The smallmouth bass fishing on the Columbia River has been pretty good lately, so with calm winds and temperatures in the 90’s we hit the Columbia for a couple days of bass fishing.
With the weather hot and dry, there is a huge demand for water, both for crop irrigation and to produce electricity to run all those air conditioners, so more water gets released over the dams on the Columbia River to meet the demands. Since there is not an infinite supply of water in the Columbia River, the water levels have begun to drop significantly. This is not great for fishing, especially bass fishing, because the bass like to hang around the steep rocky shoreline. When the water levels are low, these bass hangouts become dry rocks and the fish scatter to deeper parts of the river. The river doesn’t flow as strongly and the shallower water warms up and massive plots of river vegetation clog up the shallow water and deplete the river’s oxygen levels.
Even though the fishing won’t be as good as in the springtime, we headed out to Rowena to see for ourselves.
There were still a few smallmouths ready to bite
The bass we did catch were smaller than earlier in the season as well as fewer fish in general. The spinnerbaits that worked so well earlier in the year ran too shallow in the warm water and were always getting fouled with seaweed, so we have pretty much switched over to swimbaits, working them closer to the river bottom in cooler water.
The river level was really low at Rowena, easily ten feet down from earlier in the year so we decided it would be a better choice to head farther upstream. The next morning, we headed to the Horsethief Lake launch ramp to fish Lake Celilo right above The Dalles dam. Got to the launch just before sunrise, rigged up and headed out.
Headed upstream as the sun rose above the hills
The strategy for smallmouth bass is to work the rocky shorelines of the river. Cast as close to the rocks as you can because the fish hang out right next to the rocks. The shoreline is usually pretty steep, so the water can be up to twenty feet deep right off the rocks. Plenty of potential smallmouth hot spots here.
Even right above the dam, the water levels and river flow were down and there was plenty of seaweed. No doubt this has a serious impact on the bass fishing. We caught a few, but they were smaller fish and seems given all the potential bass environment, I’m thinking we should have caught a few more.
We left a hot and glassy Lake Celilo by noon. The temperature was well into the nineties on it’s way to nearly the century mark.
That will probably do it for the smallmouth bass fishing on the Columbia River for the time being. Going to have to head farther upriver or go after some other kind of fish.