The start to our annual Fall Chinook season has be nothing short of fantastic! We have been down here in the Lower Columbia River fishing the famed Buoy 10 season and it has not disappointed. We have been getting limits of Chinook most days and we are starting to see a bunch of Coho in our catch. We still have Thursday the 31st of August open down here in Astoria. This is our last open date and it is a full open boat.
We also wanted to take this as an opportunity to talk about our upcoming fall seasons. As many of you have heard it is not looking like we will have an opportunity to harvest and fall Steelhead off the Snake or Clearwater Rivers. This is difficult news to swallow, but we want to make sure you know that there are plenty of great fishing opportunities ahead this fall and because of the lack of Steelhead we are extending our Fall Chinook season on the Columbia River.
Starting the 8th of September we will be jumping back on the migration of Fall Chinook up the Columbia and we will be fishing the Columbia River Gorge near Hood River, Oregon. We plan on fishing this area through the 16th of September. These fish in the Columbia Gorge are in great shape as most of them still have more than 100 miles to go before they spawn. We will fish one of a few locations depending on where the best opportunity for fish is at. Our most fished areas of the Gorge are the mouth of the Klickitat, Drano Lake, and the mouth of the Dechutes River. All three locations give you a great chance to take home some great salmon. And the entire Columbia above Bonneville Dam has a limit of two Adult Chinook daily.
We are also planning on extending our Hanford Reach Fall Chinook season through the 22nd of October. This will give us a great extended opportunity to catch these big Chinook as they state near their spawning grounds on the Hanford Reach. We often catch some of our biggest Chinook of the year off the “reach” and fishing for these bruisers in the desert of Eastern Washington is a great experience.
We thank everyone for your continued support of Jones Sport Fishing! And without our great customers living our dream on the water would not be possible.
Over the weekend we spent some time fishing in the Heller Bar area of the Snake River, and despite the low return numbers and the negative Steelhead press we did very well. On Saturday I had two customers hook over 12 Steelhead and land 6. Numbers like that are great when we are talking Steelhead fishing. These are great fish that fight hard and have great meat quality. We have lots of open dates for the rest of November so if you are interested get in touch with us and we can get you set up on a great day of Steelhead fishing!
