430 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Oct. 5, 1912 
Fishing in Central Oregon. 
Lamar, Colo., Sept. 10— Editor Forest and 
Stream: My dear brothers of the rod and reel: 
I have been sitting around your camp-fire now 
for two years listening to your many interest¬ 
ing stories and have said not a word. It is time 
that I, too, gave you an account of one of my 
fishing trips. This time it is to a new and but 
little known territory in Central Oregon. It 
was the De Chutes River and its confluents 
that I visited the first week in July. I had been 
told of the marvelous beauty of the region and 
of the great Dolly Varden trout to be found 
there by a friend who was born and reared in 
Oregon, and I decided to try it. 
1 The De Chutes is rightly named in French 
and it flows as through a mill-race, there being 
but very few pools, and the stream very dry 
and too swift for canoe fishing and too deep to 
wade, consequently one cannot reach the middle 
of the stream with a fly, and I was so disap¬ 
pointed in it that I fished it but one day with 
indifferent results. Then a party of three of us 
hired a machine and went to Crooked River, 
which is a confluent of the De Chutes. We 
were riding along a smooth prairie road and 
viewing the many snow peaks in the distance 
when our friend, the driver, said, “Here we 
are.” I descended from the machine, but could 
see no sign of a river, but after walking a short 
distance we came to a great chasm 600 feet 
deep, so narrow that one’s voice could be heard 
from the other side, but if you wished to reach 
him by wagon, you must go forty miles. There 
are but few trails down into the canon and our 
guide was soon leading us down one of them. 
I became so leg weary that I was glad when 
the bottom was reached. I noticed many large 
springs knee deep flowing into the river; in fact, 
the river has its source from a multitude of 
these springs, and they are fine indeed for the 
trout. 
I soon found that my old friend the gray 
hackle was but little use in these waters, and for 
the first time while fishing west of the Alle- 
ghanies, I used the professor and yellow May. 
The royal coachman I used for a dropper. In 
this stream there are many pools, and in these 
I expected to find some large ones, but caught 
only the small fish there. Here again the fish¬ 
ing differed from our Colorado waters, and to 
get the larger ones I must whip the swiftest 
water. This seemed very strange to me. I 
caught some rainbows weighing two pounds and 
better, and the way those rascals fought was a 
joy forever to the fisherman. I lost many, as I 
could not accustom myself to the difference in 
fishing from our clean pools of Colorado, but 
later in the day I was as enthusiastic as any. 
One of our party, a college professor, had 
never fished with fly before but caught nineteen 
of as fine trout as I ever saw. They outweighed 
my catch of twenty-one, and a prouder man I 
never saw. I will take off my hat to that boy 
any day. His fishing certainly exploded the 
theory in my bonnet that a man must fish for 
years before becoming skilled with the fly. They 
told me that about May 15 there appears along 
the streams a fly gray in color and about one and 
a half inches in length and are very plentiful, 
and that the fishermen bait their snell hooks with 
these and float them upon the water as they 
would the artificial fly. During the time that 
this fly exists they tell me that fishing upon the 
Crooked River is a veritable slaughter, and that 
to catch ninety per day is not uncommon and 
all large ones, one to three pounds. 
Central Oregon, speaking geologically, is the 
newest territory in the United States. It is 
volcanic and there are places that the soil is 
but 150 years old. It was very interesting to 
study the different stratas of the canon wall and 
reminded me very much of the Grand Canon. 
The Cascades are the western boundry of this 
territory and catch the Pacific winter rainfall, 
converting it into snow, and the soil being of 
a porous nature and in some place this going to 
a depth of 700 or more feet, it makes of the 
entire territory an immense percolator, and in 
this manner the immense springs are formed. An¬ 
other confluent of the De Chutes is the Mitolius 
that bursts out of the mountain in one immense 
mass of springs so deep that 500 feet from their 
source it is too deep to wade. Huge pools are 
formed fifteen feet or more in depth and so 
clear that a coin dropped in one of them can be 
seen upon the bottom. In these pools can be 
seen the mammoth Dolly Varden trout lying 
upon the bottom and immune from all form of 
bait, except in August, when they run the riffles 
and can then be taken with fly. Some weighing 
as high as seventy-five pounds have been taken 
from this stream. The water is so cold that 
a ranchman living near the head of the stream 
in using one of the springs in his milk room can¬ 
not set the milk cans in the water, but to get the 
cream to raise hangs them above the water. The 
temperature of this water is 34 degrees through¬ 
out the entire year. 
In going to a new territory one has many 
things to learn, and if I ever visit the De Chutes 
country again, it will be in the month of August, 
that I may get a specimen of the king of all the 
trout family, the Dolly Varden. 
J. H. Kellogg, M.D. 
Some Fishing. 
Williamsport, Pa., Sept, n .—Editor Forest 
and Stream: I am inclosing a copy of part of 
a letter sent to me by my son whose home is at 
Wellsboro, Pa. I thought it might be of in¬ 
terest to some readers of Forest and Stream. 
Chas. Lose. 
You know Pine Creek well enough, I think, 
to be able to locate what they call the “Pine 
Creek Gorge.” Roughly speaking it begins at 
Ansonia and ends at Blackwells, and this creek 
is almost a succession of rapids for the whole 
distance. 
Several times I left here at six in the eve¬ 
ning and returned at nine and have had a fine 
basket of fish, but on Saturday I made my big 
“killing”. 
Cathryn and I left on the noon train and 
went to Stone Station. I had minnows and my 
fly-book full of flies, so we were prepared for 
anything. The creek was high and we pottered 
around and did nothing until five o’clock. I 
used bait and fly equally unsuccessfully until at 
last I tried a new wrinkle. I had purchased a 
tiny silver spinner, not half as big as a dime 
and I had three flies to go with it: a royal- 
coachman, a coachman and a Cahill. I looked 
them over and strung on the coachman. Then 
on my second loop I put a Reuben-Wood fly 
tied on a No. 2 hook. I was fishing with my 
old rod with a new reel and a good line and 
with an extra heavy single gut leader. I 
rigged up along the railroad track and then 
waded out and began casting. I was in a little 
pool of still water and I worked down to 
where the ripples all smoothed out as the water 
began to pull for the riffle. I cast my spinner 
and fly to the other bank'and began to pull it 
across when something hit it with a bang. I 
hooked him, of course, for bass don’t fool, and 
finally got him out. It was a bass about 
thirteen inches long caught with the spinner. 
Well, from then on until dark I had a hold of 
one all the time. I just waded down stream 
and caught bass after bass. I don’t know the 
number, but I culled them well, keeping only 
big ones, and when I attempted to put the last 
one in my basket he slipped over the side and 
swam away. So I quit and started cleaning, 
and I had a basket full of dressed fish when I 
was through. 
I have fished for trout in Loyalsock, and I 
have caught big bass in the river, but never in 
all my life have I found any fishing that could 
even compare with this fly-fishing for bass in 
Pine Creek Gorge. Sometimes they take a 
spinner, sometimes a fly, and sometimes both, 
but they are there and they come and they 
fight. You cast a fly way out behind some 
rock, and it sinks a little and begins to drag, 
when there is a swirl and you are fast to a 
fish that fights every inch of the way until he 
is in your basket. They are not little bass nor 
thin bass; they are good big fat fellows, and it 
takes skill to get them out. 
Cathryn is getting to be quite a fisherman. 
She caught one on a spoon Saturday and made 
the record at landing it. It was about thirteen 
inches long and she got it out in two jerks. 
The first jerk hooked it. She set her feet and 
jerked again, and Mr. Bass was a-flopping in 
the bushes. She had a little split bamboo rod. 
and that test proves it a world beater, for I 
saw her do it on the tip of the rod. It was 
easily six inches past the butt when she heaved. 
Tod. 
Dry vs. Wet Fly. 
Cavendish Square, London, Eng., Sept. 10. 
—Editor Forest and Stream: T have been very 
much interested in following the discussions in 
your paper on dry versus wet-fly .fishing. To 
start fair, we dry-fly men cheerfully give the 
wet-fly men due credit for being able, especially 
on small streams, to locate the likely spots where 
a fish may lie, and to nip him out where you 
would hardly expect one to be, but on the other 
hands we maintain to be able to rise and land 
good fish under conditions impossible to wet-flv 
fishers. Let me give my experience of last 
