We launched from Service Creek at 1050 cfs, ran Clarno rapid at about 900 cfs, and took out today at Cottonwood at about 800 cfs.

I’m not an angler, but my partner who does fish (before and after work hours, of course) says the bass fishing conditions are excellent.

My opinion of running the river in four days? Expect to move only 2-3 miles per hour. Probably start early and plan for 8-10 hours on the river. Hope for no up canyon winds – we had a whole day of wind in our face. Very unpleasant. Expect to read the river a lot to avoid rocks and pick out lines through shallow areas. Expect to occasionally get out and drag your boat across shallow areas. Take lots of water and sunscreen.

Clarno Rapid. I definitely recommend getting out at the first scout point and checking out the top of the rapid. There are some boulders to maneuver around. At 900 cfs, there was a decent chute open next to the left bank. Don’t know what you’ll see at 700 cfs. I’d recommend hiking the trail down to the second scout point as well. I usually stay left through all of Clarno. However, the channel just above the scout point was quite shallow and the one place on this 70 mile stretch I had to get out and pull my raft over shallow rocks. From the scout point down, I had to dance around a few rocks before setting up to run the chute river left (the standard route through Clarno). At this flow, Fang Rock sticks out in the middle of this chute. The option here is decide whether to try and go left or right of Fang, and expect to use a bump off maneuver. I went right, but left was probably just as good. Another option is to dance around the rocks, then scoot to river right, and sort of bump along over the rocks there. A third option is to stay river right after running the top of the rapid, and then line your boats down that side. And, by the way, a metal row boat that was wrapped on a rock higher up in the center channel of the rapid earlier this month, has now moved and is wrapped around a rock in the center of the main drop of Clarno. Stay away from that for sure.

The above was all for rafts. If you have rafts, definitely think about floating light. Almost backpack style. My partner took a canoe down. A much better craft for the John Day at these flows in my opinion. And a lot less work to handle against the wind. If you take canoes, then you line them river right in Clarno.

Hope this info is useful to you. You’ll have an outstanding float. The river canyon is beautiful. The swimming (in the deep eddies) is refreshing. The wildlife watching is incredible. This past week I saw about seven bands of bighorn sheep (around 150 individuals all together), bald eagles, golden eagles, deer, chukkar, etc. See you on the river sometime.