pdxfisher

Good job!

Glad your last trip for a while was a good one! Your pond bass look healthy and athletic. Your bog bass look like they would be most easily caught using a bag of dorotos or a slice of cake as bait Good luck with your surgery!

I rarely fish a tube but I get bit reeling in a Ned rig all the time. Fits in the same category as tube swimming.

That is just a crazy amount of high-quality bass! It would be more surprising to see you catch a 1lb bass than a 4lb bass!!

I fish the Columbia which has currents that run 1.5-3mph. I mostly throw upstream but sometimes fish down or down and across. Both techniques work for me at certain times of the year. In warmer water fishing downstream works for me but in cold water I pretty much exclusively cast as straight upstream as I can.

I have not been fishing in a month due to not feeling my best but last Sunday I finally felt good enough to head out. The wind forecast in the gorge was not looking too favorable and sine my drive broke on my last trip I as not eager to test the repair on the mighty Columbia in high wind conditions. So I fished the Willamette for the first time this year. The Willamette used to be my mainstay. It is 1/4 to 1/2 the travel time of going to the gorge (depending on where I launch) and there are plenty of bass and places to launch. The only downside is the size of the bass. Once I started fishing the Columbia it was hard to go back to fishing the Willamette - especially in the summer after the flash boards are in at the falls. Once those flash boards go in it seems like the bigger fish abandon the places that I fish. They are somewhere but I just don't know where Anyway, I knew what I was in for when I headed out and had my expectation set appropriately. I was ready for a dink-fest and I am sorry to say that the Willamette held true to form. I tried fishing depths from 5' to 35' and what I found was that there were dinks at every depth. It amazes me that there are so many smallmouth at so many depths at the same time and all biting. I ended the day with 52 bass but only two of 2lbs or more with the "big one" coming in at 2lb 2oz. I do have to say that the Willamette did trick me a little bit. The 2lb 2oz bass was my 2nd fish of the day so it got my hopes up for a while but then it was dink city for most of the day. Now it is still a lot of fun catching tons of fish, even if they are mostly small, but all day long I was missing the Columbia. The other trick the Willamette threw at me was that my 50th bass of the day was a 2lber. Kind of like golf where you are having a terrible round but then on the last hole you get a birdie. You were ready to quit but then it sucks you right back in I did try to spend a lot of the day trying to catch bigger fish. I threw a wobblehead with a creature bait a lot during the day since I find that it is generally larger fish selective but I did not catch anything on it. I did have one good bite on it that bit both the tails off my Zoom Zcraw. I was thinking that perhaps it was a walleye. I tried some bigger crankbaits and the JH stealthblade but neither one produced anything beyond a few pecks. I did catch fish on most of what I threw (swimbait, jerkbait, spybait, Baby bull shad,...) but the best producers were small plastics: drop shot and Ned rig. Those two accounted for the majority of my fish. That's sort of especially OK since my Ned rig rod is a light action rod so even the small fish are fun to fight. For anyone caring the water temp was 77-78F. I think the smolt are done out-migrating and most of the fish I caught were either throwing up or pooping out crayfish. So it was good to be back on the water but a little disappointing to catch so many dinks. At least I did not have false expectations when I headed out. Here are some pics of a few of the better fish and the usual video.

Pretty fish!

Great report and beautiful pictures - the bass and the backdrops! Your pond always looks so magical!

Good luck to run across the school then all skill to wreck them when you found them!

Wow! What a great day! Those smallies were thick and the largemouth looked like they weren't missing too many meals either! We're the smb and lmb on the same spot or were they on different spots.

Being on the water is always better even if they aren't jumping in the boat! I hope the new rod is awesome!

Echoing most every other post but I fish a lot of 30' to 50' water in late summer. Wobblehead with zoom Zcraw, drop shot, blade bait and Ned on 1/4oz head. The 1/2 or 3/4oz wobblehead is my faster searching bait. Once I find fish (and they stop biting the wobblehead) I re-fish the area with the other baits.

Beautiful pics! Sounds like a pretty awesome trip!

When you break the next one you will no longer be furious while fishing Glad you can have such a good attitude about a rough day!

That is an awesome experience! Thanks for sharing!!

Great pics! I especially love that blue bass. What makes it that color?

I use a 256Gb card and run my camera (gopro 8) at HD (not 4K) I think it will record about 10 hours. I don't narrate or do anything except hold my fish up to the camera after I catch one. I mostly keep it running all day. I make my videos for me. Someday soon I won't be able to fish but I will be able to watch myself and re-live my trips. Youtube is basically free cloud storage. I make the videos public because why not. Trying to make videos professional looks like a lot of work and is a big commitment. Narrating while fishing would take away from the fun of fishing for me. I do talk to myself while I fish but I do that all the time. I process better when I think out loud.

That is awesome! I have never heard of that before! Now does that count as a double or not

What another awesome trip! That kid is living the dream!

Great job on the new PB!

I am sure they do. Those post-spawn bass are cranky.

Nice! Those fish look very post-spawn. They should start to fatten back up to the chunkiness we are used to seeing from you soon.

PB smallmouth during pre-spawn. PB largemouth in the summer.

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!