We’ve been fishing the Klicktiat River for Chinook salmon and steelhead for the past couple weeks. The weather has been great, getting colder, but it’s been clear, calm winds and sunny. We’ve done a little bank fishing using the mountain bike to get to some spots that don’t get a lot of fishing pressure, but most of the effort has come by kayak fishing.
We have to get up at 4:00AM, drive to the river and carry the kayak and gear down a treacherous cliff side trail to be on the river by sunrise. It’s been getting colder, especially early in the morning. Salmon fishing on the Klickitat River where it empties into the Columbia River is not a solitary experience, there can be thirty or more boats on the Klickitat, which is less than fifty yards wide, trolling in all different directions and at different speeds and usually seventy five boats or more out on the Columbia, trolling, drifting and jigging. Quite the circus, you have to be alert, especially in a kayak, or you may be run over and dumped into the cold river.
Some days we didn’t catch anything, I lost a couple big fish before I could get them in the kayak, caught a couple small fish, or “jacks” that I released and got one decent sized coho salmon. I was determined to catch a trophy salmon so I kept getting up long before dawn and heading out in the cold on the river to get one. I finally got lucky and managed to hook and land a big coho salmon, probably about twenty pounds.
The salmon put up a great fight, these are strong fish. Just as I lifted it into the kayak, the hooks on the lure straightened out and the fish plopped on the deck of the kayak. I was lucky enough to get the battle on video, as soon as I get it edited, I’ll post it on the WatermanAtWork website.
The numbers of salmon coming over the Bonneville Dam is starting to taper off a bit, but still enough fish coming upstream to get out there a couple more times.