pdxfisher

Great report! So glad the weather stayed away and that you could have an awesome trip. I am sure he felt like a hero when he saved your 19"er!

Good luck! Iam sure that he treasures these trips!

Wow! What an awesome day!

That really shows how paying attention to details is important!

There is a program on the Columbia but I still just C&R. The guys who make a lot of money fish nonstop during the part of the year the program is running. They sleep a couple of hours a day but otherwise they are fishing for pikieminnows. They are super intense! Bass, walleye and pikieminnows all.predate on smolt to a degree but they are a drop in the bucket in terms of the overall picture. However they make a convenient scapegoat

I enjoy catching pikieminnows up here too. All the salmon and steelhead guys hate on me for releasing them but they are a native fish and fun to catch. I have caught several 4 pounders and they hit like freight trains and fight hard.

Thanks @Swamp Girl and @A-Jay!! That was a pretty awesome trip - especially getting to share it with my good buddy.

I had an amazing day out on the water on Sunday the 22nd. It was a great day partly because it was my first trip out this season with my regular fishing buddy (suffering from an ongoing case of steelhead-itis) and because the fishing was just plain amazing. The executive summary is that I caught 48 bass and my best 5 weighed 16lb 9oz and measured 95.75". My best was a 20", 3lb 15oz toad. My buddy did almost as well in numbers and caught a 20" fish as well! It is the kind of day you dream about. There is an old myth that catching a fish on your first cast is bad luck but I found out that you can cancel out that bad luck by catching fish on your first 3 casts back-to-back-to-back I caught those first 3 bass and quite a few others, including the first of my 3+lb bass, on a Sammy walking bait. Those fish were hitting the topwater with gusto! I still miss a lot of bites on that bait but it is a blast to throw and the bass hit it with such violence. As the day brightened the bass were still hitting the topwater but my hookup ratio went down so I started mixing in and transitioning to the Jack Hammer Stealthblade. The JH SB did not let me down and stayed productive for several hours. I did occasionally mix in a Ned rig when I marked deeper fish but most of the work was being done with the JH SB. They were thumping that thing so hard, I love it when they just knock slack in your line. I love that lure because it is productive but also because it seems to produce bigger fish for me. Three of my 3+lb bass came on the JH SB. By late morning the wind had picked up pretty ferociously and the JH bite finally shut off and from there on out it was classic deep water summertime fishing. I alternated between a drop shot and a wobblehead. Those are my go to lures when it starts getting rough on the Columbia and the bass (that are biting) are deeper. Once the shallow bite turned off we caught all the rest of our fish in 15-25' of water. The interesting thing is that I caught my biggest fish of the day on the wobblehead out of 22' of water and then a few minutes later I caught a couple of 6" dinks on a drop shot on the same spot. I was surprised that a 20" fish would be around 6" fish. I would think the 6" fish would look like food to the bigger fish. Eventually as I was fighting the wind I noticed that the squeaking on my drive was getting worse and worse. I kept fishing for a a while longer but eventually I figured I should head home. I am disappointed to say that when I got home I found that the several needle bearings in the drive had broken, the housing had cracked and the spindle was chewed up. I love the performance of my Hobie Outback but the 180 drive seems to be fragile. This is the second major repair on a drive that is 6 years old. Anyway, lets end on a happy note. My best 5 bass were a 3lb 6oz (18.75"), 3lb (18.5"), 3lb 2oz (19.25"), 3lb 15oz (20") and 3lb 2oz (19.25"). I also had at least 7 other bass that were well over 2lbs. There were certainly plenty of small bass mixed into the 48 but I did end the day with a 2lb 4oz bass which is a pretty sweet ending to an awesome day. Here are pics of the 5 best and a video from the day.

Great writeup and pics for a great trip! Sounds like such a blast.

I would be surprised if such a shallow pond would have a thermocline but I certainly have been surprised before. I also think that most ponds that have aerators is due to general low oxygen content not due to thermoclines. Back to the original topic though, I feel lucky to be out here in the PNW where the summer fishing is generally as good as the spring or the fall.

Great report! Love how precise you had to be!

That is rough but hope the fishing was good enough to ease the pain!

Thanks for helping the next generation! Hopefully you are rewarded with many lunkers!

I imagine FFS is very frustrating on a day like that! I guess if they don't want to eat you can't make them by wanting them to. I guess my first question is how sure you are that they are bass and not something like carp, big shad or suckers? Assuming they are bass, I would try a Ned rig with a 2.5" TRD or a spy bait. For the drop shot I am not sure what soft plastic you were using but once again I would try something very small. Another idea would be to try something like a 1/16oz maribou jig. You can fish it very slowly and have good action. Also, how aggressively were you fishing the drop shot and Neko? Did you try just dead sticking them?

That is really awesome!! Great event and glad you wrecked them!!

I use a lucky craft screw pointer (their spybait).

Wow! That's an amazing story. Hard to imagine what motivates people to act like that. The important thing is that the bass did not demand privacy They were posing nicely for the camera!

Awesome day! Some of those fish are so healthy and some are so skinny. Maybe based on having spawned earlier or later. That was a really nice bag overall!

Way to adapt and figure them out! Those kinds of days are almost the most memorable.

That is an awesome report! Multi-species days are always awesome in my book!

Great report! It is always more special when you have to figure something out to dial them in.

I was out all day long. So fewer fish and it took me longer. I did waste several hours in total fishing deeper, hoping to run into a big female, but thats part of the game. I think maybe the river dropped so much because Bonneville was pulling so much water. I think the big drops happen during high demand periods. There was a guy out on the main river in a little pond prowler with a tiny gas outboard on back and an electric up front. That really seemed like rolling the dice on the river. He did get off pretty early but that I don't think I would attempt that.

Not as good as yours but I was pretty happy. I love those days when they bite a moving bait all day long.

Definitely worth the wait!!

I hit the Columbia out of Stevenson on Saturday the 7th for the first time in 3 weeks. High temp was forecast to be 90 but Sunday was supposed to be 5 degrees hotter so I picked the lesser of the two evils. I got to the river at first light and there was a bit of a breeze. I started throwing to a mini-point that usually produces at least a fish or two in the summer but I got nothing but some weeds. Then I went over to a bigger point that ALWAYS has fish on this time of the year but again all I could conjure up were some more weeds. Well, after 45 minutes I was having the kind of day that only a vegan would be excited about and I have to admit my confidence was beginning to get a little bit shaky. "How am I not getting bit" I said to myself again and again during those first 45 minutes. But I did all I could do and just kept plugging away and switching presentations. Eventually as I cycled through my rods I picked my old faithful back up, the 1/2oz JH Stealthblade with a 3" MinnowZ trailer. I am not sure if the dinner bell went off, if the fish were waiting for more light, or what but all of a sudden the bite was on!! The bass were biting with ferocity that was matched only by my ineptitude at getting one into the kayak. I promptly lost 3 bass on 4 casts. I have to say that after fishing for 45 minutes without a sniff only to lose the first 3 fish I hooked had me feeling kind of angry However, when I hooked the fourth fish and finally did manage to land it all the dark feelings were washed away. Amazing how that works! For the next half hour to 45 minutes the bite was just insane. I seriously got bit on almost every cast. I missed a ton of strikes and lost several more but the action was intense. It was extra cool because I saw so many of the bites where I watched them zoom in and just annihilate that JH. After watching like 3 bass in a row hit the JH right below the surface a few feet from the yak I switched to a Choppo thinking that maybe with two sets of trebles I would do better at hooking them but somehow it was even worse. I am not sure if those fish needed new glasses or what but their ability to actually grab that Choppo was pathetic. After finally landing one on the Choppo (I just could not give up without catching at least one) I went back to the JH stealthblade. For the rest of the day I fished that JH. When I would miss a strike I would follow up with a wacky-rigged 4" Senko. It was the perfect combination. As the sun rose I kept expecting the shallow water bite to turn off but it never did. It did slow down a bit but all day long I was able to get bit on 1'-6' of water. The bass themselves were definitely post-spawn and skinny as rails. I caught a 19" bass that only weighted 2lb 9oz. I ended the day with 40 bass with best 5 only weighing 12lb 13oz (biggest was a 2lb 12oz that was 18"). I should have measured the length of more fish but I would guess that my best 5 were about 90" total length. Just to be thorough I did probe deeper water every once in a while just to see if maybe there were some big females out there chomping and I did manage one fish out of about 15' on a wobblehead and maybe had another bite or two but the shallow bite was so good and so much fun that I just could not stay out in the deeper water for very long. It was interesting in that the river dropped 2' during the course of the day. Some of the spots I caught fish off of first thing in the morning were high and dry in the afternoon. Other spots were I was fishing over tops of the weeds now had the weeds all the way to the surface. So the day started out really slow but once they started chewing they really never stopped. It was definitely one of the most fun days of fishing I have had. For me, nothing beats just slaying them on a moving bait. Here are a few pics on the day and the usual video.