PRINEVILLE —

Prineville Reservoir resembled an enormous natural bathtub on its way to being completely drained. All of the boat ramps were closed, and still are, because the water is so low.

But below the reservoir, down along the Crooked River, anglers lined the grassy banks, casting away for their chance at landing some wild rainbow trout.

Even in low-water years, the Crooked remains one of the most popular fisheries in Central Oregon. And actually, fishing tends to improve at this time of year when water flows coming out of the reservoir are reduced by the Bureau of Reclamation. Flows below Bowman Dam dropped from 180 cubic feet per second to less than 60 cfs last week.

“You go from having the same density of fish, just now in a smaller area,” says Tim Porter, assistant district biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Prineville. “So fishing usually picks up around that time of year just because it’s like fishing in a bucket.”

That is good for the anglers, but perhaps not so much for the fish, especially in a low water year.

“The more they’re caught, the more they’re handled and released, the more stress they’re under,” says Porter of the wild rainbows in the Crooked. “There’s obviously some hooking mortality involved, and catch-and-release mortality, where as the fish are being released some will die.”

While the lower flows are typical at this time of year on the Crooked, this fall they could be extremely low due to the meager snowpack from a mild winter. In exceptionally low water years, Porter says, flows can trickle all the way down to 30 cfs, which he says is likely this year.

“There’s always some concern,” Porter says. “We’ve been pretty fortunate the last few years — we’ve had good winter flows.”

Porter adds that fishing has picked up the last couple of weeks on the Crooked River below Bowman Dam, with decent bug hatches and anglers catching “quite a few fish.”

I drove the 35 miles from Bend to Prineville Reservoir earlier this month, and I was struck by the low level of water in the reservoir. As I crossed the bridge over Bowman Dam, I could see fly anglers wading in the middle of the Crooked River, hoping to hook some of the wild rainbows that make the desert stream their home.

The river in that area is lined by numerous campgrounds that give anglers easy access to the water. At Poison Butte Campground, I parked and walked the short distance to the shallow river. I tied on a pheasant tail nymph with a strike indicator and cast out into a small riffle.

The rugged canyon rose above me as I continued casting and watching my yellow strike indicator. When it finally sank below the surface, I raised the rod tip and reeled a 12-inch rainbow trout to hand.

Nymphing (using wet flies below the water surface) is always popular among fly anglers on the Crooked, but during the fall they can find success by dry-fly fishing as well, according to Porter. Bait is allowed on the Crooked River until Oct. 31, but the fishermen there seem to be almost exclusively fly anglers.

The ODFW performed a population survey on the Crooked this past June, electroshocking fish, a procedure that temporarily stuns them so they float to the surface and can be counted.

Porter and other biologists estimate that there were about 2,500 rainbows per mile that were 8 inches or longer in the 8-mile stretch below Bowman Dam. Porter says those are good numbers, although in 2014, he adds, the number was about 6,300 fish per mile.

“A lot of it has to do with natural mortality,” Porter explains of the decline. “We had some good water years in 2010, 2011 and 2012, so we saw a good year class from 2010. Trout, on average, live about four to six years. Lower water years affected the population a little bit. We’re not seeing as big of a size class coming in behind them to keep the numbers up high. But 2,500 fish per mile is still a good density of fish.

“And in all reality, 6,000 is probably too many. The Crooked River is very productive, but that’s still a lot of (fish) mouths to feed.”

Porter says that the fish are well-dispersed throughout the 8-mile stretch. While most of the angler effort is closer to the dam, the catch rate is fairly similar throughout the river, the biologist notes.

Most of the rainbows in the Crooked River are in the 13- to 14-inch range, although they can grow as large as 18 inches, according to Porter, who adds that fishing should only improve as fall continues. When the whitefish spawn later this month and into November, the trout key on the whitefish eggs.

“You can use an egg fly,” Porter suggests. “The trout will hang out below the spawning whitefish and pick off the eggs. The peak is usually in November. But fishing can stay good throughout the entire winter.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0318,

mmorical@bendbulletin.com