Late Summer Smallmouth Bass Fishing on the Columbia River

Late summer is not prime fishing season for smallmouth bass on the Columbia River, but they are still biting. While you may not catch as many fish as you would in the late spring and early summer, there are some big, hard hitting, hard fighting smallmouth out there. When it’s hot, as it has been around here, you have to fish the shallow water early in the morning and move to deeper water as the sun comes up and the temperature begins to rise.

Today, we are fishing a local spot, launching from the Bingen Point sailing beach, which is in Bingen Marina Park, a short distance from the boat launching ramp. When it’s windy, this is a beach used by sail and kiteboarders, but when it’s calm, there’s nobody there. There are rocky points and rock ledges a short paddle from the beach that are holding plenty of smallmouth bass.

There is also a lumber mill nearby and you can’t miss the logjams

With a forecast of calm winds, we headed east towards Lake Umatilla, which is the reservoir behind the John Day Dam on the Columbia River. This area is well known for the excellent smallmouth bass fishing in the spring, we were hoping the late summer action would be good as well. The first place we stopped was at the end of Blalock Canyon, a little bit east of the John Day River. There was a place to camp with a great launch site

There was a culvert that opened onto Lake Umatilla

On the main river, there was rock jetty and miles of rocky shoreline; perfect smallmouth bass habitat, but after fishing for a couple hours without a bite, we figured it might be best to save this spot for next spring and head to the John Day River where we were hoping the bass might be a little more cooperative.
We drove back to the John Day River and checked in at Le Page Park. Normally, we would prefer free “dispersed camping”, but for direct access to the John Day rivermouth on the Columbia River, Le Page Park is about all there is. There are about twenty campsites, half of them are tent sites, the others are “pull-through” spots for RVs. The campsites are on the river, but it’s not rustic, “in the woods” camping; it looks more like an RV parking lot. There are bathrooms and the campsites have electricity, so it’s pretty comfortable by PacNW standards. It’s easy to launch a kayak and you can lock it to the bouy line of the swimming beach with a cable lock at night.

It’s a short paddle to the mouth of the John Day River where it empties into the Columbia

You can also head south up the John Day River. There is good fishing on the Columbia and the John Day, a great place for kayak fishing.

The John Day is a bit calmer and much smaller than the Columbia. You can paddle quite a ways upstream before you encounter a series of rapids that would be pretty hard to negotiate in a fishing kayak.

This is a rugged, dry, rocky and at times, windy area. Still, plenty of awesome scenery

The fishing was good, not great, but for this time of year, that’s to be expected. We caught a few medium sized smallmouths, the one in the photo below was one of the smallest ones we caught, got him right under the railroad bridge over the John Day River

The highlight of the trip was the big bass I caught off the rocks on the main river. It hit hard and put up a great fight on my ultralight fishing rig. This fish is the biggest smallmouth bass of the year for me, so it made the whole trip worthwhile.

I probably should have brought some salmon fishing gear along because the whole time I was fishing for bass, there were salmon jumping all around my kayak. It’s one thing to see salmon, to catch them is another thing altogether, still would have been worth a try.
Can’t wait to get back to this area next spring and see what it’s like when the fishing is really good.