t was crazy windy on a cold Saturday night out-side Rome Station, deep in the southeast Oregon outback. We’ d been on the road from Washington’s San Juan Islands for several days and had only pulled into the boat launch on the Owyhee River an hour earlier. After unloading boats and pitching tents in a scramble, we’d driven back to the roadhouse for dinner. The only service of any kind for 50 miles in any direction, it was packed with hunters, ranchers and truckers, all watching the Boise State football game on the team’s iconic blue field. One busy guy ran the entire show—cook, waiter, dish-washer, bartender and cashier. It took ages to get food on the table, but we felt more sympathy than pique. We ’ d have been in our tents or sleeping in our rigs otherwise; besides, we had the game and the beer. When the power went out, we lost the game and there was a general fuss, but the dude hustled out back to fire up a generator and returned with a couple of Coleman lanterns. We ate by headlamp and the Broncos prevailed to a riot of hoots and hollers. It was local color and always a lark to get in a small fix together with strangers, but in my bivvy that night I was nagged by the thought that the night ’ s events could prove prophetic. We might not have been as prepared for contingencies in the week ahead as the fellow at the cafe. They call it the Little Grand and it has all the drama, visuals and geologic gravitas of its namesake, only in miniature. Picture a mile-deep ravine filled with freakish hoodoos and sheer basalt palisades, ancient caves, pictographs and rock strata every color of the rainbow. Whitish calcium limns river rock like a milk mustache. Lichens and microflora in butter I yellow and soft green glaze the ochre stone of can-yon walls and the crystalline basalt columns that aren’t texturing the cliff walls lay strewn on the canyon bottom like some ancient Roman ruin. The smallmouth bass are thick as thieves. We had come in the fall again, five men and a young woman. Moore Huffman flew up from Los Angeles, where he works as a recording engineer and musician. His college buddy, Robyn Minkler, was our lead cameraman. Steve Thomsen is an old fishing buddy whose day job involved running the public works district of a huge county in Washington state. Steven Wrubleski is a stained-glass artist who lives in the San Juan Islands, as does Callie North, a grassroots political activist and co-founder of the KnowledgeShare program there. We pushed off late the next morning under cool, clear skies and slipped through the shadow beneath the Highway 97 bridge a stone’s throw from the cafe of the night before. A semi rumbled loudly over-head—heading for Winnemucca, if I had to guess. We approached a small ranching community at Rome, OR, population 25 souls. I cupped my hand over the brim of my cap to make out the namesake limestone columns towering several miles to the north. Someone in a boat ahead pointed with their paddle, shouting, “Bass!” We were tempted to stop and wet a line but did not; there would be plenty of time for that. It was late in the day in the middle of October and our first night’s camp lay on a cold sandbar at the base of the canyon entrance that loomed ahead. The river was in no hurry. • CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT • Rob Lyon nymphs a beautiful bit of broken water in front of camp. “Unlike the dynamic fishing in the course of a day’s drift juggling paddle and rod, fishing out of camp is pure relaxation,” Lyon says. “I hooked up here that evening and the shiver in the line felt different than a bass. Sure enough, we got into a school of white crappie.” Photo: Steve Thomsen Advertising one of the few places to stay in Jordan Valley and a throwback to the era of exploring the west by road, the Sahara Motel offers an oasis from the blistering heat of the Owyhee canyon lands. Photo: Brandon Sawaya Rob with a smallmouth bass caught tenkara-style. Fall flyfishing on the Owyhee makes for good tenkara work. Water is low and lies are easily approached. The upper Owyhee, above Three Forks, is even smaller and more ideal for this method. Photo: Steve Thomsen “Steve Thomsen prepares for launch. There are only a couple spots to access river bottom around Rome; this one near Ryegrass Crossing is extremely rugged. A high-clearance rig is required. We found a truck abandoned halfway down the grade and had a laugh as we wondered what the driver might have told their spouse back home.” Photo: Rob Lyon “Having walked my boat down to a particularly squirrelly choke point, I’m about to hop in and try to get control before I pancake on the rock immediately below. Autumn rapids aren’t the biggest, but they can still be challenging to negotiate.” Photo: Steve Thomsen Mobile target practice in gravel road country. Photo: Rob Lyon 042 OWYHEE RIVER
The Flyfish Journal The Flyfish Journal 15.3: Page 42
