Im taking a guided trip to the hanford reach (yea i know, guided. what a poosay right, but our outboard on our alumaweld went T/U) alot of big kings stage near the vernita bridge then move up to spawn from there. Anyone ever fished this fishery? anyways thoughts comments help is welcome, and i will post pics of the catch when we come back.

if your paying a guide shouldnt he know the fishery and what to use and where????

It used to be that the guides backtrolled herring and Kwiks in the deeper holes with downriggers. Then jigging with Nordics became popular. I think some still backbounce big globs of eggs too.

Those kings can be big... but don't expect to see any bright Up River Brights there.

actually theyre pretty bright until the middle of october. not super bright but still good eatin

and hybrid, i was trying to strike up convo. uim not worried about not catching fish, just thought itd try and get some interesting talk goin

i know i was just board at work and being a smart ass......

take a small mesh net so you dont loose any chunks off your fish.




yea there are a few decent fish in there now and maybe for another week or two. If i had the time I would do it.

did the guide tell you this?

URB's lose the B about the time they hit hanford.

After they pass Bonneville Dam they switch from being brights to bootyfuls, but still cut red, and will smoke up just fine.

i had good luck there with a guide about 4 years ago we fished eggs with a spin-n-glow behind a jet diver. 4 guys on the boat. We each left with a fairly chrome king and released about 15 boots. I switched up to a sardine rapped quick fish at the end of the got slammed 20 min later we had a 7' sturgeon to the boat but had to release it. there are a ton of fish there right now.

yea, theres a few brights in there. I think with the numbers over bonn there will be more than usual. but there already been fish just hanging for awhile now. Ive seen the brights up that far firsthand. The only reason we are takin a guide is because we dont have a boat right now, well thats not exactly true, we HAVE a boat but we dont have a functioning lower unit.....over half the kings that run the columbia end up at the reach, so im pretty sure we will spank em.

All that sun on the eastside must make fish look alot brighter, and cook up tastier.

No biggy, lots of people eat Eddie Murphys.

yea sumthin smarty arty like that.

Yep, it's prime time for some kings up here now. They should still be in decent shape for another week or two and the numbers are definitely getting good.

The main techniques are still diver/kwiks, eggs, herring, and now more and more the downrigger/superbaits. There are just a handful of boats that jig in the Reach; a couple of them are legit and a couple of them are snaggers.

As others have said, these fish won't win beauty contests but they're a blast. Springers and summers are for the bbq, fall kings are for the smoker... just let the dark ones go. Now that we can retain steelhead there's plenty of bbq fish to be had without having to kill dark fish.