Oregon

Oregon's fly fishing splits cleanly along the Cascade crest. East of the mountains, the high desert holds the rivers most anglers travel for — the Deschutes, with its wild redband trout and summer steelhead; the Metolius, a spring creek that springs full-grown out of the ground near Camp Sherman; and the Crooked, a tailwater canyon full of eager redbands. These rivers run clear and cold through volcanic country and fish well into the shoulder seasons. West of the crest, the rivers drain rainforest — the McKenzie, where the drift boat was invented, and the valley streams around Eugene that mix wild cutthroat with hatchery rainbows.

The through-line is anadromy. The Deschutes and the Rogue are as much steelhead and salmon rivers as they are trout water, and the calendar bends around the runs — summer steelhead from July into fall, winter fish after the new year, spring chinook pushing through in May and June. The state runs the gamut: fly-only spring creeks in the Klamath Basin (the Williamson and Wood grow oversized redbands), swing-steelhead classics in the Wallowa country (the Grande Ronde), a world-class wild-brown tailwater in the desert canyons (the Owyhee), rainforest steelhead rivers dropping to the coast (the Chetco, Wilson), and low-pressure wild-trout gems draining the Wallowa Mountains (the Minam, Lostine, Imnaha). Trout fishing peaks with the salmonfly and golden stone hatches in late spring and the caddis and mayfly fishing through summer. Note the one rule that trips up visitors on the Deschutes: you cannot fish from a floating craft — you float to access, then get out and wade.