Ana River

The Ana is a seven-mile spring creek that has no business being where it is. It boils out of a cluster of artesian springs at the foot of Winter Ridge, fills the 60-acre Ana Reservoir, then runs southeast through sagebrush and alkali flats before dying into Summer Lake, a closed-basin desert lake with no outlet. The whole thing sits in the Summer Lake Wildlife Area, roughly 100 miles southeast of Bend and about as far from a fly shop as trout water gets in Oregon. What makes it worth the drive is the water itself: the springs push a nearly constant 55 to 90 cfs at a steady ~58F year-round, so while the surrounding high desert bakes in summer and freezes in winter, the Ana just keeps flowing clear and cold. It fishes all twelve months, and its wild redband rainbows rise to dry flies in February when almost nothing else in the state is happening.

Practically, this is a small, intimate, wade-and-walk stream — a few rod-lengths wide, tucked down in an alkali ravine that shelters it from wind and holds warmth. Most anglers walk the banks or use a float tube; the channel is too small for a drift boat, though there is a ~3.25-mile float down to the County Highway 4-17 crossing if you want it. Because the water is so clear, the fish are spooky and the game is match-the-hatch: long light leaders, small flies, careful presentations. Caddis are the dominant bug, but a size-18 Blue-Winged Olive is a reliable bet, with hatches typically coming off in the afternoon window from roughly noon to 3 p.m. Numbers can be silly — anglers report close to a hundred small fish in a mid-summer day — but most are 6- to 12-inch fingerlings and juveniles. The better fish, 14 to 19 inches, come to stripped beadhead Woolly Buggers and small leeches, and show up more in spring and winter than in the summer crush of little ones.

A couple of things set the Ana apart and are worth knowing before you go. Unlike almost every other stream in ODFW's Southeast Zone — most of which are restricted to artificial flies and lures — the Ana allows bait and carries a general 5-trout, 8-inch-minimum limit. It fishes wonderfully on flies but is not a catch-and-release fly-only water, and several online write-ups get this flat wrong (see Regulations). Ana Reservoir upstream is a separate warmwater story: ODFW stocks it with sterile hybrid striped bass ("wipers"), and it produced the Oregon state-record hybrid at 18 lb 9.5 oz in 2009. The river holds a few of those bass plus native Summer Lake tui chub, but the trout are the reason to fly fish it. Nearest services are the Lodge at Summer Lake and the Ana Reservoir RV Park; there is no fly shop or dedicated guide operation on the water.