by Jason Brooks, April 11, 2015

Springtime means Springers! I had a chance to head out to the lower Columbia and fish the tail end of the Spring Chinook fishery (which has been extended with a one day opener for this coming Thursday, April 16th). Launching at the Port of Kalama launch at daylight isn’t because this is an early morning bite, but more of maximizing the daylight and the fact that afternoon winds often cause you to vacate the water.

Trolling during incoming and slack tide is very productive. The set-up starts with a stout rod. We were using 9ft heavy action rods by North Fork Customs. By having a little longer rod you can spread them out and cover more water.



Along with a beefed up rod a good trolling reel is needed and we had Okuma Coldwater Series reels, size 203, with line counters. Spooled with Izorline XXX in 30 pound test as well as a few other rods spooled with 50 pound braid. We had two rods per person on our trip, only fishing one at a time but had the second rod ready and rigged which helps when tangles happen or if you get a bite and miss the fish just reel up grab the other rod and put it out, then take the time to re-bait the first rod. Next on the mainline was a slider with a bead bumper. On the slider was an 18 inch dropper of 20 pound monofilament to a 10 ounce lead round ball. Tied on the end of the mainline was a ball bearing swivel and a duo lock snap, then another 18 inches of 30 pound test XXX Izorline to an in-line flasher (Big Al’s, Kone Zone, Short Bus, there are many kinds so find the ones you like). The most popular colors are green and chartreuse. Behind the in-line flasher tie on 3 feet of 30 pound leader to a 4 bead chain swivel, then another 2 to 3 feet of leader to a mooching rig. We used cut plug green label herring including some dyed chartreuse or “bright green”. Slowly drop it down to the bottom and then make a ½ turn crank on the reel. You want this to be as close to the bottom as possible. Due to the heavy dropper weight if you drop it down too fast you will cause everything to tangle up. If you have a second rod ready to go just reel up, switch out rods and then work on the tangle as you troll.



It took about two hours before we hooked our first fish of the day which quickly broke off (still unknown if this was due to a sea lion or just bad luck). On the next pass it was “fish on” again for my friend David Patrick who boated his first ever Springer. He was happy about it, being a veteran Grays Harbor salmon catcher but I bet after he bakes that first Springer we will see him a lot more out on the Columbia in future years!



As the tide starts to change to an outgoing flow a lot of people anchor up and sit back on hog lines. However, if you don’t want to do this you don’t need to as people will still be trolling. In fact after we went “on the hook” and anchored I noticed several of the guides continued to troll and picked up a lot of fish while we sat on anchor and waited for the rod to bend.

We did about average talking with the fish counter at the launch who said he had checked 28 fish for 14 boats so far. Since we hooked two and landed one for three of us in the boat we figured that there was no reason to complain, until the guide boats started showing up at the dock, most with boat limits for clients.