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Home › Waters › Oregon › Sandy River
River · The western flank of Mount Hood, east of Portland, Oregon · Oregon

Sandy River Fishing Guides

A glacial Mount Hood river half an hour from Portland, restored to free-flowing condition in 2007 and now one of Oregon's best examples of a recovering wild salmon and steelhead system.

A drift boat running a riffle between mossy banks in the Pacific Northwest

Map of the Sandy River

14 numbered points: 1 access point, 1 campsite, 1 bridge, 7 parks and conservation areas, 3 agency offices, 1 USGS gauge. Tap a marker for details. Reviewed Sep 15, 2026.

Printable version →
  • Access / boat ramp (1)
  • Campsite (1)
  • Bridge crossing (1)
  • Park / conservation area (7)
  • Agency / conservation office (3)
  • USGS gauge (1)
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Points are curated from OpenStreetMap and state agency sources; confirm access and hours before you go.

Print it. Bag it. Bring it.Phones die, screens crack, and most of this water has no signal. Print this map, fold it into a zip-top bag or dry bag with your license, and you have a backup your electronics can’t give you. Every marker is numbered so you can say exactly where you are.

Open the printable map
All 14 points on this map
#PointTypeLat, LonNotes
1Zigzag Ranger Station
Mt. Hood National Forest		Agency / conservation office45.34292, -121.94180Permits and river information for the upper Sandy and the Salmon River.
2Hoodland County Park
Clackamas County park		Park / conservation area45.34378, -121.94945
3Wildwood Recreation Site
BLM recreation site		Park / conservation area45.35543, -121.98676Fronts both the Sandy and the lower Salmon River; the fish-viewing boardwalk is on the Salmon side.
4Barlow Wayside Park
Clackamas County park		Park / conservation area45.38270, -122.03995Riverside wayside at Brightwood.
5Sandy River-Cedar Creek Access
Public river access		Access / boat ramp45.41227, -122.26273Bank access at the Cedar Creek confluence above Dodge Park.
6Ed Latourette Park
Riverside park		Park / conservation area45.43890, -122.25384
7Dodge Park
Portland Water Bureau park		Park / conservation area45.44446, -122.25068The upper put-in for the Dodge-to-Oxbow drift, at the Bull Run confluence.
8USGS 14142500 - Sandy River below Bull Run
USGS streamgage		USGS gauge45.44901, -122.24509The gauge floaters read before the Dodge Park run; it spikes hard in winter rain.
9Oxbow Regional Park Campground
Metro regional park		Campsite45.49585, -122.28874
10Oxbow Regional Park
Metro regional park		Park / conservation area45.49529, -122.29340The big park on the middle river; day use, camping and the standard take-out.
11Oxbow Regional Park Welcome Center
Metro regional park		Agency / conservation office45.50089, -122.30613Entry station and information for Oxbow.
12Glenn Otto Park
City of Troutdale		Park / conservation area45.53641, -122.37759The lower take-out and the busiest swimming beach on the river.
13Historic Columbia River Highway Bridge
Troutdale		Bridge crossing45.53840, -122.37672The old highway bridge at Troutdale, right above the last mile of river.
14Gateway to the Gorge Visitor Center
Troutdale visitor centre		Agency / conservation office45.54103, -122.38428

Guides on the Sandy River

Claimed profiles take booking requests. Unclaimed profiles are built from public records so the river is never empty; the guide can claim or remove one any time.

Order on this page: premium and outfitter plans first (labelled Premium placement), then claimed free profiles, then unclaimed — one published price, no bidding for position. How placement works

About the Sandy River

The Sandy comes off the Reid and Sandy glaciers on the west side of Mount Hood and runs about fifty-six miles to the Columbia at Troutdale, close enough to Portland that it functions as the city’s home river. The gauge below the Bull Run confluence watches four hundred and thirty-six square miles and reports discharge, stage and a live water temperature series. Both readings matter, because this is a glacial river and its clarity through the warm months tracks how hard the mountain is melting.

The defining event in the river’s modern history was the removal of Marmot Dam in 2007, which reopened the upper Sandy to anadromous fish for the first time in a century. The river has been a closely watched recovery story since, and wild winter steelhead and coho now use the upper basin again. Management has shifted steadily toward wild-fish protection, and regulations here change more often than on most Oregon rivers.

Fishing is primarily a winter steelhead affair, running from December into April, with coho in autumn and a spring chinook run lower down. The upper river above the old dam site holds resident trout and is fished on foot. The lower river is drift-boat water, launched from the Oxbow and Dabney park accesses, and a single day float from Oxbow to Dabney is probably the most-run guided trip on the system.

The Sandy is also heavily used for swimming and rafting in summer, when the gorge below Dodge Park draws a large local crowd. Its proximity to a metropolitan area is both the reason it is easy to fish and the reason it is rarely quiet. Winter is the season that resolves the tension, when the recreational crowds vanish entirely and the river belongs to a small number of steelhead anglers working the same handful of runs in the rain.

This water needs a real photo

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Read the full license

Version 1.0, dated 6 September 2026. Applies to every photograph submitted to GuidedFloats through the contact form, a species page, or the community board.

1. What you give us

By ticking the box on the form you grant Guided Floats, LLC (“GuidedFloats”, “we”) a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, copy, resize, crop and display your photograph on guidedfloats.com, in GuidedFloats’ own social media accounts and mobile apps, and in material that promotes the site itself, in connection with the fish, water or community feature you sent it in for. The license lasts until you withdraw it (section 4).

You keep the copyright. The license is not exclusive, so you can use the photo anywhere else and license it to anyone else. We will not sell your photo, license it on to anyone else on its own, or use it in paid advertising for a third party.

2. What you confirm

You confirm that you took the photograph yourself (or otherwise own the rights to it), that you have the right to grant this license, and that publishing the photo does not infringe anyone else’s copyright, privacy or other rights.

If any person is recognisable in the photo, you confirm that they have agreed to its being published here, and that a parent or guardian has agreed on behalf of anyone under 18. Please do not send photographs of other people’s catches, screenshots, or pictures copied from other websites or social media.

3. Credit

We print the credit name you give us beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, and record it as the photo’s creator in the page’s structured data. If you leave the credit blank we use the name you gave us on the form. Write “Anonymous” if you prefer no name at all. Your email address, phone number and the exact spot the photo was taken are never published.

4. Withdrawing the license

You can withdraw the license at any time by emailing hello@guidedfloats.com, or by using the contact form, and telling us which photo you mean. We will remove the photo from guidedfloats.com within 7 days of receiving your message and stop using it in anything new. Copies that are already outside our control — search-engine caches, social posts that have already gone out, printed material already produced — may take longer to disappear or may not be recallable, and we are not responsible for those.

5. What we may do

We choose which photos to publish and may decline any submission without giving a reason. We may crop, resize, sharpen or colour-correct a photo for display, and we may remove a photo at any time. We will not alter a photo in a way that misrepresents the fish, the water or you.

6. Your details

We keep your name, email address, the credit name, the water and date you gave us, and the network address the submission came from, with the submission record, as our evidence of this license. We hold that record for as long as the photo is published and for the retention period described in our privacy policy. Location data that your camera or phone embedded in the file is removed before the photo is published.

7. Versions

The version of this license you accepted is stored with your submission and printed with the photo. A later version does not apply to a photo you have already sent unless you agree to it.

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Never published. We use it only if we need to ask about the photo.

Posting to Sandy River.

JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 12 MB. We resize it and strip the location data out of the file.

The name shown under the photo. Leave blank to stay anonymous.

Reader photo license v1.0 — the short version:

  • You grant Guided Floats, LLC a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to publish, resize and crop your photo on guidedfloats.com and in GuidedFloats’ own social posts and apps. You keep the copyright and can use the photo anywhere else.
  • You confirm that you took the photo yourself, that publishing it does not infringe anyone else’s rights, and that anyone recognisable in it (or a parent or guardian, if they are under 18) is happy for it to appear here.
  • Credit is printed beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, using the credit name you give us. Leave it blank and we use your name; write “Anonymous” for no name. Your email address is never published.
  • Withdrawing is one email to hello@guidedfloats.com naming the photo. It comes off the site within 7 days.
Read the full license

Version 1.0, dated 6 September 2026. Applies to every photograph submitted to GuidedFloats through the contact form, a species page, or the community board.

1. What you give us

By ticking the box on the form you grant Guided Floats, LLC (“GuidedFloats”, “we”) a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, copy, resize, crop and display your photograph on guidedfloats.com, in GuidedFloats’ own social media accounts and mobile apps, and in material that promotes the site itself, in connection with the fish, water or community feature you sent it in for. The license lasts until you withdraw it (section 4).

You keep the copyright. The license is not exclusive, so you can use the photo anywhere else and license it to anyone else. We will not sell your photo, license it on to anyone else on its own, or use it in paid advertising for a third party.

2. What you confirm

You confirm that you took the photograph yourself (or otherwise own the rights to it), that you have the right to grant this license, and that publishing the photo does not infringe anyone else’s copyright, privacy or other rights.

If any person is recognisable in the photo, you confirm that they have agreed to its being published here, and that a parent or guardian has agreed on behalf of anyone under 18. Please do not send photographs of other people’s catches, screenshots, or pictures copied from other websites or social media.

3. Credit

We print the credit name you give us beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, and record it as the photo’s creator in the page’s structured data. If you leave the credit blank we use the name you gave us on the form. Write “Anonymous” if you prefer no name at all. Your email address, phone number and the exact spot the photo was taken are never published.

4. Withdrawing the license

You can withdraw the license at any time by emailing hello@guidedfloats.com, or by using the contact form, and telling us which photo you mean. We will remove the photo from guidedfloats.com within 7 days of receiving your message and stop using it in anything new. Copies that are already outside our control — search-engine caches, social posts that have already gone out, printed material already produced — may take longer to disappear or may not be recallable, and we are not responsible for those.

5. What we may do

We choose which photos to publish and may decline any submission without giving a reason. We may crop, resize, sharpen or colour-correct a photo for display, and we may remove a photo at any time. We will not alter a photo in a way that misrepresents the fish, the water or you.

6. Your details

We keep your name, email address, the credit name, the water and date you gave us, and the network address the submission came from, with the submission record, as our evidence of this license. We hold that record for as long as the photo is published and for the retention period described in our privacy policy. Location data that your camera or phone embedded in the file is removed before the photo is published.

7. Versions

The version of this license you accepted is stored with your submission and printed with the photo. A later version does not apply to a photo you have already sent unless you agree to it.

Flow alert

Tell me when the Sandy River cfs

Now: 266 cfs, read 7:45 am CDT, Sat Oct 24, 2026 (USGS 14142500, SANDY RIVER BLW BULL RUN RIVER, NR BULL RUN, OR).

We never use this address for anything else and never share it. See the privacy policy.

Access

Oxbow Regional Park - the primary drift launch and the best-known access on the river.
Dabney State Recreation Area - the standard takeout for the classic lower float.
Dodge Park at the Bull Run confluence - upper drift access near the gauge.
Lewis and Clark State Recreation Site - lowest access, near the Columbia confluence.
Sandy River Delta - the mouth of the river and a large day-use area.
Marmot Dam site - the reach reopened by the 2007 removal, now walk-in water.
Zigzag and Brightwood along Highway 26 - upper river trout water on the mountain.

Seasons

Spring: the tail of the winter steelhead run through April, with flows still high and cold.
Summer: glacial melt clouds the river; heavy swimming and rafting use, and limited fishing.
Fall: coho enter the system and the first rains clear the glacial tint out.
Winter: the core steelhead season, fished hardest from December through March.

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Questions

What is the current flow on the Sandy River?

As of Oct 24, 7:45 am, the USGS gauge SANDY RIVER BLW BULL RUN RIVER, NR BULL RUN, OR reads 266 cfs, with water temperature 47.1 F. Conditions update every 15 minutes.

What species can you catch on the Sandy River?

Anglers target Chinook Salmon, Coho Salmon, Cutthroat Trout, Mountain Whitefish, Rainbow Trout, Steelhead on the Sandy River in Oregon.

Are there fishing guides on the Sandy River?

GuidedFloats lists 1 guide and outfitters on the Sandy River. Claimed profiles accept booking requests; unclaimed profiles are built from public records and link to the business.

Where can you access the Sandy River?

Oxbow Regional Park - the primary drift launch and the best-known access on the river. Dabney State Recreation Area - the standard takeout for the classic lower float. Dodge Park at the Bull Run confluence - upper drift access near the gauge. Lewis and Clark State Recreation Site - lowest access, near the Columbia confluence. Sandy River Delta - the mouth of the river and a large day-use area. Marmot Dam site - the reach reopened by the 2007 removal, now walk-in water. Zigzag and Brightwood along Highway 26 - upper river trout water on the mountain.

When is the best time to fish the Sandy River?

Spring: the tail of the winter steelhead run through April, with flows still high and cold. Summer: glacial melt clouds the river; heavy swimming and rafting use, and limited fishing. Fall: coho enter the system and the first rains clear the glacial tint out. Winter: the core steelhead season, fished hardest from December through March.

Where are the fishing regulations for the Sandy River?

Regulations change by season and section. Read the current rules on the Oregon agency site: https://myodfw.com/fishing/regulations