It’s been a hot few days on the Columbia River and the smallmouth bass fishing has been pretty good for this time of the year. There was one session a few days ago where we got blown off the river by wind that came up very suddenly, causing treacherous wind waves and cross chop that made getting back to the launch pretty difficult. Other than that, it’s been calm or light winds and very hot; in the low 80’s, which is pretty warm for springtime here in the PacNW. The fishing has been typical for early spring smallmouth bass fishing; not that many fish, but the fish caught were big. Got at least two twenty inchers and one that may have been twenty, so that’s three trophy bass for the 2014 season that is just getting started.
Today was hot and mostly dead calm with a light northeast breeze kicking up for a couple hours at mid-day. The bad news today is that the river level has dropped a couple feet. This is pretty typical in the summer when they let water over the downstream hydroelectric dams to make electricity and to provide water for irrigation. When there are big water level changes on the river, the bass have a tendency to move and stop biting. That seemed to be the case today, we did a lot of paddling and covered a lot of river but only caught one smallmouth bass and had a few half hearted nibbles to show for the effort.
The weather is supposed to stay sunny and hot, but unfortunately the wind is going to be picking up, 15mph with stronger gusts is a bit too strong for kayak fishing and the dropping river water level is not going to be a big help either so it looks like a nice run of smallmouth bass fishing has come to a close for awhile. Hopefully, the strong winds will not stick around for long and we can get back to the smallmouth bass fishing.