Pacemaker Fishing Forum

Bob B · Jun-29-13 7:52PM

For those who might not be familiar with my previous posts... my wife and I moved from Reston VA to Vancouver WA in 2010. I used to fish "back there". Sometimes I still look at this site and write a post about fishing "out here". We mostly fish on the section of the Columbia River which is the border between the states of Washington and Oregon. So, here is some of what I've been up to recently.

June 27
Went out on a friend's boat to try for sockeye salmon for the first time ever. We had never tried this before. Thirty to forty miles downriver they have good success catching sockeye but for some reason they are difficult in my neighborhood, river conditions are a somewhat different and few folks try for them here. But, I had studied up on techniques used downriver and convinced my friends that we should try at least once for them. It didn't work, we only had one takedown in 5 hours which did not result in a hookup.

June 24
A fun trip for chinook salmon 30 miles downriver from home. Two of us fished with a guide from that area. We had 15 takedowns which resulted in 8 hookups, but with barbless hooks (new rule started this year) we only got 4 of them to the net. As luck would have it, the two that I caught were hatchery fish which we could keep and the two that the other guy caught were wild fish that we had to release. We each took home half of the meat. At this time of year we can only keep salmon of hatchery origin... wich are identified by a clipped adipose fin that has healed over.

One was a 21 lb. beauty.

The other was a "jack" in the 5-6 lb. range.

What is a "jack"?
The size of chinook salmon that we catch in the river depends on how long they were out in the ocean. They can spend one to eight years in the ocean before returning to the rivers to spawn (averaging three to four years). Some males get the urge to spawn much earlier than most and are referred to as "jack" salmon. "Jack" salmon are much smaller than those that spend three or more years at sea, typically they are less than 24 inches long.

There were a lot of ships going by that day. Here are a few of them:

June 22
Janet and I had planned months in advance to go out on an afternoon trip with friends for keeper sturgeon at the best time to do so, but on June 19 the authorities decided to close the keeper sturgeon season early on June 21 because too many were being caught. Dang it! On June 21 the guide that we were scheduled to go out with on June 22 brought over 60 sturgeon to the boat to get 5 keeper size. We had wanted a trip like that! So, June 22 became a salmon trip. Then, on the morning of June 22 our guide called and told us that the morning bite was not good because the folks at Bonneville Dam were messing around with the flow of the river. He offered to let us cancel the trip, but it was a beautiful day and we decided to go anyway, even if it would just end up being a nice picnic out on the water. The action was slow with a few takedowns and one hookup wich resulted in a friend getting a very nice 22 lb. hatchery chinook to the net. He had never caught a salmon before and it was the bigest fish he had ever caught in his life, so we considerd the day to be a big success.

Some homes along the Vancouver WA riverfront.

June 21
A friend who owns a boat is throwing a July 4 party. He is proud of his talent for smoking fish and wanted to be able serve smoked sturgeon and smoked salmon along with the other goodies. So we needed to go get a keeper sturgeon on the last day of keeper sturgeon season. We took along another friend and I played "guide" that day. The best odds of success would be upriver of Bonneville Dam. Neither of them had ever fished upriver of Bonneville Dam before and I had been up there several times with guides. To get to the spot that I chose we had to get through some rough water and the boat owner got seasick. He stuck it out as we went thru several undersize before catching a skinny keeper size in a bit less then three hours. But that was it, we had a keeper to smoke and he wanted to go back in.

June 11
Janet and I were out on a one week sightseeing road trip and fished at Shasta Lake in northern California on June 11. If I find the time to do so, I'll write a separate post about that with pictures of some of the sights going to and from there.

June 6
This was another trip that was originally scheduled for sturgeon. But, our guide reported that sturgeon fishing had not been hot and suggested trying for salmon instead. I was reluctant to do so, I had never fished for salmon in June before because June isn't known to be a real good time for doing so. Like, one out of four boats will catch one. But now I have learned that a good guide can beat the odds. We had ten takedowns which resulted in six hookups. Two managed to spit the barbless hooks just as we got them near the boat. So, we got four to the net but had to release a really nice size wild one that wasn’t fin clipped.

Two of the keepers were typical 12-14 lb. fish for this time of year and one was a "jack".

Most of my share of the meat was donated to being smoked for the party mentioned above for July 4.

Here is some scenery stuff.

That day we fished on the Washington side of the river a bit west of the Interstate Highway 205 bridge. We had a nice view of Mt Hood which is about 45 miles away to the east.

Portland Airport was a bit downriver on the Oregon side of the river.

There are some places where we get views of Mt Saint Helens which is about 45 miles away to the north. That's the one that blew up a bit back in 1980. In the picture below, on the left side, you can faintly see Mt Rainier (the highest in WA at over 14,000 ft) which is about 90 miles away.

I recently wrote a post about fishing for shad on May 30 which is at the link below:

http://pacemakerfishing.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5578

Just thought I would update that a bit by mentioning that 3.6 million shad have passed through the fish ladders at Bonneville Dam with about a week of the run remaining. Also, there were probably a lot that were not counted as they went up through the shipping locks instead of the fish ladders.
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