Two days ago Tim Porter from ODFW gave his annual presentation to Central Oregon Flyfishers on all things Central Oregon. You can see his slides below but I’ll provide a quick overview. Tui Chub trapping on East Lake continues but there is no identified funding for future efforts. New funding is being sought and tiger trout will be planted in East and Paulina next fall. Tigers have been very effective in controlling chub in Diamond Lake. Hopefully we will not see an explosion of chubs in East and Paulina.

Annual fish sampling has continued in two one mile reaches in the Upper Deschutes below Wickiup Reservoir. The number of fish remains modest but as you can see in the presentation there are some big browns in there.

Bull trout redd counts in Metolius River tributaries have been trending down recently, but they are still good compared to long term numbers. The data goes back to 1986. Metolius redband redd counts have been trending up recently but Metolius flows are not looking robust.

A discussion of gas bubble disease in the Crooked River begins on slide 11. As you can see, there were lengthy periods of high risk due to high flows in early 2025. As has been observed in the past, redbands over 4″ are highly impacted by gas bubble disease. There are a photos of fish that show external signs but the real concern is damage to gills and internal organs that can’t been seen. There is a slide with an abstract of a study on gas bubble disease. Fish in the Crooked had long exposure to high concentrations of super saturated water which the study found can lead to high rates of mortality. Slide 24 shows total fish counts over the years and the number was OK this spring, but Tim said that most of the fish were small. This can be seen on slide 25. Note that 240 mm is 9.45 inches.

Slides 29 through 31 refer to sampling done in and around Deep Creek in the Ochoco Mountains. See this post for more. The presentation is below, click on the link to view in a larger window.