John Day Smallies

[j.d.smallie]

Last weekend bucketmouth,bukubass, and I drifted the John Day river above Twikenham. The water was high, cold, and a little off color. Needless to say the fishing was slow at best. Should improve as water levels drop and warm.

[BuKuBass]

In keeping with my policy of not reporting dinks, not even the one that I eyeballed to be 11 & 7/8s inches, I did release one that was just over thirteen.
What with the rain, wind, snow, my dog deciding to do some galavantin' for five hours, me forgetting my sleeping bag, bucketmouth doing his best imitation of a Hot Saw competition from within the tent and discovering that road treaded tires, even while in 4wd, are no match for John Day dust saturated with a quarter inch of rain which results in SLIME, we had a good time and plan on doing it again when the river's at a more managable level and is in a more generous mood.
Now jd smallie was smart; well, let's say responsible. He had a business to run and so left Sunday night. Turns out that he and I worked together in Bend 32 years ago; hadn't seen him since. And bucketmouth worked with one of my childhood buddies at about the same time. Small World but as Steven Wright observed, "I'd hate to have to paint it".
Rich, I know that you took some pics of the flotilla; care to post some?

[quacK5]

Post up some pics, we would love to see them!
Man just reading this is getting me excited. My group is meeting up over near Kimberly on June 3rd for our annual three day camp/fish trip. Hopefully the water will be warmer and the fish will be biting. I try to keep tabs on how people are doing and how they are catching their fish, and found this site where the guide gives water temp reports, clarity reports, fish size/number reports and what they caught the big ones on. I think he is further north past fossil but just reading about all the 20+ inchers gets me going. Here is the link:
http://www.johndayriverfishing.com/fishingreports.htm

[BuKuBass]

One of Steve's rigs was where we put in so he probably floated from Service Creek on down to there. That's not to say that he works the river below Clarno as well.

[retaliate]

Yea I've fished the John Day this time of year before, & same story, just too high, & muddy, June is usually great, maybe even May this year with the low snowpack.

[j.d.smallie]

The later in the year the better the fishing gets. We fish the Clarno area hard in july to the middle of august. Our pontoon boats are easy to drag over the sand bars to go from hole to hole. We have 30-40 fish days!

[bucketmouth]

Here is a picture of the floatilla.
http://www.ifish.net/gallery/data/500/medium/2122JD_Float.jpg

I finally got the cacked mud out of the wheel wells and off the fenders and running boards. I had a great time and look forward to doing it again!