Life
Swift Reservoir trout fishing
Saturday at Swift Reservoir most likely was closing day of the 2013 fishing season for me. I might try pulling Wiggle Warts for coho at Lady Island, or for steelhead at the mouth of Oregon’s John Day River, although I doubt it. (It’s time now to walk through southeast Washington under the pretense of pheasant […]
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. […]
New coho harvest proposal
State fishery managers will meet at 3 p.m. Tuesday at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2108 Grand Blvd., with sport and commercial advisory group members to review a new assessment of harvest options for lower Columbia River coho salmon. The assessment was developed by the Washington and Oregon departments of Fish and Wildlife […]
Fall chinook numbers update
Approximately 1.2 million adult fall chinook will have entered the Columbia River by the time the counting is done in December. Robin Ehlke of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife told the Columbia River Compact the return is anticipated to include 832,500 “upriver brights” and 69,000 chinook destined for Spring Creek National Fish Hatchery […]
Best spots for lower Columbia fall chinook
For the lack of a better term, we’ll call it the “biteability index,” or perhaps “encounter rate.” It’s simply the arithmetic showing what your chances were of catching a salmon or steelhead in the lower Columbia River for the first two weeks of September. Washington and Oregon divide the Columbia River between Buoy 10 and […]
Spring chinook update
I’ll have more details on Thursday, but here’s the quick-and-dirty about spring chinook in the lower Columbia River. Washington sampled 760 anglers with 17 spring chinook and eight steelhead during the first three days of March. Thirteen of the chinook were kept and 10 were upper Columbia fish. All but one of the chinook were […]
First spring chinook tallied
The Fish Passage Center reports the first spring chinook of 2013 was counted on Feb. 13 at Bonneville Dam. The temperature in the Columbia at the dam is 40 degrees, with a flow of about 150,000 cubic feet per second.
Columbia River fish wrap
Here’s the latest on sport fishing rules, conditions, etc, updated a couple of times a week: Columbia River — The forecast of spring chinook to the mid- and upper Columbia river is a relatively low 141,400 salmon. That converts into 5,010 fish available for sport harvest below Bonneville prior to the run update in early […]
Commercials bash guides
GUIDE BASHING: At almost every meeting of the Columbia River Compact either a sport fisherman or a gillnetter takes a verbal swipe at the other group. It’s just part of the landscape and state officials give it no thought. On Monday, gillnetter Bruce Crookshanks took a shot at sport-fishing guides, calling them just another type […]
Bonneville pool sturgeon 6/30
Bonneville pool sturgeon — This is kind of a target-gone-by post, but here are the numbers from the June 15-16 and June 22-23 sturgeon season in the Bonneville pool of the Columbia River. Anglers caught 940 sturgeon in the winter portion of the season between Jan. 1 and mid-February. On June 15-16, the catch was […]