Rain Event= Early Salmon Fishing on the Wilson, Trask and Nestucca Rivers

Early Wilson, Trask and Nestucca River Salmon are HUGE! Time to go Fishing!

I haven’t seen this much rain in September since 2003. The guys that know weather say, “since the 20’s”! The point is, it’s wet and with it will come some opportunities that are seldom seem.

The last time we saw an early gully washer like this rivers came up to about half their flood stage. No big deal, but it was enough to blow the rivers out and in a matter of days it was on. On it the sense that all the leaves, moss and debris had blown out of the rivers and the only question was, “which river will we fish?”. Although either the Trask or Wilson would have fished, early numbers seem to always be good on the Nestucca.  I grabbed a couple clients and made a date to accidentally arrive just on the heals of the bad water.

It was creepy quiet on the river that day.  Only a couple other boats around making me question whether I was missing something. Was it closed? Was it too early? I was questioning myself down to the first hole below Farmers Creek wondering if I’d made a mistake by rousting my guys up and begging them to trust me on this hunch.

So with eggs and shrimp on the business end of our gear, we backed our baits down the Highway Hole. With in very few bounces one of the guy’s rod began to get bit. Like the cool customer that he was, he waited and allowed the Chinook to inhale the egg and shrimp cocktail. Some excitement, half of a rodeo and a little whooting and hollering later we had our first Nestucca River Chinook, just shy of 40 pounds. “Thank you Lord!”, I thought after we landed the fish. No matter what happened for the rest of the day, we were all happy. Fortunately, complasency when it comes to catching fish is not something I’ve ever been accused of, so back in the water we went nd fortunately, not for very long.

With in a matter of minutes of redeploying another fish was on. Just as hot, just as big and can I say, “are you kidding me”? It was another Nestucca River hog. 35-40, mint bright and awfully mad as it rattled around the boat.  Put a #40 in the boat have him flop around for a while, they will break something 😉 Of course by this time, the writing was on the wall, this was going to be a special day.

Over the course of the next hour we caught our remaining fish. They were all enormous pigs. After rowing down the remainder of our drift and pulling out at Three Rivers, we rolled into Nestucca Valley Sporting Goods around 9:30a.  We weighed my clients four fish and the total weight turned out to be just shy of #150. A bodacious bag of chromers that I still remember regularly.

Will this year’s early rains yield similar results? Is there another four fish limit just like the one we found on the Nestucca 10 years ago this month? I like to think so and eagerly await creating more of these great fishing memories with all of you.

It’s just the beginning of the North Coast Fall Chinook season and I’ll be fishing the Wilson, Trask and Nestucca Rivers this year as river levels allow. This is some of my favorite fishing of the year as we go back to the basics of back bouncing and hunting the flowing rivers for these incredible fish.

Give me a call or send me an email. This year we’ll be fishing out of my boat and I’ll be booking another guide boat as well.

Thanks and tight lines,

Lance