John Day

 The first time I ever heard of the John Day River in Oregon was back in 1987, when I won the first of state Nevada Trout Stamp contest.  I had to go to a sports show in Reno to sign prints of the design, and the booth across from where I was signing at the show had a large mounted smallmouth hanging on the wall.  So naturally I went over and talked to the people there.  They were running trips on this river in Oregon that was full of smallmouth.  Well, I was interested.  Their photos of the scenery was nothing like what I'd pictured rivers in Oregon to be like, but what really turned me on was that they said they were the only outfit running guided trips on the river during the low water of mid- to late-summer, and in a five day trip we would never see another person.  So I traded a painting for a trip for me and Mary.

That trip, in 1988, was epic.  There were six other clients besides Mary and me, but all but one of the others were not serious anglers.  It wouldn't have mattered.  We all caught smallmouth until our hands were chewed nearly to ribbons from lipping and unhooking fish.  They came in all sizes.  The majority were under 12 inches, but there were plenty of 14-16 inchers and enough 17 to 20 inchers to keep us fishing like crazy trying to catch more of them.  I counted the number of fish I caught on my second best day of the five days we were on the river, and ended up with 175 smallmouth that day.  I probably caught at least 20 that were over 17 inches, topped by a couple 20s and a huge 21 incher.  And the scenery was simply spectacular.  The guides told us we'd never see but one sign of civilization, the roof of a shed that was atop the plateau, miles away, but could be seen briefly if you looked up a side canyon.  They were right.  They weren't right about everything...they told us not to worry about a tent because it never rained during the summer, but on our fourth night a huge thunderstorm struck and the 11 of us spent hours huddled under a 12 by 20 foot tarp, wind howling and trying to blow our shelter away.  Just one more facet of the story of that trip.

Naturally I had to go back.  Our second trip was a few years later with another couple, artist friends of ours, on a section farther upstream that wasn't quite as wild or scenic but was still pretty spectacular, as was the fishing.  Then in August of 1999, I did another trip on the lower wilderness section, this time with a different company, accompanied by cwc on here and two other Missouri anglers.  This time, the fishing was disappointing.  There had been a huge landslide farther up the river just prior to our trip, and the river was still working its way through the debris, fluctuating in flow and remaining very murky.  We only averaged about 25 fish a day because of those conditions.

After that, the river went on the back burner...still a stream I'd like to return to someday but not a priority.

But then I met Dirty Ed on the Riversmallies website, and fished with him and his two friends, Doug and John.  Dirty Ed's real name is Ken, and the three of them are from Ohio.  I don't know who first mentioned the John Day, but Ken really wanted to fish it, and I started getting excited to go back.  We tentatively set up a do-it-yourself trip for last summer.  But other things got in the way and I couldn't go, and besides, the river was extremely low by early July, so Ken and the others opted out as well.  But we were bound and determined to do it this summer.

It started out being a canoe trip.  The kind of watercraft you use on the John Day is somewhat dependent upon water level.  If it's flowing under 500 cfs, canoes and kayaks make the most sense, and typically by mid-July it's down below that mark.  When I had floated it before, it had been down around 300-400 cfs, and the first two trips we had used inflatable one person kayaks, while the guides carried all the camping and food gear in smallish rafts.  The third trip, we'd floated in one person pontoons propelled by kayak paddles, with again the guides using small rafts.  So obviously the river was doable at that level in rafts, though they weren't recommended below that 500 cfs mark.  And the fly in the ointment was that, because we were doing a DIY trip, we wouldn't be able to use the private access the guides used, which not only cut 14 miles off the trip but also was below the one true hazard, Clarno Rapids.  Clarno Rapids is rated class 3 and 4, and would either be dangerous to kayaks and canoes at flows above 500 cfs, or nearly impassible in rafts below 400 cfs, or so the guide books said.  So we watched river flows religiously as the time approached.  It looked for a long time like the flow would be right around that 500 cfs mark by the time of out trip; the river had been a little above normal all early summer, and though it was dropping steadily, the snow pack in the mountains at its headwaters was still substantial.  So by the time we absolutely had to make a decision on what kind of boats to use, it seemed rafts would be in order, and that's what we would end up taking.

Then the river started dropping much faster, and by the time of the trip, it was down below 400 cfs, and we were pretty nervous about Clarno Rapid.  Would we be able to make it in rafts?  Two more of my Montana buddies were going to go, and we planned to take three rafts.  John would row solo in a smallish raft and carry a good portion of the gear.  Ken and Doug would be in a smallish raft, and my two buddies and I would be in my bigger raft.  But at nearly the last minute, my buddies had to cancel.  Now I had to make a big choice...take the big raft by myself?  Or could I do it in my one person Water Master raft?  I decided to take the Water Master.

You have to get permits to float the John Day, which is both an Oregon scenic river and a National Wild and Scenic river, though there is no limit (so far) on the number of people floating it.  We got the permits, and the Ohio boys drove out and met me at our Montana house.  The next morning we piled all my stuff, including the folded up Water Master, in their big Dodge truck along with all their stuff, and drove the 10 hours to Arlington OR, where we spent the night.  The next morning we drove to Fossil, dropped off a set of keys with the guy who would shuttle our vehicle the 70 miles from put-in to take-out, and headed for the river at Clarno.  Our first view was both promising and worrisome--the riffle near the bridge didn't look very big, but there were small smallmouth swimming all around the sandy ramp to the water as we unloaded, inflated the rafts, and loaded all the gear.  After more than an hour in 90 degree sunshine, we started down the river, through that first riffle where we at least never touched bottom, and we were committed to 70 miles and 6-7 days of wild river.

 

We were so worried about Clarno Rapid, 5 miles downstream, that we didn't even rig fishing rods, we just steadily rowed.  The riffles were easy at first, but a mile above Clarno Rapids we encountered the first thing I was worried about, shallow riffles over a mostly solid basalt bottom.  I'd been worried mainly that the basalt would be sharp and might damage the rafts, but we slid over the shallows with relative ease.

Clarno is actually two rapids, an upper and a lower.  We finally came to Upper Clarno.  We got out to scout it, and it had an impressive three or four foot drop through big boulders, but looked easily doable in the center gap.  

No problem.  I ran it easily even in the little Water Master.  Then, a quarter mile downstream, the river split at a rocky island, with most of the water going over a shallow rock riffle with about two feet of drop...and then we were at the head of Lower Clarno.  We climbed up the hill to scan it, and it didn't look good.  It was a boiling obstacle course.

Which went a long way before funneling down a bit to the last big drop, about three feet through the jagged teeth of a row of huge boulders.

Viewed from below, you could see that final drop, with the only option the gap on far river left, which is to the right in this photo.  

The problem with that option was the huge boulders guarding it just upstream, which you had to slide behind to line up for that drop.  And then there were two barely submerged boulders just 10 feet above the drop, and there was really no way to avoid both...you'd have to slide over one of them.  And finally there were other boulders barely underwater just below the drop.  But there was nothing to do but run it.  I took off first, finding it surprisingly easy to negotiate the obstacle course of the rapid until I neared that drop.  I slid into position, and saw I could hit the gap easily, but the roiling, boulder strewn water at the bottom of the drop looked even scarier from river level.  I'm sorry to say I chickened out.  I eased over to the bank and the other guys, who were there watching, helped me slide the loaded Water Master over the rocks behind the big boulder on the edge of the bank.  Then I ran the last bit of froth below.

The other guys all have a lot of whitewater experience, but Ken wasn't feeling well.  John was next, and he made it down the rock garden, slid into the gap perfectly, over the submerged guard rocks, though the gap barely wider than his raft, and rode out the waves below.  Ken then asked him to take the other raft down.  He did, even better.  We were past Clarno!

It was mid-afternoon when we made it through the Clarno Rapids, and we still had 4 miles to go to the first campsite.  The "gravel" bars on the John Day are rock bars, not conducive to camping on, so there are more or less designated campsites, mainly spots on the banks a bit above gravel bar level where there is flat ground and a few juniper trees for shade.  Most are marked on the guidebooks we had, and I'd also marked them on my complete set of topo maps for this stretch of river.

But after making it through the one spot that really worried us, we just had to rig up the rods and start fishing.  It was also nice that the wind hadn't risen.  Almost every day I'd ever been on the river, the wind had come up sometime during the day, and it invariably blew upstream, making fishing much more difficult.

The John Day pretty much has one predator fish during the warm weather months--smallmouth.  Smallies were stocked in the river many years ago, and if you were drawing up the perfect smallmouth river, you wouldn't have to use your imagination, you'd just copy the John Day.  It's a riffle/pool river, the riffles fast and dropping sharply to provide more oxygen during hot weather when the river's temperatures reach the upper 70s and lower 80s, the pools long stretches of gentle current swirling around boulders of all sizes, anywhere from a foot deep to too deep to see the bottom.  The water visibility was about 4 feet with a beautiful green color.  Crayfish live in the John Day, and lots of aquatic insects, as well as juvenile fallfish, the adults of which look like giant creek chubs.  The state of Oregon used to value the smallmouth fishery to the extent of at least putting on a 10 fish limit, but in recent years they've decided the smallmouth are bad for the baby steelhead and salmon that hatch out in the river in the late autumn and early spring, so they have removed all limits on smallies; you can keep as many as you care to clean.  I had been uneasy about that, fearing that the removal of the limits would hurt the smallmouth fishing.  So I was anxious to start casting to find out.

First cast with a spinnerbait...strike, miss, strike, miss, strike, miss...and as the lure neared the Water Master I saw a wolf pack of at least a half dozen 6-7 inch smallmouth following it, swiping at it, which is what I'd been feeling.  And that, my friends, would be how the whole trip went.  There are literally MILLIONS of smallmouth in the John Day.  They were everywhere.  Cast into shallow water, and you'd get a strike.  Cast into the middle of the deep pools and you'd get a strike.  Cast along the gravel bars, on in pockets in the rapids.  It didn't matter.  The problem is, nearly all those fish are less than 12 inches.  At one point, in mediocre water, I counted how many casts out of 200 that I made that DIDN'T get at least one fish swiping at the spinnerbait.  Only 37.  And of those, most had one of those packs of little ones following it.  If you just didn't cast randomly and picked a little bit better spots to make your casts, I have no doubt that you'd get a strike on every cast.

There seemed to be five year classes represented in those fish.  There were inch long fry in the shallows, young of this year.  There were four inchers cruising all through the shallower water, one year old fish.  Then those 6-7 inchers, which would swarm the lure and seemed to be just solid masses along the banks.  Then 9-10 inchers that actually got hooked constantly, also along the banks but also everywhere else, including cruising the middle of the river.  And finally, a whole lot of 11-12 inchers, and they were strong fish, strong enough that you'd think when you hooked one that it must be a pretty good fish.  But fish larger than that were scarce.  That first afternoon, I believe I caught maybe a half dozen fish between 13 and 15 inches.  The other guys, using various lures, had similar experiences, with Ken reporting he'd caught a single 16 incher.  In that four mile stretch, however, I ended up catching 67 smallies, Ken said he had 50 plus, and the other two guys had in the 40s.  They were mainly using curly tail grubs on jig heads.  I tried a lot of stuff, including topwaters, my homemade crankbait, and several spinnerbaits, and it didn't matter what I threw, the results were the same.  At first I thought that surely all you'd have to do was keep casting to the better looking spots and you'd catch some bigger fish among all the little ones, but it just didn't seem to be happening.

We found the campsite about 7 PM, plenty of time to set up tents and cook some supper.  My responsibility for the trip had been to provide supper.  We had a big freeze dryer, and Mary had cooked up meals for us all and freeze-dried them, so all I needed to do was boil water to reconstitute them, dump them in a big pot, and pour enough water to make them the proper consistency.  This first night we had chili.

There were no insects, and the weather was delightfully cool as the sun went down, so we could have slept under the stars, but we all opted to put up our tents without the rain flies.

The next morning we got a fairly early start after a quick breakfast, anxious to start fishing.  Surely we'd catch some bigger fish this day.  And it started out well for Ken, who quickly caught a 17.5 incher.  But then it was back to the little ones.

The river had started out in a fairly shallow, wide canyon:

But it was gradually digging deeper into the landscape.  There were many steep, sharp dropping little rapids that made for interesting maneuvers to avoid the rocks:

And it was beginning to show the basalt cliffs for which the John Day is famous:

As it carved ever-deeper into the high desert plateau:

We passed the mouth of Butte Creek, which is the spot where I'd always put in on the guided trips, and we knew that Basalt Rapid, the only other rated rapid on this stretch, would be coming up soon.  I remembered Basalt from the other trips as a sharp but open drop with much of the water crashing against a couple huge boulders just below, not particularly difficult to run.  It's rated class 3, but that's in higher water levels.  It wasn't much of a problem at this level:

 

There were other "riffles" that actually were more of a problem.  Often the river would shallow out over a very wide flat approaching the riffle, and then most of the water would funnel into a very narrow trough as it curved along a bank, with big boulders strewn throughout the trough that required a lot of quick maneuvers.  I had no problem with the Water Master; it was made for this kind of water.  But the bigger rafts were more difficult to negotiate those very fast and narrow gaps.  Still, the guys knew what they were doing and we had no mishaps.  And so the days went.  We passed Thirtymile Creek, where some outfitters put in these days for 42 more miles to the take-out.  Both Butte Creek and Thirtymile Creek require 25 to 30 miles of rough dirt road, almost 4WD territory, to get to the river, and they aren't much fun.  After Thirtymile Creek, where there is a single cabin close to the river, there would no more signs of civilization whatsoever for the next 40 miles.

John and I had been eyeing the occasional places where you could climb to at least the lower "rim" of the canyon; there was also a higher rim, and some of the bluffs on the outside of bends went all the way up to that higher rim, more than 1800 feet above the river.  So one night we were camped at a spot where we could climb a steep, grassy, rocky canyon-side, and we decided to do it:

You can see the tents as the tiny white dots close to the river in the first picture.  We reached the lower rim, almost a thousand feet above the river, where the views of the John Day winding down its canyon were spectacular.

The fishing?  Well, it stayed the same. We tried everything we could think of to catch fewer little ones and maybe more bigger ones.  On the third day, Ken had found one big fish, a beautiful 19.5 incher, and had hooked and lost another that was at least that big, so we knew there were a few in there.  But we just couldn't figure out how to catch them...mainly, how to keep the little ones off so the bigger fish could get to our lures.  We tried the biggest lures we had, and caught little ones.  We tried fishing only the deeper water and caught little ones.  Nothing seemed to work.  But, on the other hand, it's difficult to complain too much when you're catching 200 or more fish per day.  And sometimes the scenery just overwhelmed us and we forgot about fishing for a while:

On the fifth day, I was drifting along a sheer basalt cliff, water who knows how deep, desultorily throwing a spinnerbait, when it just stopped dead.  I set the hook, and shouted "Finally!"  The others watched me fight the fish and finally lift it in triumph, a heavy 20 inch smallmouth!

A half mile downstream I caught a 17 incher, and then a 16 incher.  Were we finally going to get into bigger fish?  Nope.  That was it for the big fish.

We had planned the trip for seven days, but the wind had other plans.  Some days the wind would come up early, and we'd struggle to row against it and make the miles.  Other days it would stay mostly calm, and we'd just keep drifting and fishing, hoping to get ahead of schedule in case the wind came up.  And somehow on the fifth night we found ourselves only 12 miles above the bridge at Cottonwood Canyon.  We had had terrific fishing, spectacular scenery, fun rapids.  We'd seen bighorn sheep, golden eagles, and mule deer.  But we'd also gone five days without a cold drink.  We'd fought the wind; one night it had been cold, down into the 40s, with a hard north wind much of the night, but mostly the nights had been comfortable; yet we were getting a little tired of sleeping on the ground.  Our shuttler had said he'd take the vehicle down to the take-out the afternoon of the sixth day just in case we wanted to take out early.  So we decided that night would be our last.

Two miles above the take-out, we encountered the first signs of humanity we'd seen in 42 miles, a big power line and a couple of windmills atop the plateau that were visible from the river:

And a mile above the bridge, we came upon an actual human, a guy fishing from a little pontoon boat who had come up from the access.  And then we were pulling into the sandy ramp beneath the bridge, deflating the rafts, and piling everything into the truck with visions of cold drinks in our heads.  All in all it was a great trip, and we had to wonder whether in three or four years those five terrific year classes we'd been catching would be far bigger.  We were already making plans to come back then.  

We're all old farts.  I'll be nearly 70 in three years, the others close to the same.  But we did it this time, and maybe we'll do it again.

• tho1mas, Jadesjigs, dan hufferd and 7 others
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