Boating permits for the John Day River first became available at 7 a.m. Tuesday morning. Within 20 minutes, overnight permits for half of June were all snapped up for one popular stretch of the river, along with a couple of days around Memorial Day weekend.

Available dates kept getting scarcer through the morning for the segment between Clarno and Cottonwood along the John Day, especially during June — by 10:30, only two days were available, and by the end of the business day, all of the June overnight permits for that stretch were gone.

About half of the season’s permits were released Tuesday. The rest will be released in May. For each day between May 20 and July 10, the Bureau of Land Management will issue up to nine group permits launching from Clarno or Thirtymile, nine permits for overnight trips a day from Muleshoe or Service Creek, 10 overnight trip permits from Twickenham, Priest Hole or Lower Burnt Ranch, and 24 day-use trip permits between Muleshoe and Clarno.

There were 1,200 day and overnight permits released Tuesday, said Chip Faver, Central Oregon field manager with the BLM’s Prineville office, and by 9:45 a.m. the agency had issued 375.

“It was surprising how fast some of those trips went,” said Brian Sykes, owner of Bend’s Ouzel Outfitters, which offers trips along the John Day River.

This is the first year for the John Day permit system, which the Bureau of Land Management set up to ensure the river doesn’t become overcrowded, and that everyone who launches on an overnight trip will be able to find a campsite on public lands.

Sykes said he was online exactly at 7 a.m., and got the half-dozen permits he needed for trips already booked by clients. One of the dates had been sold out, but through a program the BLM designed to help outfitters phase into the new permit system, he was able to get it in the end. The phase-in is only for two years, however, so getting a permit may be more difficult in the future for the outfitters, who have to have clients lined up before they get a permit.

“So far, I have not been unable to operate a trip,” he said. “That may change.”

Craig Wright, general manager of Oregon River Experiences, said he only had one client so far for a John Day excursion — his clients tend to book later — and he was able to get the date he wanted.

“I wasn’t certain how it would go with the brand new system, but it went very smoothly for us,” he said. “If we’d been looking to assist half a dozen or a dozen people, I don’t know.”

He’s also unsure how it will work as clients try to book trips in the coming months if permits for those dates aren’t available.

For Glenn Van Cise, who has been boating on the John Day for three decades, the system worked well — but he was ready.

“I did it at exactly 7 o’clock and four seconds,” he said. “And I got one.”

He doesn’t like that there’s a permit system for the John Day, adding that although there were sometimes a lot of people on the river, it never seemed like a problem. But the permit system seemed to work smoothly, he said. He knew of four other people who got the dates and segments they wanted, although another friend was out of luck at 7:15 a.m.

Drew Child, of Bend, said he was able to get the permit he wanted — but then tried to get another for a different segment, only to find he was limited to one.

“The instructions weren’t that clear,” he said.

But he thinks permits are a good idea for those segments of the river, since last summer he noticed some problems with people finding campsites on popular weekends.

“It can get real crowded, and that’s not any fun if you’ve got a group of people camped on top of each other,” he said. “That’s not the wilderness experience you were looking for.”

From the BLM’s perspective, the permit launch went well.

“We couldn’t be happier,” Faver said.

The permits, called for in the 2001 plan for how to manage the John Day River, are designed to reduce crowding and protect the river, Faver said. If people log on and find that their preferred date is booked, they should keep trying, he said — cancellations will immediately result in openings online, and another batch will be released in two months.

“This isn’t the end of it,” Faver said. “We’re going to be watching it and improving it,” Faver said.