The Snake River in the Clarkston area continued to fish well for us this past Sunday/ Monday opening. On Monday we had a group of four customers and had a great day catching Snake River Spring Chinook. We hooked a total of 7 fish and landed 4 of them, and when the tally came in at the end of the day we had close to 10-11 bites. This has been a great fishery this year and with the addition of a 2 fish limit the last two weeks we have been very happy.
Our success came while anchor fishing bait wrapped plugs such as the T-50 Flat Fish from Yakima Bait Company. I prefer this style of plug when I am fishing on anchor in places that require lead or divers to fish the bottom. My plug fishing set up this week consisted of a 6 foot 50# mono leader and a 4 foot dropper. All this is attached to 50# high visibility braided line such as Power Pro or TUFF Line. Our lead weights of choice were 4 oz cannon ball type sinkers. We have been having the most success wrapping our plugs with our own tuna concoctions, and the recipe for our success can be found in a previous blog.
In addition to catching fish on plugs, we also had some good action fishing herring and a flasher on anchor. Our method for this is similar to the way we fish plugs, but with a few minor changes. Our most successful system was the same mainline and dropper length for our plug set up, but we add a 24 inch bumper between our mainline and flasher. Our most successful flasher was a Green and Chrome Leo flasher. I think this flasher was a major reason for our success as the flows this week were almost too slow to spin a herring, but with the slow roll of the Leo flasher we were able to impart that great herring action on our baits. To get your own supply of Leo Flashers make sure you head over to Moneymakerfishing.com and check out their supply!
Hopefully we get one more Snake River opening, as I think the fishing will be similar to this past week. We should know for sure if we are going to be able to fish by the end of the day Thursday. I do have openings this weekend for both Snake River Spring Chinook ( if we get to fish) and Snake River Sturgeon / Bass Fishing. This time of year yields the best sturgeon fishing of the year and is a great way to spend a day at the entrance to Hell’s Canyon. Also if anyone is interested in keeper sturgeon fishing we offer trips on the Hanford Reach section of the Columbia River. Catch rates here are high and we often land 10-20 fish per day and average about a keeper per boat.