The weather was exceptionally warm and sunny as we arrived back in the Columbia River Gorge in the Pacific Northwest. As always, we were ready to get out on the Columbia River and start looking for those big springtime smallmouth bass. The temperature was mid-summer but the wind was mid-spring; windy almost every day.
The wind died to manageable for kayak fishing for a couple days so we were out on the Columbia long before the sun came up, anxious to get into the smallmouth bass. We caught a number of decent sized smallmouth bass on the first few casts, about an hour before sunrise. Since we were catching fish on the first few casts, we were pretty optimistic about how the first day of smallmouth bass fishing was going to go.
Unfortunately, our early luck did not hold up for most of the rest of the day, only picking off a few more fish here and there, maybe catching about eight fish all day. We called it a day about noon, packed up the gear and headed to another spot, hoping for better luck.
We were back on the water at a different spot the next morning. After a couple hours of fishing and only a couple real small bass to show for it, we started to wonder what was going on. We got out the thermometer and found the river water temperature was in the very low 50’s. The Columbia River is usually warmer this time of year, but heavy late season snow has the rivers still running with snow melt. The spot where we caught the smallmouth bass is as far from any Columbia River tributaries as you can get, the spot we were at was only a couple miles downstream from a major tributary. A degree or two in water temperature makes the difference for the fish being active or not.
The wind has come back with gusto and we are getting what we hope are the last few rainstorms of the winter rainy season, so it will be a few more days before we will be able to get back out on the river. Another season of weird weather is off and running, we’ll be out fishing whenever we get the chance so check back soon!