Trout made small splashes at the water’s surface all across the river as Bruce Berry, standing waist-deep in the stream below the canyon, hooked fish after fish.

The angler moved on to another spot farther downriver, figuring he had worn out his welcome after catching and releasing eight small rainbow trout on a mild, overcast day.

“Fishing’s been good,” said Berry, standing on the bank of the Crooked River near Big Bend Campground on Tuesday. “They (trout) are rising to dry flies.”

November can be a hot month for fishing on the Crooked River. The whitefish are spawning this time of year, and the rainbow trout in the river feed on the whitefish eggs. River flows earlier this week were running at a relatively low 77 cubic feet per second, which are prime flows for fishing and wading.

“November is always a popular time for people to fish the Crooked,” said Tim Porter, fish biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Prineville. “The trout will be sitting behind the whitefish picking off eggs.”

The population of native rainbow trout in the eight-mile stretch of the Crooked River below Bowman Dam has also surged recently. Based on surveys conducted this past June, Porter estimated 5,244 trout per mile in that stretch of river, up from 1,220 fish per mile in June 2011.

That dramatic increase in population no doubt has helped to improve fishing, but biologists are trying to determine what caused such a spike in trout numbers.

Porter said the increase might be a result of the cooperative multimillion-dollar effort by the ODFW and Portland General Electric to reintroduce steelhead and chinook salmon into the Upper Deschutes and Crooked River basins.

As part of that project, steelhead fry have been placed in the Crooked River over the past several years. But Porter and other biologists have questioned if some of those fish — instead of making their way to the Pacific Ocean like most steelhead — have stayed in the Crooked River and “residualized” as rainbow trout, adding to the population.

“The fry that were placed in there, instead of migrating to the ocean, they find that the habitat is good enough, that they just hang out and live the rest of their life there in the river,” Porter explained.

Genetic clips of Crooked River rainbow trout were sent to a lab in Washington to determine whether they are native rainbows or released steelhead, Porter said. Biologists are still waiting on the results.

But the population increase could also be a result of other factors, such as recent winters with heavy snowpack that have made for improved water flows, which aid in fish reproduction.

“With the last couple years of good water years, we may have seen some good production and recruitment to the population,” Porter said. “It is a little early to tell, but I think it may be a combination of both (the good water years and the steelhead reintroduction).”

Some Crooked River steelhead have made their way to the ocean and are now back near Opal Springs, in the Crooked River arm of Lake Billy Chinook, according to Porter.

“I think it’ll be a pretty big boost to the economy, if we get steelhead fishing here (on the Crooked),” Porter said.

But for now, the trout fishing is red-hot on the Crooked, as evidenced by my experience on Tuesday.

After landing two fish on a pheasant tail nymph, I noticed the fish rising to the surface, so I tied on a small blue-wing olive. Before long, I had caught and released three more rainbow trout. The fish were not huge by any means, but the nonstop action made for a thrilling day of fishing.

Rainbow trout in the Crooked River below Bowman Dam average in the 8- to 11-inch range, with some fish in the 14- to 16-inch range, according to Porter.

Numerous campsites along the river provide access, and the most popular stretch for fly anglers is from Big Bend Campground downstream to Lower Palisades. (The use of bait is prohibited until late May of next year.)

“Below that, the habitat seems to favor the whitefish more,” Porter said.

The Crooked River typically fishes well year-round when the flows are low enough — but November on the Crooked can offer some of the best fishing anywhere in Central Oregon.