Fishing Reports

Fishing for winter steelhead has been decent the past few weeks on the tributaries of the Columbia River. December’s heavy rains certainly put a damper on water conditions making fishing a bit more challenging than normal. The hatchery Winter Steelhead will slow down a bit from the last week in Jan until the first week in Feb. Fishing will remain good though until then. After the first week in Feb we will start seeing hatchery fish moving back into the Cowlitz River in huge numbers! The Cowlitz Winter Steelhead fishery is the best in the NW and is insane fishing until mid-March! Looking forward to fishing with all of you in the next few weeks!

Fishing for winter steelhead was fairly good before the recent record rain that SW Washington has had for the past two weeks. Now, the weather seems to be cooperating and the rivers are coming back into shape! Winter Steelhead fishing is commonly the most exciting fishing of the year due to their ability to sky out of the water and take big runs after hooking them. We fish with light tackle for these fish making the battle even better! Fishing will be great for steelhead clear into late March! A fishing adventure makes for a great gift for your loved ones, and gift certificates are available for future fishing dates. You will be the Christmas hero!   I assure you! I would like to thank everyone who joined us this year for the great fishing we had, and look forward to seeing you in the future! Have a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Fall Chinook fishing on the Columbia River ended with an incredible bang! Previous records of fish caught, and numbers of chinook passing over Bonneville Dam (1,034,129) were crushed in the month of October! Catch rates in October were over 6,300 fish which is 4,600 more than any other October on record. Also, the total number caught from August 1^st to October 31^st was 41,886, which beat the last record kept from 1967. The Fall Chinook run sizes are continuously growing larger every year, due to habitat and stream restoration along with large smolt plants in the upper Columbia River. We are very excited for the future of the Fall Chinook fisheries! We have now switched gears to the tributaries of the Columbia, and fishing remains strong. We are starting to see a few Winter Chinook and Coho Salmon in the rivers already, and are anticipating another strong return of Winter Chinook for 15/16! These fish are known to be larger than your average chinook caught throughout fall and fight very hard! There is still fantastic fishing to be had through December for chinook, and after a small pause we will start catching high numbers of Winter Steelhead in Feb- Apr! For more up to date pictures and info, please like the page nw columbia fishing adventures llc. See you soon!

Fishing on the Columbia River has remained very good through the first week in October! We have been limiting out on beautiful bright Fall Chinook nearly every day for the past 3 weeks! What a great fall season it’s been! There have been over 1.2 million Fall Chinook that have passed over Bonneville Dam, and the numbers are still remaining strong! We will start seeing the B run Coho start to enter into the tribuataries of the Columbia later in the month, and if it’s anything like last year it will be major carnage once again! Get out fishing before the fish are gone!

Fishing on the Columbia River is red hot right now! Currently the limit is 2 chinooks which may be either hatchery or native. We have been averaging 10-30 hook ups a day and it should stay that way through mid-October! After that we will be moving into the tributaries of the Columbia to target Coho salmon and Fall Chinook!   I have some great dates available, so get hooked up on the hottest action of the year!

Now that the B10 fishery is over and done, we have moved inland to intercept the Fall Chinook and Coho in the Woodland and Longview Washington area. We will be anchoring in special spots on the Columbia River for a couple weeks catching high numbers of fish with what are known as “wobblers”. “Wobblers” are a thin piece of metal with vibrant colors painted on them that swim in a 10oclock to 2oclock motion making fish very angry when travelling near them. Fish bite these “wobblers” with such aggression that the fishing rod goes down extremely hard with line peeling of the reel in no time! This is a great fishery to kick back and enjoy the scenery while watching your rod get bit often throughout the day! I still have availability for this great fishery on the Columbia River. We will then move into the tributaries of the Columbia River with a more “hands on” approach. “Hover fishing” is when everyone has a rod in their hand and finds the bottom with the appropriate amount of lead attached to the fishing poles. We will be using different types of bait for this type of fishing, although the predominate bait will be salmon eggs. Having the right salmon eggs and scents is crucial to the success of fishing in the tributaries.   I’m excited to meet all that will be fishing with me for the remainder of the year and see all the familiar faces again this fall.  Hope to see you soon!

The Fall Chinook are in! Fishing in Astoria Oregon at buoy 10 has been unreal this year! The great news is that we have another three months of awesome fishing for the Fall Salmon in the Columbia River and its tributaries. We will be moving inland to our great fishing spots on the Columbia starting on Sep 6^th and then into the tributaries around the 20^th of September. The Chinook salmon are running large this year in awesome numbers, so don’t miss out on the chance to catch the fish of a life time!

The Buoy 10 fishery is off to a great start! Catch rates have been extremely high for the first part of August, which was a welcomed surprise by the many anglers who fish this area. There have been limits of kings caught nearly every day in the first two weeks of August, and is only expected to get way better as we head toward the end of the month! Once the fish are inland, we will start targeting them near the cold water tributaries of the Columbia River where they are sure to congregate before heading farther up river. Fall Salmon season last clear into November with tons of opportunity to catch high numbers of fish. Don’t miss out on the fall run of Kings and Coho Salmon this year; after all it is the third largest run in history!

Summer Steelhead fishing is been phenomenal so far this month and it’s just getting started! The steel head were a little less eager to move out of the cold ocean water at first due to the warm Columbia River water, but now are really moving through! We will be fishing for steelhead till the 10^th of August and then we will be switching gears to the famous Buoy 10 fishery in Astoria Oregon. I still have some awesome dates left for the Fall Chinook and Coho Salmon fishery in Astoria remaining. This is one of the hottest fishing destinations in the world for Fall Kings and Coho Salmon! It is projected to be the third largest fall run on record, but the way the other projections have panned out this year, I believe will be much more fish than they expect. For instance 75,000 Summer Chinook were expected to return and we already have 130,000 over Bonneville Dam!   Don’t miss out on this year’s fall run of salmon; it will be another one for the record books!

Summer fishing is in full swing! We are finally wrapping up our Summer Chinook fishing, which was absolutely amazing this year! The run was much larger than predicted which gave us an extra three solid weeks of high numbers of fish hitting the boat! Now we are starting to switch gears to the acrobatic little over achievers known as steelhead. Summer Steelhead, much like the Summer Chinook and Spring Chinook are traveling a great distance to their spawning grounds which make them great eating fish due to their healthy oils they need to complete their journey. They are also a blast to catch!   Steelheads are known to make quick runs, and fly out of the water when hooked! There are still great dates left to catch these exciting fish.

After Summer Steelhead we will be heading to the buoy 10 fishery in Astoria Oregon in August.   The third largest Fall Chinook and Coho run are expected to return yet again this year! This is the most popular fishery of the NW. Generally we can only keep non hatchery fish until Aug 30^th, but this year it has been extended to September 7th! This is so exciting! I can’t explain how cool this is that we get to retain chinook until the 7^th! It will be ridiculous good fishing! I’m starting to get a lot of inquiries, and soon the best dates will be gone. Don’t wait too long! Looking forward to fishing with you!