Welcome to the Blue Mountain Flycasters' website of northeast Oregon, USA.
If you are interested in fishing in some wild west pristine waters, with no one else in sight of your camp, you have come to the right place. Here we fish for trout, steelhead, salmon, in most streams/ rivers, and for bass, crappie, bluegills, perch, trout, carp, etc. in most stillwaters. We are the only fly fishing club in northeast Oregon and the only Federation of Fly Fishers (FFF) affiliate in eastern Oregon/ southeastern Washington. While you are here don't forget to take a look at our Blue Mountain Fly Hatch Chart for the fly selection that should serve you well in our part of the Pacific Northwest. If you don't find the information you are looking for, please drop any of our club contact persons a line with your questions or thoughts.
We're glad you drop by, hope you will come back and wet a fly with us sometime.

It was early in the year of '99 when our club's founder set out an interested parties sign-up sheet at his fly shop to establish a fly fishing club in Pendleton, Oregon and the surrounding area. That sign-up sheet gave our startup organization 40 interested individuals and we set our first meeting for February 21. Twenty one area fly fishers came together for that meeting. From that meeting we still have six charter members making regular attendance to Blue Mountain Flycasters - Federation of Fly Fishers. We are a non-profit organization promoting conservation, the art and science of fly fishing. Our FFF club number is K99716, and if you would be interested in joining our group, please indicate this number to FFF upon membership registration. We currently have 28 active members, and for three of our eight years of existence we have qualified for the FFF new membership rewards of Sage rods and Ross Reel.

The regularly scheduled club meetings are held the third week of the month; September through May.
Our next meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 16, 2008.
Club meetings are located at:

Our meetings are open to the general public and all who are interested in the art and science of fly fishing, fly tying, and the camaraderie of being with folks that enjoy sparkling gin clear water and beautiful unspoiled getaways.

Blue Mountain Flycasters membership comprise a group of fly fishers, all members of Oregon Council of FFF, most of us living at the base of eastern Oregon's Blue Mountains. We are also a community service oriented club, working with groups like Pendleton's S.U.R.E. (Umatilla River waterway cleanup), Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife (bull trout recovery projects, Kids' Fishing Day outing, and Passport to the Outdoors workshops, Becoming an Outdoors Woman programs - fly tying and fly fishing seminars), Boy Scouts of America (helping young men earn their fly fishing merit badge), and US Forest Service (Ukiah- Free Fishing Weekend Kid's Derby). We also provide fly rod/ line handling/ fly tying demonstrations and instruction at different community events, at various times in the year.

Our nearest fishing waters are those of the Umatilla River which flows out of the Blue Mountains, through Pendleton City Center, and through the town of Echo, Hermiston, and Umatilla where it empties into the mighty Columbia River. We also spend time fishing the area's other rivers such as the Grande Ronde, Imnaha, John Day, Wallowa, Powder, the Walla Walla, and those tributaries that flow from Oregon into the Snake River.

The closest national forest with rivers full of redband trout, bulltrout (dolly varden char), whitefish, steelhead and chinook salmon is a few miles east and south of Pendleton. The Umatilla National Forest with 1.4 million acres of fly fishing adventure (over 319,400 acres in wilderness area). Less than 50 miles east of Pendleton is the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest (the largest national forest of the Pacific northwest) with 2.3 million acres (over 600,000 acres in wilderness area). In our two local national forest we have four wilderness areas to get away from the crowds and enjoy the great outdoors. The Blue Mountains also has Oregon's highest and most beautiful drive thru byways to lake, with plenty of back country fly fishing at elevations from 5,000 to 10,000 feet. You can follow this link to McKay Reservoir to take a look at some of the stillwater/ warm water fishing of our area. In McKay Reservoir, about 5 miles south of Pendleton there are trout up to 20", bass up to 7 pounds, crappie, perch, catfish (state record catfish catch), etc.

Hitting the trail high in the Elkhorns

Taking a break on Crooked River

We are an outdoorsy group, and many months of the year we have regularly scheduled club fishing outings. Our next club outing is to Anthony Lakes on September 26th. Click on this link if you would like to see how our outing develop. We do enjoy good fishing, good food, and great camaraderie.

Preparing lunch for the crew fishing the Blues.

A typical club outing scene in the Blues looks like this

When we head for the hills to fish we end up talking about 100 to 200 fish days. Depending on the moon phase, the fly of choice, and the weather, this is not an uncommon occurrence in our Blue Mountains and surrounding area. If you are interested in steelhead fishing, we are also located to the east of the John Day River, where 2-4-6-10 even 15 steelhead per day is not an uncommon occurrence and quite a workout. Flowing through Pendleton City Center is the Umatilla River, which has trout fishing from Memorial Day Weekend through October 31, steelhead fishing from September 1 through April 15, and spring chinook (King salmon) fishing from April 16 through the month of June most years. See Oregon Dept of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) for any and all fishing regulation and changes. Click here if you are interested in a FREE fishing weekend in Oregon.

As we approach the onslaught of colder weather, icy road conditions, we hope you will visit our Blue Mountain Flycasters' weather cam often to take a real time look at the weather/ road conditions around our region before heading out in any direction for fishing or travel.

One of the club's favorite "Let's Go Fishin" retreats. Yep, we do get snow on the 4th of July here.

While snowing outside, we are sitting by the fire preparing to drown flies...tomorrow.

It feels great to drown those flies at 7100' in Oregon's highest drive to trout lake.

Our club also help conduct workshops with the ODFW programs of Becoming an Outdoor Woman (for women only) and the Passport to the Outdoors (open to everyone over 18 years old).
We will be conducting a fly tying workshop an ODFW - Passport to the Outdoors program on March 22, 2008 at Blue Mountain Community College in the Science and Technology Building Room 204 from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm with lunch included. Workshop fee with fly tying tools, materials and lunch included is $30.
A general fly fishing workshop will be offered June 14th. If you are interested in participating in these programs, please contact Mary Hoverson with ODFW in La Grande, OR.

We also with the help of ODFW's trout stocking will have our 4th Annual Kids' Fishing Day on Saturday June 28th, 2008.

Our club president is Bob Wolfe, and he can be reached at 541-966-9335. Vice President John Dadoly is our Pendleton contact, and he can be reached at 541-276-5052. Ryan DeGrofft is club Secretary & Treasurer. Our "Let's Go Fishing" committee chair is George Ficenec. Our Hermiston contact folks are Paul and Mary Quintana at 541-667-8265. Dale McKain is the club's founder, web master, and Milton-Freewater contact, you can reach him at 541-938-3303.

The club's USPS mailing address is: PO Box 271 Pendleton, OR 97801-0271.

Would you like to be part of a truly action organization... with a fly rod in hand? We teach fly fishing and fly tying. Give us a call, or join our next group meeting and see what we are all about. Most of us come wearing jeans, and we relax as a group serving cups of rich Pacific Northwest coffee, with cookies or donuts.

The dues for our club membership is that you are/ become a member of Federation of Fly Fishers (FFF).

On the left, we can bear witness to the kind of company that President Bob keeps on some of our club's"Let's Go Fishin"outings around the area.

The club's motto: "No politics, no religions, no commercials, no dam issues; we are just talking fly fishing."

Have you been having trouble putting all those fly line - knots together? Here's help from Netknots.com, that you can use to practice tying knots at home.

Oregon Fishing Regulations in PDF -- 93 pages of 2008 Oregon Sport Fishing Regulations

Trout Stocking Schedule -- Click here to check the 2008 trout stocking schedule for Oregon's Northeast Zone

Places to go fishing -- here are some ODFW directions to fishing spot around the Northeast Zone

Planning a fishing trip around eastern Oregon? Follow this link to the most current ODFW fishing report for the Northeast Oregon Zone.

To be emailed our regularly delivered Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife - Northeast Zone and club's local fishing reports please click here to be included in Blue Mountain Flycasters' delivery list.

Want to see what the road - weather conditions looks like around here? See realtime weather across our area via these linked ODOT cameras.

If you are one interested in chasing Pacific Northwest steelhead and salmon, you might want to follow the fish runs through these Columbia/ Snake rivers dams via the USACE adult fish counts. Click this Three Mile Dam link to track the current steelhead - salmon run on the Umatilla River .

Survival tips for fall/winter outdoors activities and much much more.

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Copyright © 2004-2008 by Blue Mountain Flycasters. All rights reserved.
We request that any work cited from this website be acknowledged to credit Blue Mountain Flycasters (FFF), please contact President Bob.

Webmaster: Dale McKain
Website Design: mckaincomputergraphics
Updated: May 2008