The “hot” part of this blog post has to do with the extremely hot weather, the fishing was not that hot, but it definitely had it’s moments, more on the fishing later in the post. The weather here in the Pacific Northwest has been very hot the past couple days, well into the 90’s, with even higher temperatures forecast for the next three or four days. This is going to make for a real threat of forest fires, normally not a big problem until August, but the unseasonably warm and dry late winter and spring has left the normally moist and green Cascade Mountains brown and dry. One lightning strike or careless use of fire is all that it takes to start a fire that might burn for months.
With high and muddy water around the Hood River/The Dalles area, we headed east to try our luck further up the Columbia River. Generally speaking, the farther east you go, the better the smallmouth bass fishing is. We launched at Celilo Park, just east of The Dalles and headed upstream towards the mouth of the Deschutes River. Just like farther downstream, the water was high and muddy. I’d never fished this part of the Columbia before so the biggest challenge would be finding the fish. The entire Oregon shoreline from Celilo Park to the mouth of the Deschutes looked like prime smallmouth bass territory, but despite throwing all the proven bass lures, I did not get a single bite. How much of that was caused by the high, muddy water and how much was fishing in spots where there aren’t any fish, no matter how promising it looks, I can’t say for sure.
After paddling a couple miles with no action, I was starting to wonder if I should just paddle back downstream to Celilo Park and call it a day. It was really hot, over 90°, not a cloud in the sky and not much wind. I decided paddle across the main river channel to a large island off the mouth of the Deschutes River and give it one last shot. After about a half hour with not even a nibble, I was having some doubts, but it only takes one cast to change your luck and the next cast was that lucky cast. On the edge of a rocky point, I had a big hit on a yellow head fluke and could tell right away it was a nice fish. He swam me into some river weeds, with ten pound test line and ultralight gear, I was worried that the line was not going to hold. Using a trick I learned while getting white seabass and yellowtail out of the ocean kelp, I was fourtunate enough to get the fish to the kayak. I was right, it was very nice smallmouth bass, probably the biggest bass of the season and possibly the largest smallmouth I have ever pulled out of the Columbia River.
Smallmouth Bass don’t get longer, but they get “chunkier”. This fish may not look any bigger than other good sized smallmouths caught this season, but it was much heavier. I was able to get this great battle on video, so that will be coming up soon on the watermanatwork.com website. I caught a couple smaller bass off one of the smaller islands in the river, but save for that one trophy fish, I would have to rate the fishing as extremely slow. We did see a bunch of giant carp in the shallow parts of the river, but they don’t bite on anything.
We’ll see how this hot weather is going to affect the already slow fishing, might have to curb the fishing enthusiasm and wait until the river conditions stabilize and the weather cools off.