
Caddis Larva and Pupa, and some Jig Leech Streamers will be good throughout the day here and at times that little streamer might be your #1 fly. Reminder again Warm Springs, Mecca, Trout Creek and South Jct are closed to fishing until 4/22/26 so the Lower D is open below the Warm Springs Reservation boundary but not on waters on or across from the reservation.