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Tillamook fishing- All about the tides and water levels

a limit of tillamook salmon

A couple weeks of really good fishing caught up to us a little bit this week as small tides and less than ideal water levels finally slowed things down a little bit.

The week fishing in Tillamook started strong on the heals of another system that made the rivers come up and the fish come in. Tuesday, the “high water” spots performed and then by Wednesday the many Tillamook County rivers performed well. By Friday however, 5.5′ tides and clearing conditions started to make fishing a little tougher. You really had to work by Friday unless you were lucky enough just to land on them.

Nice fish from a Tillamook area river.

By Saturday, a new system had moved in and fishing was tough from the start of the day. Rivers came up, albeit not has hard as I would have thought, but there was that silence on the river that a Salmon fisherman knows when not much is going on. I didn’t stick around to find out what the late afternoon tide brought in because by the time I left at 11a, the river was leafing up and turning color. We’ve had enough rain at this point that the rivers aren’t going to dirty up like they did three weeks ago, so things turned around pretty quickly.

wilson river level

The rain was timely. We needed it and it should set the stage for a decent week to come as tides will build. The forecast looks like more rain and river level uncertainty for the week, but I’d rather have some rain than not. There is still a lot of Salmon fishing to be done and while I’m glad to be home for a couple days, I look forward to getting back in the Willie and hunting down some more chrome bright Chinooks.

Looking to get out? Send me an email to info@lancefisherfishing.com and I’ll see if I can get you in the schedule.