Northwest Sportsman – August 2019

nwsportsmanmag.com | AUGUST 2019 Northwest Sportsman 93

FISHING

By Rob Lyon

I

was on the phone with Linda

Tagg at Service Creek confirming

last-minute details on our shuttles

from Thirtymile Creek to Cottonwood

when we discovered that we’d missed

the turn out of Condon, Oregon, and

had to backtrack a good 10 miles. The

newly pushed-in grade paralleling

Thirtymile was strewn with sharp

basalt rock and we slowed to a crawl.

After half an hour of tortuously slow

progress, windows down and no AC,

we could see the boat launch ahead

Floating the iconic Central Oregon river puts you into plentiful smallies now,

plus upland birds and steelhead in fall.

and the rest of our crew repairing a

flat in 100-degree heat.

We put things right finally and

loaded up the big 18-foot cataraft

and prepped the two fishing kayaks.

These were the nifty Wilderness

System Radar models with the pedal-

drive option, providing a warp-speed

booster for the slow, pokey stretches

of the John Day. It was fry-pan hot

and there were a good number of

other anglers already on the water,

judging by how many rigs were in

the lot. The river was schlepping

along at a good clip of about 1,000

cubic feet per second and was the

color of dirty dishwater.

Part of what brought us here earlier

this summer was that the Oregon

Department of Fish and Wildlife

introduced 80 mature smallmouth

and a number of fry into the river in

1971 to augment what was only a

native steelhead fishery at the time.

Nowadays bass are ubiquitous and

the river is considered to be the best

Down The John Day

Winding for over 280 miles through Central Oregon – this is Horseshoe Bend below the newer

Thirtymile Creek access – the wild and scenic John Day River is a favorite for anglers. (BOB WICK, BLM)