Clackamas River

The Clackamas is Portland's home river, and it lives a double life. It falls 83 miles out of the Mount Hood National Forest, pools behind three PGE dams above Estacada, and then runs the last 20-odd miles through the suburbs to meet the Willamette at Oregon City. That split is the whole story. Above North Fork Reservoir it's a clear, boulder-strewn mountain freestone full of wild cutthroat, rainbows, and mountain whitefish, where the rule is fly-angling and catch-and-release only. Below River Mill Dam it's an anadromous river — one of the closest genuine winter and summer steelhead and spring Chinook fisheries to a major West Coast city. Roughly half its length carries a National Wild and Scenic designation, which is unusual for a river you can reach from downtown in under an hour.

For the swing-and-drift crowd, the lower river is the draw. Winter steelhead show from mid-December, the wild fish push through late January into May, and a smaller summer run overlaps March into June; spring Chinook arrive in April and coho light up a fall fishery from September. The lower river fishes best from a boat — the classic runs are the drift-boat and jet-sled floats between Milo McIver, Feldheimer, Barton, Carver, and Riverside, with Barton-to-Carver the most popular and most crowded stretch. The Estacada gauge is the number everyone watches: locals like the river between about 10 and 13 feet of stage, and it blows out and browns up fast after Cascade rain. Up top, the trout water around Three Lynx and Big Bottom is genuinely good, wadeable pocket water that sees a fraction of the pressure.

The trade-offs are honest. The lower river is busy — jet boats run up from Carver, bank anglers stack on the popular runs, and it fishes as much a put-and-take hatchery fishery as a fly one. Clarity is weather-dependent; a warm winter storm can take it out for days. And this is a river with a real conservation history — wild winter steelhead and spring Chinook here are ESA-listed, PGE's relicensed dams now pass fish, and the fly-only C&R rule above the reservoir exists for a reason. Come for the convenience and the shot at a metro-area steelhead; don't expect solitude on the lower runs.