After a few days of on and off rain showers, today’s forecast was calling for the showers to end by late morning. What do you know, wrong again. There were intermittent rain showers all day long, but at least the wind was mostly calm and it’s not cold, so it’s OK to head out on the Columbia River to get back to the smallmouth bass fishing.
The fishing was fine, the catching was terrible. Only had one hookup with a decent smallmouth, but lost him at the boat, so no photos. The fishing was as dead as I’ve ever seen it and I’m pretty sure I know why. The past few days of rain have got the rivers running higher, dumping a lot of water into the Columbia River. As a result, they let a lot of water out of Lake Celilo, over The Dalles Dam and into the Bonneville Pool, where we were fishing. The water rose nearly a foot in a few hours, I’ve never seen the water level rise that quickly while out fishing. When the water level changes rapidly, the smallmouth bass stop biting. To add to the problem, the water is dirty, or should I say, dirtier than usual. These conditions made for really poor fishing. I saw a few salmon and a sturgeon jump near my kayak, but the fishing was pretty bad. Even though the weather tomorrow will be perfect for fishing, it’s going to take a couple days for things to settle down, so looks like a bike ride.