ALONG THE MCKENZIE RIVER - Cooking a shore lunch of fresh caught fried fish is one of the great things about fishing Oregon's McKenzie River in mid-summer.

Stocked trout on the McKenzie River have had the adipose fin clipped at the hatchery (a small fin behind the dorsal fin on wild trout). In the summer, the numbers of stocked fish are in the thousands. You should keep all the hatchery fish you can eat. They are stocked sterile and are breed for the frying pan.

Where to fish?

The Upper McKenzie River fishes well all day long, even in the dead of summer. The water is clean and cold year round and offers lots of good fish holding water that is accessible to anglers. The upper section usually means between Blue River to Leaburg Dam, and the typical runs are from the boat ramps at Blue River to Rennies or from Rennie’s to Ikes. This section of river has a great supply of hatchery rainbow trout all summer and early fall.

The hot flies for this section of river are possie bugger nymphs, fished under an indicator or with a hopper-dropper two fly rig with a parachute golden stonefly on top. Anglers should do well fishing the likely holding water, drop offs, seams where different speed currents flow together and behind large boulders.

A word of warning: This section of river features the Class III Martins Rapid and there are several Class II features, including named rapids such as Bear Creek, Eagle Rock Rapid, and Clover Point. Anglers need to be cautious -- go with a guide or follow someone through the rapid on your first trip. Do not throw your boat in at Blue River without scouting the run first.

Cooking the trout

You want to keep your fish as fresh as possible. So that means you dispatch the fish, put them in your cooler and keep them cold till lunch time (which should be soon after you catch them).

There are numerous places on the river to pull out and cook lunch, made by the guides over the years, but none are marked or named. Look closely and you’ll find them. Or look at a map. There are lots of public lands along the McKenzie. Pick up your garbage and anyone else’s. There are two very obvious pullouts across the river from Silver Creek boat landing.

Once you’ve found a place to cook your meal, it’s time to clean the fish. You start by cutting the fish from the anal fin to the base of the jaw, reach in with one finger, pull the guts out and clean out the blood line along the backbone in the water.

To skin the fish, you break the fish’s neck and peel the fish’s skin off like a banana. You can see the how to in this video:

The next step is to bread the fish. Breading consists of 75% flour to 25% corn meal. You can add Cajun spices for a blackened taste, or any number of variations like lemon pepper, garlic powder, or Cayenne.

The tradition on the McKenzie was to build a fire to cook over, but that’s not practical in the summer. A one burner Coleman-type camp stove works well for a 12-15 inch pan.

After breading the fish, melt a cube of butter in a pan (one stick of butter for six fish.). Brown the fish, 8-9 minutes on each side and crisp them on high heat.

They taste great fried, served with a lemon.  Recommended side dishes include potato salad, seasonal fruit (there are some great U-Pick blueberry farms on the way out Rte 126) and chips and salsa.

Matt Stansberry is a Eugene, Oregon-based blogger and outreach coordinator for the McKenzie Upper-Willamette Chapter of Trout Unlimited. Chris Daughters is a fly fishing guide and owner of the Caddis Fly Shop in Eugene. Stansberry and Daughters blog at www.OregonFlyFishingBlog.com.