THE OREGON SPORTSMAN 



An angler intending to fish the Umatilla country will do 

 well to look up in Pendleton Mr. Charles K. Cranston, a former 

 valuable member of the Oregon Fish and Game Commission, 

 who is thoroughly acquainted with all the fishing streams of 

 Umatilla County, and a naturalist-angler of great experience. 

 West of the Umatilla there are no fishing streams save the 

 upper John Day — and this a hundred miles back from its mouth 

 — until we reach the great Deschutes. 



This is a wonderful river in many respects. Its watershed 

 is about equal to that of the Willamette, and its most southern 

 source rises twenty-five miles south of Crescent Lake, which is 

 the source of the middle or principal branch of the Willamette. 

 While the Willamette rises annually in its occasional floods to 

 twenty-five feet above its low water mark, Deschutes scarcely 

 varies five feet between highest and lowest. Several of the large 

 tributaries of Deschutes pour out of the eastern base of the 

 Cascades in subterranean rivers that burst forth full-grown from 

 their dark mountain tunnels. 



The Deschutes is accessible by railroad to Bend, over 100 

 miles from the Columbia. The best fishing is said to be (as 

 usual) farther up river, and doubtless this is true, for the river 

 is too deep and too big for a trout stream and its tributaries 

 yield better sport. Anglers who have gone up toward the upper 

 valley and Metolius and other branches, report great catches in 

 the mid-summer months. 



Chinook and other salmon run up Deschutes in great num- 

 bers, and are caught by fly tackle within a few miles of the 

 Columbia. A pair of sportsmen of Hibernian origin, residing at 

 Moro, Sherman County, have told me of their success with fine 

 tackle — gray flies tied by themselves on hooks not bigger than 

 No. 8 — with which they caught large silverside salmon in the 

 vicinity of the Free Bridge. 



We have much to learn about the fishing on Deschutes, but 

 no river in the state looks more promising. 



''Five-Mile" is a lively stream of Wasco County, entering 

 the Columbia five miles east of The Dalles in a fine cataract cut 



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