Ron Lauzon (Sandy) is a fly fisherman and river guide, among the few who fish the Clackamas River year-round.
Bio
Ron Lauzon is a fly fisherman and river guide on the Clackamas River. Lauzon spent his teen years tagging along with Portland neighbors on Saturday steelhead fishing trips to Washington State. An otherwise uptight kid by his own account, he found the river relaxing: “it was just neat...being there.” Lauzon yearned to follow in the footsteps of Jim Conway, a local fishing guide who worked the Columbia River during that era. Now a 25-year veteran of his profession, Lauzon is one of the few people that fishes the Clackamas River year-round. “I work that river all summer and fall when the trout season opens…and people come from all over the world...to go down the river with me and study with me." As a guide, Lauzon matches up his students with the right fishing rod and teaches them how to read the surface of the water to determine what’s happening underneath. Lauzon’s work as a fisherman and instructor is one of constant learning and improvement; he has attended workshops with some of the best single and double-handed casting instructors in the nation. As a guide, Lauzon uses a specialized "Rogue River" boat, a long vessel crafted for carrying heavy loads on shallow water. He continues to hone his boatmanship skills as well as his fishing technique. Most notably, he spent a year and a half on the McKenzie River with expert Northwest boatman William Blair. Lauzon studied at night, then spend his days out on the river with Blair and his clients. "Everything I avoided for 25 years on the river he put me through," he remembers, "every technical thing that a person would encounter in fishing and running a boat."
