Sport Fishing Blog

Today marks the start of our final week chasing Fall Chinook and Coho in the Columbia River estuary for 2020. This has been an awesome season so far, and it has been a pleasure to spend some great days on the water with such great people. Our customers are the absolute best and our business would not be growing without their support. While we have seen some amazing fishing, this season has also had plenty of challenges. We have had some days where we struggled to get fish only to have our day saved in the 9th inning, and other days that we just couldn’t quite come up with the magic formula. Some years this fishery is difficult and this is one of those years, but despite having to work extra hard for fish this year the payday is seeing…

Our first day of the 2020 buoy 10 season was a huge success. We started off the day on the Oregon side of the River near Hammond. There was a good bite going but it only lasted about a pass, then we managed to just pick up one here and there, and had all our Chinook by 10 am. Today our hot combinations were both anchovies, and 3.5 Colorado style spinner. We almost exclusively fish with rotating 360 style flashers. This is just a combination that we have a ton of confidence in, and we just like to roll our program. This is setting up to be a great, although short season down here, and we are excited to se what happens over the next 13 day. Please stay with us on the journey and hopefully we can provide some…

Brett Jones, owner and manager of our southern Idaho operation was on a afternoon trip with good friend Jeff Fetters of Fetters Custom Rods, when he hooked something big! As Brett got the fish close to the boat he realized he had something special. Jeff, in true walleye tournament form quickly scooped the monster up with the net. After a quick measurement the huge rainbow was sent back to the lake to continue growing and is still out there for someone else to put their hands on. Congratulations are in order as Brett is one of the the best and most accomplished anglers we know, and to see his name next to a state record is a special treat. The video below shows the excitement just after the fish is landed and being released. American Falls has long been known…

With the official start of summer just around the corner the walleye bite on the Columbia River is really starting to heat up. Water temps are now in the upper 50’s and walleye are feeding heavily as they feed on migrating juvenile salmon smolts heading to the ocean. We have been having success both pulling crankbaits, and fishing bottom walkers and worms. Our best bites the past few outings have been using crankbaits in color combinations that mimic downstream migrating salmon smolts. Any baits with chrome, blue, and purple hues to them have been getting consistently attacked by hungry walleye. A major key to our success this year has been the use of inline planer boards. We like the yellow boards made by Offshore Tackle Company and we use them in conjunction with the tattle flag system. Trolling with planer…

We started our 2020 walleye season last week on the Columbia River. To say that fishing started out hot was an understatement. Fishing was on fire! The beautiful spring weather has pre spawn Columbia River Walleye on the bite, and the box of fish we brought back to the landing last Thursday was one of…

We are back for another instalation of our Tip Tuesday series. This week we discuss what crankbaits we choose and why we choose them for early spring on the Columbia River, as always we really appreciate you watching our videos, and please leave us comments with questions or what you find to be effective when chasing walleye early in the season.

On this weeks Tip Tuesday we are going over how we rig up our Kokanee Cut Plugs to catch more salmon. Over the past three years we have experimented with a number of different hook configurations to try an get the best performing hook setup. What we have settled on two different set ups that seem to give about an equal hook to land ratio. The first is a single #4 treble rigged behind eight 4mm beads, and the second is two #1/0 Owner Cutting point octopus hooks. The two hook set up is also rigged behind eight or so 4mm beads. The purpose of the beads is to set the hook just behind the cut plug, an to let the lure spin freely on the line enabling it to spin faster that it would if it had to spin…

After the recent rains the Clearwater is back in shape and the fish are snappy! We had some great fishing the last two days, and lots of open dates now through the 10th of March. February is one of our favorite months and it’s great to be out on the river as the days are beginning to last a little longer, and the sun finally has a little warmth to it. Idaho’s Clearwater is know for big fish and we have been seeing lots of 15 pound plus fish this season. Now is the time to book if you are looking to get that late winter steelhead trip in on the Clearwater!

Welcome to our second installation in our how to fish for Columbia and Snake River walleye series. Our first article titled “How to Fish for Columbia River Walleye: The Easy Way” was a detailed introduction to what we consider the easiest, and most basic way for the beginning Walleye angler to get into fish. All that information is still valid and the things we discussed there are still very much part of what we do. This part and the following articles are meant to add more tools to your walleye fishing toolkit and give you an added advantage over the other anglers around you. The following is Part 1 on how we approach fishing crankbaits for Columbia River Walleye. This is the hard earned knowledge we have gained from running a full time guide business, and you will often find…

We often get asked, “what’s the best time to fish Idaho’s Clearwater River?” Often our answer is simply whenever you can get here, but specifically we look at the month of February as one of the absolute best times of the year to fish for the giant B-Run steelhead on the Clearwater. February is typically when the Clearwater starts to become alive again. With Orofino, Idaho sitting at an elevation of just over 1000 ft spring starts to show in the Clearwater Canyon often long before the surrounding highlands. February also tends to kick off the Spring migration of steelhead that have overwintered both in the Snake and Clearwater Rivers . During the cold water periods of late November, December, and January most of the upstream migration stops and Clearwater steelhead look for deep slow moving water to wait out…

We are now through our second full week of fall Chinook fishing on the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River. We have been non stop fishing since September 15th. Over the past week we have had some amazing fishing and a few days that we absolutely could have done better. This week saw our first major weather event of the fall, and the drastic drop in temperatures and strong winds made for a tough weekend. All in all though fishing has been very good this week and we are excited to see what this upcoming week has to offer. Again this week we almost exclusively trolled brads superbaits behind pro troll flashers or small 3.5 Colorado spinners behind the same flasher set up. We still have been having the most success fishing in the bottom 10 feet of the water…

It’s been a full week straight of fishing for us on our 2019 Hanford Reach Fall Chinook season. This week has seen its ups and downs, but we are definitely on fish and we have had the opportunity to limit each of the past 4 days, some days we have pulled it off and other days we came in a fish or two short. This is one of our absolute favorite fisheries of the year, and there is nothing quite like spending an early fall day on the Hanford Reach. The weather this time of year makes for some amazing days spent on the water. All our fish have been coming on the downstream troll. We have been doing equally well on both superbaits and spinners pulled behind pro troll flasher. Our program goes roughly as follows, remember there are…