Columbia River Salmon Fishing- Going on now in Astoria
I was able to get out to Astoria to fish the Columbia River the last few days and get in on some of the early Salmon fishing. According to fishery managers fall fishing doesn’t start until August 1, but I’m not so sure that date means much. Unless the Summer Chinook run is 10x’s bigger than projected, there are sure a lot early fall fish in the system.
I started out with a trip with my Dad and kids. I like to get the family out before guiding takes over my life and I had a day to burn before clients started showing up. We still had a few hours of incoming tide as we headed out on Friday morning so the situation couldn’t have been better. We were bit within a few minutes of dropping the gear in the water and then consistently bit through the morning. There are a lot of jacks in the river already and we definately went through some bait.
With the kids along we didn’t stay out very long as I like to keep things short and sweet when taking the 8 year olds. They both caught fish and that was the goal. Below you’ll see a camera phone video of Sophia taking on a nice Chinook. My other daughter Sarah is on the camera and providing the Whoot! Whoot! in the background. My girls were Buoy 10 babies, born during the season and they love heading out. They’ve come a long way in being able to put the fish in the net since their initial trips when they were 3 years old.
My how time flys. Take the kidos fishing all you can as these opportunities today will be the memories of tomorrow.
I started guiding customers the next day and was able to have decent fishing both days. It wasn’t spectacular, but there are definitely fish around. Oddity of the weekend had to be the two fin-clipped Coho that we caught on Anchovies. Not sure why the current rules would have us releasing these fish, but catching these fish in the river on July 25th was certainly unexpected.
Fun few days for sure.