NW Outdoor Explorer

Springer season on the lower Columbia is officially closed, but the WDFW/ODFW once again has blessed us with an additional day of post season springer fishing on the lower Columbia and everyone with a seat in a boat was out there.

With all these fishermen in the area, how do we not have a greater influence on the mis-management of fish and control of the sea lions?  That is a topic for another blog.

I started my day bright and early at 4 am.  Had a bit of a drive up to Ridgefield where my boat is residing and some prep before I met my crew at the Ridgefield ramp.  We were in line to launch about 6 am.  This was the first time I had to wait in this long of a line at this ramp.  I was above the RR tracks.  As we crept down to the ramp, it gave me time to unstrap and plug the boat getting ready to launch.  Overall, most people knew what they were doing and the process went smoothly.

I am not a firm believer of fish flash colors, size or shapes.  I have caught fish on just about every color, size and shape.  I even have a crew member that has caught more fish without fish flash.  I think it is more of what you believe in.  I am more of a believer of if the bait gets in front of a fish, it will bite it.  If the fish are there, we do tend to land a fair amount.

That all being said, I do have a go to fish flash, I call my “Hail Mary”.  On days when nothing seems to work, I will put this fish flash on and more times than not, I have gotten a bite.  Now, if I try to go out targeting fish with this go to fish flash, I usually get disappointed.  There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, but it does what it does.  Today was a different day.  We have been given this additional day on the lower Columbia and I have not landed a Springer yet.  It was time for the “Hail Mary” for sure.

My crew lineup today was Alex, “Dredger” Bob and Emery.  Good people and always fun to hang out with.  Sometimes, we even catch fish together.  🙂

Bob starts by telling us that we will not catch a fish unless we put a wager on it.  I am like “I have $5.  I am game.”  Bait on the hooks and lines in the water.  It is time to get this party started.

About an hour and a half into the day, I see two boats hook in shallow water.  I steer over to see what is over there.  We see a few other boats hookup around us.  It looks like a good school is coming through.  Bang!!!  My rod goes down.  I had my drag a little loose, so it took some time to get it to the boat.  As it rolls close to the boat, I can see it is a hatchery.  I am thinking to myself, “You better not loose this F@#$!% fish.”  I was finally able to get it into a nose up and led it to the net.  Emery with the awesome net job and we had one on the deck.  Pay up boys.  I won the wager and “Hail Mary” worked on this day.  🙂

Unfortunately, we could not find that same school on the next couple passes.  The bite turned off as fast as it turned on.

We tried another location and saw a couple fish caught.  We even had another bite, but it was gone after a quick little fight.

Now we turn our focus on the Willamette Springer fishing.

With the weather warming up a bit and tons of great fishing reports from some reliable sources on Thursday, I felt really good about hitting the water Friday.

Launched the boat in Ridgefield and came across a fella tied up to the dock that appeared to have a dead battery situation.  I tied up along side him and proceeded to hook up the jumper cables.  “Give it a go.”  Nothing.  Not even a click of the starter.  This guy tells me he is borrowing the boat and not 100% sure how the battery system is connected.  I take a look and we try 1, 2 and both on the battery selector and still nothing.  Luckily, I keep a pretty good tool set onboard with a volt meter.  I check the batteries and both are showing a complete charge.  I check connectors and all looks good.  The guy tells me thank you for trying and he knows I want to get out fishing, so off I go.

We are thinking at this time, with the good deed attempt, the fish gods might shine on us this day.   🙂

Come to find out, the boat belongs to a friend of mine I just met last week.  He was away on vacation and let his friend borrow the boat.  They did get the problem figured out.  The dead man switch on the throttle was pulled.  DOH!!!

We get out to the main stem and see nothing but boats as far as we can see.  This is Buoy 10 all over again.  Everyone must have gotten the same fishing report from the day before.  Long story short, we make pass after pass and do not even get a bite.  We watched at least 8 fish getting caught in front of us, behind us and all around us.  Considering all the boat traffic, the catch numbers were not all that great.  I guess the fish gods were not happy with us just trying to get that fisherman in need back on the water.  I bet if we found the dead man switch problem, my story would have ended on a much happier note.  🙂

Tomorrow is another day.  Fish on.

This is a combined report for the previous two days because although each day was drastically different, the end result was no bueno.

Headed out Friday morning from Marine Park.  Cruised down to Davis Bar for a few passes.  Got our lines in the water and started the grind.  Again, the standard flasher and cut plug herring right out of the pack dredging the bottom.

The end of the first pass, my wife gets a pretty good take down on her rod then nothing.  Wait about 30 seconds and bring up the line to find the bait was striped.

Run up for our second pass.  Again, my wife’s rod takes a hit then nothing.  Reel it up to find it striped again.

Take a third pass.  This time my wife buries the trailing hook in the side just like Dave Johnson showed on Outdoor GPS the night before.  Her rod takes a big hit and this time it stuck.  It made a couple runs and when it finally gets to the side of the boat, we see that it is possibly a jack.  Not very big at all, but a fish none the less.  I get ready to grab it with the net and it is gone.  🙁

It is ok.  So far, it is a great day with action.  We will get the next one.

Fourth pass, my wife gets hit again and then nothing.  Her rod is on fire, but nothing seems to be sticking.

Fifth pass, my buddy Alex notices that his leader is a bit longer than what my wife and I are using.  He shortens it up and he gets a drive by on his daughters rod.  At this point, we are still pretty excited that we are getting action, but cannot seem to get anything in the boat.

Sixth pass, my wife notices her rod tip keeps shaking.  Reel it in to check and she gets a smolt.

Seventh pass, my buddy get hit on his rod.  Same story, quick one time hit and nothing.  Bait striped.  These buggers are pretty cleaver or very lucky.

This was all before high tide.  Because we got our springer last week after high tide, we thought we still had a chance.  Unfortunately, this week the bite turned off at high tide and we did not see any more action for the day.  In fact, we did not really see any action on any other boat out there that day.  We felt pretty lucky to get what we did.

Saturday, we launced from St. Johns.  A little closer to Davis Bar and we thought we would try the Willamette on the way in if the Columbia does not produce.  We felt pretty good from the day before and thought this day was going to be our day.  Before we even launched the boat, I got a report from down river they had 2 in the boat.  Awesome, by the time we setup on Davis Bar again, that wave of fish should be almost to us.

We made a few passes and crickets.  Not even a nibble.  It is ok.  It is still early.

I get another report from another friend down river.  They are 1 for 3.  This is killing me.  I know if I chase the phone bite, I will pass right over them.  That is typically my luck.  I decide to stay put and wait for them to come to me.

I get another report from my first friend that they just landed their third and are heading in.  WTF!!!!    Why have we not gotten a bite yet?

We grind it out a bunch more passes and we finally start to see action.  Three boats around us get fish in the boat.  Awesome!!  We turn back up to make a quick pass through the same spot and we get nothing.  We do not see any more action in any other boat around us and we do not get a bite the rest of the day.  We tried a couple of other locations and saw nothing but sea lions.

I guess the fish gods figured they gave us our chance on Friday.  I am not ready to give up just yet.  Next weekend is another day.

Launched from the Ridgefield ramp on this day.  I initially wanted to slip into the Multnomah Channel but decided last minute to head up river to Davis Bar.  It gave me a chance to run the motors good and get some fresh fuel thorough the system.  I had to replace a thermostat in one of my motors and it appears to be working well.  It was stuck open.  I will have to replace the other one on the next maintenance to be proactive as I am coming up on 800 hours and items like these are starting to fail.  Well, 20 minutes later, we arrive on the scene.  Next time, I will probably trailer a little closer.  🙂

We started with a spread of our normal flasher and cut plug herring setup.  Chartreuse flashers and natural herring for anyone that is wondering.  Heavy weights and bouncing the bottom.  For Springers, if you are not on the bottom, you are not fishing.  Especially true on the outgoing tide.  At least, that is my experience and I have been known to catch a fish or two.  🙂

The boat traffic in the area was pretty heavy.  We made a few passes and were not seeing any action in our boat or any others for that matter.  We talked to people and it seemed that today was going to be a tough grind.  We were on our sixth pass.  I came across another guide boat with one client in it.  He was a guy I knew and we started talking.  About a minute into our conversation, I here from the other side of our boat “FISH ON!!!”  I look over and line is getting pulled out at a steady pace.  “Are you sure?  It looks like you are snagged.”  About that time, the head shakes start.  We are all very excited for this being our first springer on a day where it appeared that nobody was having very good luck.  “Better not lose that fish Fred.”  🙂  This fish was a hard puller and made a few runs, but we eventually got it in the net.  The fish gods smiled on us this day.  It was a hatchery.

We had three other bites throughout the day, but nothing stuck.  We felt honored and will take anything we can get, especially early in the season.

With springer fever starting to really kick in, deciding to float for steelhead or troll for salmon was tough.  Either way, I just had to get my wife on the water.

If you read the title of this post, it is pretty obvious the decision I made.

My buddy Pablo did a little recon and thought our best chance for hooking up would be on the Sandy River.  We launched from Revenue Bridge and floated to Dodge Park.  Even if we end up not catching anything, this stretch of the river is really nice to float on a pontoon.  The weather was mild.  Overcast and about 40 degrees.  Rain was not forecast till later in the day.

Unfortunately, this stretch of the river does not allow you to fish from the boat so we had to stop along the way in some strategic locations.  We were trying a number of techniques from bobber and bead to spinner to drift fishing.

On about our third or fourth stop, I had switched up to just casting a spinner.  A Blue Fox #5.  This spot was mostly some slow moving water with a couple boulders bubbling in the middle.  I threw four casts and in this one spot, I felt a little something that did not quite feel like the bottom but it was not a solid take down either.  On that fifth cast, the spinner went through the same spot and BANG!!!! I hook up.  It has been a few weeks since my last fix so I wanted to make this one last a little.  I did not reel in too fast and let him take a few runs.  One or two aerials added to the thrill.  We could see early that it was a native and had some color.  It was time to bring it to shore and release it.  Got a couple pics and gently let him swim away only for him to run into a rock and give us one last aerial.  On to the next hole.

Our next stop was along this property that the owner is not exactly hospitable.  We were careful to stay in the water where we could.  A couple of lab puppies came down to the water to ask us to play.  One black lab and one yellow.  I love dogs and had to give them a couple of rubs.  My wife was in the water trying to fish and they kept pawing her back.  Pet me!  Pet me!

We continued down river.

My buddy Alex switched over to drifting a corky.  Probably the smallest corky I have seen.  No way is that going to work.  He worked the hole and got his hook up.  Shows what I know.  🙂  After a few runs and some acrobatics, the fish was brought to shore.  Another native that posed for some pics and was let go.  Alex took a short break and gave the same setup another go in the same hole.  First cast, hooked up again.  DAMN!!!  This one gave a good fight as well.  This one was a hatchery and going to the table.

We continued to work the hole till we decided that Alex got the only two fish there on that day.  Unfortunately, not much more action the rest of the day.  Fished through a couple rain showers and gave it all we had, but no luck.

It was another great day with great friends.  Thank you Pablo.

My original plans had me out on the Columbia River trolling for Spring Chinook again last Saturday.  One event led to another and my plans fell through.  I got an invite to join my good friends out on the Clackamas River to chase winter steelhead instead.  With the Columbia as cold as it is right now, it would be more about burning fuel than catching Kings.  The odds for landing steelhead on the Clack are much better.

We launched the Pavati about 7am.  There were only two other trailers in the parking lot.  It looked to be a light traffic day on the river.  I think we came across about 4 or 5 other boats throughout the day.

The morning temperature was a chilly 37 degrees and showers were in the forecast.  It warmed up to about 52 degrees by about 1pm and we were fortunate to not get rained on.  It was a great weather day on the water.

My day did not start out so great.  The first snag, I pulled up on my rod and snapped it about a foot from the reel.  The rod must have been compromised in some way for it to break where it did.  I know some people out there have had success with the Lamiglass X-11’s, but this is the third one I have broken.  I doubt I will ever buy another.  For cheap rods, I am a huge fan of the Okuma SST’s.  I have not had a single problem with one yet.

Throughout the rest of the day, I must have found every snag in the river and went through at least 10 leaders.  By mid day, I just accepted this was going to be my role.  Thankfully, I was with good people and spirits were kept high.  Beer, food and music made it a joyful day.

It was a tough grind, but we did not go home skunked.  The second to the last hole, I was once again with my rod in the boat putting on another leader while Pablo drifted his bead through and got a hit.  We were in some current so Pablo loosened his drag and the fight was on.  The fish turned out to be a native and after a couple of pic’s, it was returned to the water.

We attempted another pass through that hole with no success.  It was time to move on to the last hole and call it a day.

Courtesy of KATU News

PORTLAND, Ore. – An angler made $84,000 in 5 months by catching 10,000 fish from Northwest rivers last year.

Here’s how:

The Bonneville Power Administration’s Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Program offers anglers $5 to $8 for every northern pikeminnow taken from the Columbia and Snake rivers.

The pikeminnow preys on young salmon and steelhead.

“The program’s goal is to reduce the number of pikeminnow that prey heavily on juvenile salmon,” said Makary Hutson, BPA project manager. “Annual harvest rate estimates, which are calculated using data from tagged fish caught by anglers, indicate the 2017 season met our program targets, which directly benefits juvenile salmon making their way to the ocean.”

In 2017, the 1,100 registered anglers removed 191,483 of fish between May 1 and September 30.

All told, Bonneville paid out $1,542,000 this year.

In addition to the per fish bounty, state fish and wildlife biologists also release more than 1,000 tagged northern pikeminnow worth $500 apiece.

The Top 20 anglers earned an average of $30,000 each this year.

And then there’s that industrious angler who reeled in 10,000 of the fish, bringing in nearly $84,000.

That was actually a step down from past years. In 2016, the top angler caught $119,341 worth of pikeminnow. The top angler in 2015 caught over $100,000 worth of the fish.

The 2018 season opens May 1 and runs through September 30.

You can learn more by calling 800-858-9015 or visit www.pikeminnow.org

Since 1990, anglers have removed more than 4.8 million pikeminnow from the Columbia and Snake rivers, according to Bonneville. “The program has reduced predation on young salmon and steelhead by up to 40 percent since it began,” according to Bonneville.

It is finally time to come out of hibernation!

Life got in the way of much of my Winter Steelhead fishing this year.  The itch needs to be scratched.

ODFW/WDFW announced the Spring salmon season for the Columbia River which started yesterday March 1st and is set to run through April 7th.

There have been a few reports of a couple fish being caught in the system already.  The excitement is building.  My 1st mate and I decided to do a shakedown run with the boat and hope to luck onto an early Chinook ourselves.

My gear is relatively modest.  I run Okuma 9′ 6″ SST Salmon rods with Shimano Tekota 500LC reels on my boat.  I line my reels with 65# Tuf-Line braid.  This year at the Sportsman show, I came across these 200# mono bumper leaders I thought I would give a try connecting my flashers to the main line.  They come in different lengths.  I went with the 24″ and 30″ bumpers.  On one side of the boat, we used the typical Shortbus flasher and cut plug herring.  On the other side of the boat, we rigged the Shortbus 360 flasher and a Superbait stuffed with tuna and some sauce.

With Ridgefield, WA now as my new home port, we picked up our annual pass and launched at the Ridgefield boat ramp.  We headed out to the Columbia where the water temp was a chilly 40.2 degrees.  The weather was mid 40’s and overcast with occasional rain squalls.  The first of the Spring Chinook tend to head up the Willamette River via the Multnomah Channel so that is where we started. We trolled the incoming through the high tide.   We had one rod get a quick hit, but it was no surprise that we ended the day with no blood on the deck.  It is still early.  🙂

Taking the family to Puerto Vallarta in the middle of January is a real treat when you live in the Northwest.

For my wife’s birthday, I wanted to do something different being the milestone it is. I will not advertise just how old she will be or this would probably be my final blog post.  🙂  With my Alaska Air miles, I was able to find an all-inclusive that did not break the bank.  The family is looking to much pool and beach time with the sun and tropical drinks.

Because she likes to fish as much, if not more than I do, I wanted to plan a fishing trip while we are there.  According to the fishing calendar down there, this is a pretty good time for many different species.  We should be able to get into some action.

Now, the difficult task of finding the right charter.  In my initial search, there appeared to be over 100 different charter services around the PVR area.  I contacted a few people asking for advice.  Unfortunately, nobody I know has fished out of Puerto Vallarta.  I will just have to spend some time reading various reviews, hoping most of them are not fake, and cross my fingers.

My initial thought is just a half day trip, maybe 4-6 hours.  Depending on the species availability, maybe extend that to more like 6-8 hours.

I think I would like to find a boat big enough to give us a comfortable ride, but small enough to accommodate only up to 4 people.  Provided food and drink would be a nice to have so we can just relax and think about the fishing.  It is supposed to be sunny and warm while we are there, so cover of some kind would also be nice.

I’ll keep you posted on what I find.  Wish me luck.

This is the continuation to my previous post.  Thank you again Home with Heroes for making this happen.

We were scheduled to hit the Sandy river, but due to high winds, the excursion was moved to the Clackamas river to get a little more protection from the wind.  It was still pretty cold, but not too windy.  Good call guy’s.

I arrived at the ramp to be greeted by several veterans and their guests.  These were a great bunch of guys with some great stories.  Our special guest was Jim Thurber from Discovery channel series Gold Rush.  Regardless of how hard we pressed him, he would not reveal the new season, although he did have some great stories about the show.

We split between the two boats.  Cody Herman was going to be anchoring and running plugs from his boat while Brandon Glass would be bobber doggin from his.  Trying to decide between lounging around, watching rods, eating, drinking and BS’ing with the guys or running and gunning up and down the river standing and casting all day was a tough choice.  I did not have a preference, but the idea of learning a new technique compelled me to join the team on Brandon’s boat.  There was still eating, drinking and BS’ing, but probably not as much.  It was definitely worth it learning how to bobber dog.  This may be my go to from now on.

We spent a few hours with not even a nibble.  We rolled up on Cody’s boat to find him eating a banana.  Obviously, that superstition does not hold water on his boat.  He landed two steelhead for the day.  As he finished his banana, he tossed the peel at our boat and it landed on my shoulder.  Oh no, I have been cursed.  🙂

As we continued down river, casting through every spot possible, the mood was about to change.  With this bobber doggin method we were using, the way the 5 bobbers were going through the water and being moved around by the currents, if you take your eye off your bobber for a split second, you will lose sight of which one is actually yours.  Well, at least that is how it worked for me.  Someone yelled bobber down!  I was watching what i thought to be my bobber and it was still floating fine.  Then someone woke me up and said “Tony, that is your bobber.  Set the hook!”  Silly me…..  I got the slack out and set the hook.  The fight was on.  Actually, it did not fight that hard.  Just a few tugs here and there and maybe jumped once or twice.  Not much of a fight, but a nice fish nun the less.  It was a keeper hatchery in case you could not tell by the fight description.  That banana peel on the shoulder must have been the trick.  🙂

The first fishing trip of 2018 is now under my belt and the monkey is off my back.  It was a spectacular day on the water.  Let this be my omen for 2018 telling me this is going to be a banner year.