In SW Washington fishing this week, the Columbia is still fishing great above the closure line with trollers and anchor fisherman having great success. Tributary fishing has started to really pick up with tons of fish holding and the rivers cooling down. Local lakes and ponds have started to seriously slow with water temperature dropping. No Creel reports this week as WDFW haven’t sent anything out.
REMINDER, please verify the regulations before fishing any body of water. AND wear a life jacket.
Lewis Report
North Fork
The river is back down to 1200 cfs so I would guess they are done with the drainage and have begun work on the Merwin dam. I will update more if I receive any more updates on flow changes but as of now this is the flow minimum until October 16th. The river has fished very well in recent days. I fished Sunday and Tuesday this week with tons of bites but not many fish committing to the bait at times. Sunday, I fished near the golf course and probably had 15 bites with only two fish hooked. Tuesday, we fished the meat hole along with tons of other boats and almost every boat had a fish or two. We landed two, one wild Chinook and one small jack Coho.
Kalama Report
No first hand reports out of Kalama this week but I have heard there are a good number of coho and Chinook in the river.
Cowlitz Report
Last week, Tacoma Power employees recovered 42 summer-run steelhead adults, 49 spring Chinook adults, 26 spring Chinook jacks, 36 spring Chinook mini-jacks, 99 fall Chinook adults, 18 fall Chinook jacks, 180 coho adults, 12 coho jacks, and 40 cutthroat trout over four days of operations at the Cowlitz Salmon Hatchery separator.
During the past week, Tacoma Power employees released 28 spring Chinook adults, ten spring Chinook jacks, 13 coho adults, two coho jacks, and three cutthroat trout at Franklin Bridge in Packwood.
Washougal Report
The Washougal has only gotten better with most fish being caught in the lower portion of the river up to the mile marker 3 on Washougal River road, anything past that is some seriously skinny water with few deep holes in between.
Columbia River
The lower river reopens this weekend 15th-17th and above warrior rock to Bonneville has a season extension until the 21st of this month. The river has fished great lately though very crowded. Ian has yet to be skunked near the deadline at warrior rock in his recent trips out. He fished yesterday and said there was a monster bite during the tide change in the afternoon 3:30 PM-5:00 PM he got his two fish and saw plenty of other boats catching them. Camas/Washougal boats have been doing great as well. I talked with one angler on Sunday who said he had been killing them near the mouth of the sandy but didn’t give an exact location or gear being used. The dam counts are nearly 380,000 for fall chinook, which is already 6,000 more than forecasted with the season not over which is some really good news.
Creel Reports for the Columbia read as the following – No creel reports this week, no idea why.
Drano Lake
Drano lake continues to produce fish in great numbers. I fished for a couple hours here this past Sunday only getting one bright fish with a few tules before hand but we only had about two hours to fish and we were just in the area. People trolling had varied success with some getting limits within an hour or two but others not doing as well.
Warm Water Lakes and Ponds
The bite for warm water species has way slowed this could be due to lack of reports due to most people chasing fall salmon in the local tributaries but with water temperatures dropping and fall rapidly approaching Bass, panfish, and catfish fishing is just going to get worse and worse.
Lake Merwin
Fishing has essentially died out with very few fish being caught as most fish are headed for their home stream to spawn. The Kokanee have some good color to them and the meat is very very soft and off color. There are not many people chasing these fish and I will start hearing more come early spring.
Westport
No report this week still looking for literally anything here but this is an all-new fishing area for me so I have no connections out here.
Stay fishy,
Seth Kolshinski
There is A LOT more for SW Washington Members here. And SW Washington members can find our complete Columbia River reports here.
Read this week’s Oregon fishing report.
east fork lewis has big chinook i think its open until dec