Downer: Stellar steelhead season
Thursday, August 21, 2008 11:41 PM PDT
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E-mail this articleColumn by Chuck Downer
For The Daily News
I wish the fishing report had a little more meat on it this week, but we’ll try to flesh it out a little as we go along.
Steelhead are being caught locally, as has been the case for most of the summer. This year may go down as one of the better ones in the last decade.
Stormy weather hit earlier this week, with fairly heavy rain and gusting winds, but it’s unlikely that this weather will have much of an effect on water conditions this weekend. By today, if you’re looking for steelhead on the tributary streams, early morning and dusk are likely to be your best bets.
Long, light leaders will work best, and the fish will be found in fast moving water, where there’s more dissolved oxygen, and possibly cooler water temperatures.
Plunkers, it’s pretty much the same old story. Tie on your favorite Spin-n’-Glo, attach a sand shrimp, and soak it! If you use one you have confidence in, you’ll likely leave it in the water long enough to get the job done.
Reports indicate that, in addition to a steelhead here and there, the Cowlitz is producing a fair amount of sea-run cutthroat. If you’re plunking from the bank or boat, a night crawler, or a piece of night crawler and a bit of white meat off a pea-mouth chub, will work well.
Blue Fox Super Vibrax spinners in sizes 3 and 4, in green/silver, red/silver, and blue/silver are good choices, and these might get you a nice steelhead or a jack salmon as well. You want to keep these lures moving with the current.
I’m hearing some tales of adult chinook salmon being caught downstream on the Cowlitz, somewhere near the mouth. No, the fish aren’t being caught somewhere near their mouths — they’re being found somewhere near the mouth of the river. Hope I cleared that up!
At any rate, adult chinook must be released on the Cowlitz, if you catch one. Regulations require that you release the fish without bringing it inside the boat. This applies to both clipped and non-clipped fish alike.
Current regulations on the Cowlitz allow an angler a daily limit of six salmon, minimum size 12 inches. Only hatchery coho and clipped chinook jacks may be retained. In addition, anglers are allowed a limit of five trout, three of which may be fin-clipped steelhead, above the Highway 4 bridge. Anglers are allowed this same five trout limit below the Highway 4 bridge, but only two may be steelhead.
I’ve heard from multiple sources that fishing for Columbia River chinook salmon is excellent near Hammond at the present time. Regulations at the Buoy 10 area (Buoy 10 upstream to the Rocky Point/Tongue Point line) allow a daily limit of two salmon; minimum size for coho 16 inches; minimum size for chinook 24 inches. Only one chinook may be retained, and wild coho, chum, and sockeye salmon must be released.
The North Jetty remains open, with the same regulations as the Buoy 10 area. Buoy 10, and other Columbia River regulations change again on September 1, so be sure to check your fishing pamphlet before you go fishing.
Bass fishermen! I haven’t forgotten you! If smallmouth are your bag, the Willamette may be your river right now. I won’t say that it’s red-hot. It’s not. But you can catch a decent number of fish, some in the 2-pound to 2 1/2-pound range, if you work at it.
Gene Pahkamaa and I fished upstream of Willamette Park on the hottest day of the year so far. Temperatures rose over the century mark, but the bite was pretty consistent. Five-inch curly-tail grubs and stubby two-inch tubes that resembled crawfish did the trick. We also caught a few suicidal fish on a white and chartreuse spinner bait. I think our total was close to 35 smallmouth for the day.
Brothers Tom and Jack Bunn launched at St. Helens that same morning and fished the Scappoose Bay/Multnomah Channel area in their new Ranger bass boat. Tom told me that every fish was spitting up shad smolts when they brought them into the boat.
Usually the presence of small shad in the river makes for a tough bite. The same lures that proved effective upstream did pretty well on the lower end as well. A smoke/silver flake five-inch curly-tail grub can be effective, according to another bass fishermen who fishes the Willamette Slough regularly.
If you get distracted by recreational boaters (jet skis, ski boats, cruisers, yachts, jet boats, rubber rafts, kayaks), you might want to reconsider fishing upstream. I’ll bet 500 of the above, and a few odd ones thrown in, went by us in one four-hour period.
There were so many wakes, going in so many directions, that the water was bouncing up and down. And high-speed boats and swimmers don’t mix well either. I’m surprised that there aren’t more accidents reported in that stretch of river.
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