The salmon fishing on the Columbia River is still pretty good but the nice autumn weather we’ve been having made an exit from the scene yesterday. There was light rain in the morning and much heavier rain in the early afternoon as a “Pineapple Express” rain event moved into the Pacific Northwest. After the morning rain, it was actually a pretty nice day, almost dead calm and fairly warm even if it was overcast all day. The rain that started in the afternoon was pretty significant and lasted well into the night.
The fishing was pretty good. A little slow early in the morning, it really picked up in the late morning/early afternoon, then slowed again right before the afternoon rain started. I lost a couple fish that came unhooked and had a few more bumps before I landed a medium sized chinook salmon. I lost another fish or two and had a couple more half strikes before I landed a nice, big silvery chinook salmon, easily the biggest king salmon of the year for me.
Today, I’m trying to get everything dried out and ready to go again tomorrow. The number of salmon coming over the nearby Bonneville Dam has dropped substantially so the 2014 salmon fishing season is going to start to wind down, time to get the last few days of kayak fishing in.