Kayak fishing for salmon on the Columbia River continues with pretty decent results and very nice weather for this time of year. The warm weather and warm water temperatures may actually be slowing the chinook salmon bite somewhat, but the coho salmon fishing remains pretty good. That doesn’t mean you will catch fish every day; two days ago I caught six salmon, yesterday, with nearly identical conditions, I didn’t even get a nibble. You have to keep getting out there, sooner or later, you’ll get lucky because the fish are definitely there. Whether you can get them to bite or not is an entirely different story.
Anyway, on the day I caught six fish, I caught two coho salmon before sunrise, which is the daily limit
Since the fishing was so good, I kept fishing and caught four more salmon, including this nice Chinook. Lucky for this fish, I had my limit on the stringer and he was released back into the Columbia to fight another day.
I also hooked up a nice native chinook salmon that put up a heck of a fight. As with all wild fish, it was released unharmed back into the river.
The biggest coho was a pretty nice fish, not quite as big as the one I caught about a week ago, but it’s going to be hard to beat that big salmon.
Back on it again tomorrow because it looks like we may have a “Pineapple Express” rain event here in a few days. It’s hard to say how that is going to affect the fishing, but we are not going to wait around to find out.