Silver Lake fishing tip
When I mentioned to a couple of hard-core salmon anglers that I went crappie fishing recently at Silver Lake in Cowlitz County, their responses were: “I’m sorry” and “Why?”
I realize the local angling community is largely made of sportsmen with an all-salmon-or-steelhead all-of-the-time mentality.
But a change of pace is nice, in my opinion. That’s why I’ve caught walleyes in Multnomah Channel, bass in the The Dalles and John Day pools of the mid-Columbia and trout at Swift Reservoir this year.
So the Silver Lake trip was another one of those diversity-is-the-spice-of-life trips.
From reading the Oregon Bass and Panfish Club newsletter, I learned that crappie and yellow perch congregate in the canals of Silver Lake in October. My neighbor is from Wisconsin and appreciates the table quality of crappies, perch and bluegill.
So, in about four hours of angling, combined we caught about 30 fish, a mixed bag of crappie and yellow perch, plus two small bass and one bluegill. All you had to do was cast a jig positioned about a foot to 18 inches underneath bobber with tiny bit of worm to get a bite almost every time.
Unfortunately, the fish are really small. We managed to get four crappie over the 9-inch size limit plus a bluegill also about 8 or 9 inches.
Still, for a change of pace after an August and September of salmon fishing, it was fun, although not particularly productive.
