NW Outdoor Explorer

Here we go again.  🙂

6am start to launch by 8am and cross the bar at low tide.  We struggled this week.  On the positive side, after the bar crossing, the water was so calm I was able to cruise about 35 mph up to the first spot.  Got there in no time.

We tried up north where the carter boats were last week to find they have moved on.  There were only two other boats giving it a go up here.  We tried shallow and deep.  We spent a short time with no bites at various depths then moved on to the south.  Trolled around buoy 2 and managed to get one in the box.  Fished a little longer and released two more shorts.  After no bites for an hour, we decided to try back up in the crab fields.  No luck.  It was time to call it a day.  Again, no Coho.

With the ocean salmon season underway and Buoy 10 just around the corner, it is time to free up some space in the freezer.  How better to do that than with my #1 smoked salmon recipe?  This recipe has already been covered in my previous blog posts, you just need to search for it.  In short, this is the brine recipe;

7 Cups of brown sugar
2 Cups of salt (non-Iodized)
¼ Cup course black pepper
¼ Cup crushed red pepper – I bumped this up to 1/2 cup for a little extra kick
¼ Cup garlic salt

You then add 2 cups of Yoshida Teriyaki sauce to the top and let juice.

I let it juice for 18-24 hours then smoke for 6-8 hours.

Anyway, the batch turned out great as the picture shows.  Ate quite a bit and put some back in the freezer.  I know I said making room in the freezer, but smoked salmon takes up much less room.  Especially when half gets eaten before you can vac-u-seal it  🙂

June 23rd, Ocean Salmon Opener.  I have been waiting for this day since the end of Buoy 10 last year.

I have a slip in Ilwaco, but not using it just yet because I have river plans for the 4th of July.  I will be trailering for a couple weeks.

We got an early start.  Hit the road at 6am to launch by 8am and cross the bar at low tide.  Got our beer, bait and ice.  We even plan to do some crabbing to see if any stragglers are still hanging out.  Heading out, there is a slight breeze.  The swells were not terrible.  That is, till we pass buoy 10.  The confused seas were evident.  This is what my boat was made for.  We pushed on.  Once we got a little north and in about 50 FOW, we start dropping pots.  We put out 9 pots with hopes of a big bounty.

The water looked fishy, so it was time to put the lines in the water.  It did not take long and Fred was on the board with a nice Chinook.  We stuck it out there for a couple of hours with no success.  It was time to push North to the Condo’s.  The wind chop was not terrible, but not great either.  It took us a little wile to get to where we wanted to be.  We found a few charter boats doing their circles, so we fell in line.  Not long again, we are starting to get bites.  Over the next couple of hours, we land two more Chinook and released a few small Chinook.  With the doom and gloom fishing reports, this was not a bad ocean opener.  We did not see any Coho.

Time to pull pots and head in.  Sad to say, most of the pots were small females.  We did manage to get 6 nice sized keepers.  All my crew went home with something that day.  I did not.  🙁

Till next week…….

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.

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.  🙂

The Sandy river is not my back yard exactly.  From where I live, it is more like my neighbor’s back yard down the street.  None the less, it is a river I fish quite often during the late fall and winter months when I am not fishing the Columbia river or Pacific Ocean.

Chinook, Coho and Steelhead all make their way up this river system at different times of the year.  Knowing when the fish are in the system and when best to target which species, I have learned from experience.

I am fortunate to know a couple people that I enjoy fishing with that have drift boats, pontoons and rafts for different water conditions.  Not just any drift boats by the way, a couple of Pavati drift boats.  The side doors in the Pavati’s get more appealing the older I get.   🙂

If it were not for the holiday weekend coming up, I would be planning a float with my friends instead of writing about one.

It was a couple of years ago.  I took my wife out with us to chase winter steelhead.  This was her first float on the Sandy river.  She loves to fish almost more than I do and she has all the gear.  Waders, Boots, Gloves, Spinning rod, Bait caster, and a backpack full of the necessities for fishing winter Steelhead.  We launched at first light.  It was probably at or below freezing.  This is when the right gear makes all the difference to keep warm.  We hit a few holes on the way down with not even a nibble.  It was shaping up to be a nice boat ride.  One particular hole we stopped to fish, there is a good sized rock protruding out of the water along the bank.  My buddy got my wife up on the rock to give her a vantage point to cast to the seam we were targeting.  After a few minutes, she had not gotten a bite and decided to get down off the rock.  She slipped and went face first into the water.  It was not as bad as it sounded, but she did take some water down the front of her waders.  Needless to say, she was pretty cold after that, even with the right gear.  Being the trooper she is, she wanted to continue fishing.  The very next cast it was bobber down.  The adrenaline hit and being cold was no longer a factor.  It gave her an incredible fight and she eventually brought it to the bank.  This was her reward for never giving up.  I love that woman.

This is part three of a three part post. Be sure to continue to the other posts for the full process.

Continued from yesterday……

This part of the process takes the most time.  Be ready for a long day to monitor the smoking process and adjust as needed.

I pull the fish out of the brine, drain and put on racks to dry for an hour or so.  I do not rinse the meat like some others do.  Let dry long enough for the liquid to start to form a glaze on the top.

You don’t need high heat.  110-130 is perfect if you are using a smokehouse or smoker that you can regulate the temp.  I use a traeger and the average smoke temp is about 150.  For me, it is perfect for a set it and forget it setup.  I have not had any complaints.  🙂  Smoke for a minimum of 6-8 hours, but time can vary quite a bit depending on outside temps.  During the colder winter months, I have to wrap an insulated blanket around my traeger to keep it from getting too cold on smoke mode and shutting off.  There is a learning curve in determining when it is done as the fish is moist and not dry.  It will usually bubble some fat up and get flaky.  I know by touch.  I try to put like thickness pieces together so I can take individual racks out when they are done and leave the others.  I use hickory pellets in my traeger and the flavor is pretty tasty.  You can use any flavor wood of your choice.

When done, remove from the smoker and let rest.  At this point, it is extremely difficult for me to resist snacking.  🙂

I put the finished product in a container and refrigerate over night before vac-u-sealing and freezing.