The late spring Columbia Gorge winds were mostly calm for one day so we took advantage of it to do some exploring for smallmouth bass fishing spots. Smallmouth bass are all over the Columbia River but generally there are more of them the farther east you go. With only one day to work with, we did a little searching in our own back yard in the White Salmon/Bingen, Washington stretch of the Columbia.
While this stretch of the Columbia River has plenty of the rocky shoreline that is the preferred smallmouth bass habitat, in most spots, strong river currents run along the shoreline and the water is too deep for the smallmouth to hang out. As a general rule, smallmouth bass in the Columbia will be around slow moving currents that carry potential food past them, but not water that is ripping along the shoreline making it hard for fish to stay in one spot without fighting the current.
Smallmouth bass fishing is mainly about finding the fish and putting a lure or bait in a spot where they can see it, so the job was to try and find the fish. We paddled a four mile stretch of the Columbia River and found some fish in an eighth mile stretch of rocky shoreline covered with bushes, slow moving current and a water depth of two to six feet. Casting 1/8 ounce lead head swimbaits and a green and orange spinnerbait, we managed to catch about a half dozen decent size, hard hitting and hard fighting bass including a pretty good size smallmouth that is probably in the top five biggest of the season so far.
Typical of smallmouth bass fishing, you can fish for hours and get nothing, then, just like that you get a big fish, you’ve got to keep throwing that line in the water.
Looks like the wind is back for at least a few more days so the fishing will be on hold for awhile. We will be posting more fishing articles, photos and videos on the watermanatwork.com website in the meantime.