With another clear frosty night reminding me that it's now December, I'm longing for warmer days. Man, it seems like it was just yesterday that we were enjoying long summer days, evening campfires, and lots of time in between bobbing around the mouth of the mighty Columbia enjoying the freakin' biggest salmon fishing party the PNW has to offer.



Fishing with a couple thousand of your closest buddies may not appeal to those trying to get away from it all. And while pics like the one above make the fishery seem a bit intimidating, it's not nearly half as bad as it looks. With over 14 river miles to spread the fleet from the Buoy 10 line upriver to Rice Island, there's plenty of room to find some water to call your own.

The excitement level at the ramp on the first day of the trip is typically at red-line for me and my crew. But just outside the East Mooring Basin, anticipation yielded to frustration and despair as the overheat alarm on my E-tec waled repeatedly each time I hit 2200 RPM. Water pump issues!

Decision time....
Fish the OR side, plow across to the WA side, or bag it all together? Well the repair shops weren't open at 5:30 am... and dammit there were fish to be caught... and according to Vedder and others, the opposite side of the river was THE place to be. DONE!

It took over an hour to plow our way to the promised land, and by then the tide had already turned in earnest.

Decision time again. I could see that lots of fish were being caught and I couldn't bear the thought of losing even more time plowing upriver against the tide at glacial speed all the way to the top of the troll path. At least not while chrome slab after chrome slab was being heaved over gunnels all around us. Dammit! Fish or cut bait? Drown 'em boys!

We dropped our lines and painfully slow-trolled our way AGAINST the prevailing troll traffic. OMFG! I could just hear every passing boat muttering about the doughballs in the black sled with the giant useless motor ... doing it ALL wrong. Yeah it cost us a bunch of strikes (at least 4:1) in a wide-open bite, but at least we were fishing! About an hour into the troll, I was losing confidence and decided to attempt a downhill pass. Spun her around and in under 7 minutes we were right back to our starting point.... with no way to get back to the top!

OMFG! This is my worst nightmare as a captain!

Spun 'er back around to start all over again.... reassuring myself and my crew that, hey... at least we were fishing. Thankfully we did a little catching along the way, too. My neighbor Kyle invited a young man named Jesse to come join us for his first real salmon trolling trip. Jesse was an absolute natural at deploying gear. He had the bottom dredging drill down pat in about 3 tries.... and he was the first to score.







Yes... ALL hatchery fish MUST die!

We continued to trudge upriver. At the upper end of the troll, the captain was able to put fish number two in the box...



By this point in our day, our young friend was starting to get a little funky green looking. We decided to start trolling back downhill again. Man the scenery went flying by at 3 knots! Before you knew it we were almost back to the bridge... but not before scoring another nice salmon for Jesse. Funny how a fish on the line almost instantaneously cures sea-sickness!















Fired the big motor up for the painful plow back to Astoria. Trailered the sled and towed it down to Columbia Pacific Marine Works where the guys supplied us the FREE hose material for me and my crew to make the necessary repair. Back on the water, she's pissin' like a race horse... an easy 20 ft stream at 1000 RPM's... and she's FLYIN' upriver at 36 knots with 5 folks on board. We clean the fish and send it all home with Kyle and Jesse when we get back to the ramp.

LMWS f4b and myself take a short beak for a late lunch, and by the time our lines hit the water again, the tide was already well into the incoming. We worked our way along the lower Desdemona Sands and back up above the bridge where LMWS scored this platinum wild beauty.









Family, friends, and fishing.... warms the soul.