Sorry for the lack of blog posts lately. It’s summertime here in the Columbia River Gorge and when the weather is nice we get outside every chance we can. We’ve been doing stuff, mostly riding bikes, but we’ve covered most of the roads and trails we ride here on the blog or in the bike section of the watermanatwork.com website. The weather here has been very hot and dry, because of that, many of the local mountain bike trails have been closed due to fire danger so we will be riding a little higher up in the mountains for the remainder of the summer.
Speaking of the weather, it has been very windy, not unusual for an area famous for wind and it has been keeping the kayak fishing from happening. It’s tough watching beautiful summer days go by and we can’t go fishing on the Columbia River because it’s too windy. After a few weeks of non-stop wind, we also had some nasty thunderstorms blow through the area starting a number of wildfires.
Finally, the wind died down for a couple days and we managed to get out on the Columbia River for a little kayak fishing. We headed up to the rivermouth of the Deschutes River looking for walleye and smallmouth bass. We trolled for walleye for awhile and didn’t have much luck. We didn’t see any of the other boats fishing for walleye catch anything either so we bailed on the walleye and started hunting for smallmouth bass. The water temperature in the Columbia is about 70°F, as warm as it gets, so the smallmouth bass are in the deeper water. We drifted downstream, bouncing a worm in 15-20 feet of water and managed to catch a few decent smallies.
The Deschutes River is a popular spot in the summer. Heritage Landing, the Oregon State Park at the Deschutes rivermouth, is crowded with rafters on commercial rafting trips, fishermen launching boats to fish up the Deschutes River or out into the Columbia as well as bank fishermen and people swimming in the river. If you park in the parking lots near the boat ramp and landing beach, you will need a permit.
The wind stayed calm so we headed back to the Deshutes the next day. It was even hotter than the day before. This time of year, protection from the sun is very important. Without protective clothing and sunscreen, you would be sunburned within an hour. Pretty much the same routine as the previous day; an unsuccessful attempt at the walleye, then off to find the smallmouth bass. Using the bottom bouncing worm technique, we managed a few more smallmouth bass. We also lost a few hooks from snags on the bottom.
We have some video from these two fishing days so we’ll be editing that and getting it on the watermanatwork.com website as well as the WatermanAtWork YouTube channel shortly. Looks like a couple windy days coming up but we are hoping to get out for more kayak fishing. Summer doesn’t last forever around here.