NW Outdoor Explorer

It was a cold day in early March, but it was a beautiful one none the less.

After getting the motor 100 hour service completed, we decided to get out for a little “Here fishy fishy!!”

We launched from the Ridgefield, WA ramp and had a short run to the Columbia River. DFW decided to close the lower Columbia from Warrior Rock down, so our favorite spot was not accessible. Our next goto spot would be Bachelor Island. We found a nice spot to snuggle up to the beach and set anchor. The water was a chilling 36 degrees and the wind was calm.

Wrapped the plugs with some good herring and floated them out about 60′. The rod tips had a nice rhythm going. Headed back into the cabin with the heat blasting and commenced to watching the rods.

After about 6 hours, the tide had turned and not a single bite. Maybe next time. 🙂

Again, only three people in the boat.  The wind forecast was worse than the day before.  If we can find the fish and get off the water by 2pm, we should be good.

Started in my new favorite spot.  Lines in the water not even two minutes and we get hit.  Manage to get the fish next to the boat and before I can take a swipe at it with the net, it is gone.  🙁

Lines back in the water and a few minutes later, another hit.  This time, it is gone before it gets near the boat.  The water is pretty rough and could be playing a factor.  Time to loosen the drags.

We continue this for several passes and each pass, we get hit once or twice.  Nothing in the boat so far, but the action is great.

After the bite turns off in this location, we move to my #2 spot.  Cut the motors and just drift.  Before too long, we have one in the boat, release a couple natives and lose a few.  This is turning out to be a great weekend.

The winds are picking up and we still need five more fish in the boat.

We manage to get one more in the boat before we decide to call it a day.

The wind chop was so bad by this point, getting back to the bar was a slow crawl.  I love my pilot house.  Once we actually get the the bar, it was not bad to cross.

This week, we are a man down.  Only 3 people in the boat this day.  If we can find the fish, it should be a short day.  🙂

Well, it took us a while to find the fish, but once we did, it was lights out.  The fish were basically following the boat.  We were fishing 18′-20′ on the line counters.  The current allowed us to cut the motors and just drift.  One fish after another.  Some keepers, some native and some short.  We used almost all the bait and finished the day with 5 coho keepers and 1 very nice Chinook.

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…….

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.  🙂

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.