Alarm went off at 4 AM at my MIL's place in Corvallis. Was on the river around 7. There were fish around and a small group of gear guys floating bobber rigs. I watched them for a bit to get a feel for the scene. The majority of the fish I saw role were in the hole that they were fishing. They were not catching anything. I moved downstream a bit to a spot that had the occasional fish rolling. I tried swinging, stripping and floating an bobber rig - nothing. Went to the next river and the water was really low - under 10 cfs - no way there were fish holding in there. So, I was hopeful for the canoe plan. I had an early lunch and put the canoe in the water by the restroom at Lumberman's Memorial Park.
A secondary goal was to catch a pile perch. The satellite image shows a big set of old piles east of the harbor. They were in pretty shallow water so that was a bust.
I got around the point with the piles and the bay was shallower than I expect. Again, I took that as a sign the plan might work - fish should be staging in teh channels I could see on the satellite images. When I got to the river mouth I saw a pair of salmon pushing wakes across a shallow section just outside the river channel - game on! Not so fast. The water clarity wasn't great so if there were fish in the channel, I couldn't see them. I saw another wake up in the river so paddled upstream a bit. I got a good shot to that fish as it was coming right at me. Not sure if it was following or just continuing on its path. It finally saw me and spooked about 20 feet out.
I started back to the bay and started dragging bottom. I was up there maybe 20 minutes and the tide had dropped enough that I had to get out and drag the canoe across some rocks. Rinsed my fancy new hiking boots really well in the restroom at the end of the day.
I spent some time fishing a deep hole at the mouth, but there were no fish rolling so I gave up on that fairly quickly. Nothing in the channel on the way out and the bay was getting pretty shallow so I motored toward the ghost hole to see if I could get the skunk off with some random fish on a clouser - had also read about pile perch there. I could see a couple boats trolling in that area as well. On the way over I noticed a well defined current seam. Fished that and the point that created it - nothing. Nothing in the ghost hole either. As I drove by it earlier in the day it looked like it might be jetty like - nope - rocks don't go into very deep water.
I went back to the bay and tried the other channel:
It was a good bit deeper, but the clarity was shit. I motored/paddled all the way up to the river and didn't see a single fish. Lots of birds tho.
The tide was coming back in so I went back over to the area I saw a few fish earlier in the day. As I was going up a different channel that I didn't notice in the morning, I spooked a group of fish. I was standing and didn't see them until I was almost on top of them - low November sun meant the light was shit for spotting fish by 3:00 - water clarity still not great with the incoming. I anchored at the edge of the channel and waited and made a few blind casts. They pushed up on the flat on the other side and did a little loop then came back on a path crossing the channel about 30 feet to my left - perfect. The wakes they were pushing reminded me of golden dorado on the hunt in Bolivia. I made a decent shot and they turned to follow the fly for 20 or 30 feet. They spooked about 30' out - WTF. My fly had weeds on it. If I had waited a bit longer and landed the fly in the channel instead of in the shallow water on the other side, I might have gotten and eat on that one. Had one other shot at a group of waking fish, but couldn't get the fly in front of them. I was using a floating line I bought 20+ years ago for one of the original Echo rods. It worked fine on that rod, but my newer faster 8wt hated it - this was the first time I had tried it on that rod - mistake. Trying to cast a dramatically underlined rod at fast cruising fish has to be one of the most frustrating situations in fly fishing!
I tried chasing random wakes around the flats for another hour but couldn't get in position for any of them. Good day of exploring ended in a skunking. Just not a ton of fish staging at the mouth.
Nice sunset on the way out then listened to election results - that kept me energized for the 4+ hour drive home.
A secondary goal was to catch a pile perch. The satellite image shows a big set of old piles east of the harbor. They were in pretty shallow water so that was a bust.
I got around the point with the piles and the bay was shallower than I expect. Again, I took that as a sign the plan might work - fish should be staging in teh channels I could see on the satellite images. When I got to the river mouth I saw a pair of salmon pushing wakes across a shallow section just outside the river channel - game on! Not so fast. The water clarity wasn't great so if there were fish in the channel, I couldn't see them. I saw another wake up in the river so paddled upstream a bit. I got a good shot to that fish as it was coming right at me. Not sure if it was following or just continuing on its path. It finally saw me and spooked about 20 feet out.
I started back to the bay and started dragging bottom. I was up there maybe 20 minutes and the tide had dropped enough that I had to get out and drag the canoe across some rocks. Rinsed my fancy new hiking boots really well in the restroom at the end of the day.
I spent some time fishing a deep hole at the mouth, but there were no fish rolling so I gave up on that fairly quickly. Nothing in the channel on the way out and the bay was getting pretty shallow so I motored toward the ghost hole to see if I could get the skunk off with some random fish on a clouser - had also read about pile perch there. I could see a couple boats trolling in that area as well. On the way over I noticed a well defined current seam. Fished that and the point that created it - nothing. Nothing in the ghost hole either. As I drove by it earlier in the day it looked like it might be jetty like - nope - rocks don't go into very deep water.
I went back to the bay and tried the other channel:
It was a good bit deeper, but the clarity was shit. I motored/paddled all the way up to the river and didn't see a single fish. Lots of birds tho.
The tide was coming back in so I went back over to the area I saw a few fish earlier in the day. As I was going up a different channel that I didn't notice in the morning, I spooked a group of fish. I was standing and didn't see them until I was almost on top of them - low November sun meant the light was shit for spotting fish by 3:00 - water clarity still not great with the incoming. I anchored at the edge of the channel and waited and made a few blind casts. They pushed up on the flat on the other side and did a little loop then came back on a path crossing the channel about 30 feet to my left - perfect. The wakes they were pushing reminded me of golden dorado on the hunt in Bolivia. I made a decent shot and they turned to follow the fly for 20 or 30 feet. They spooked about 30' out - WTF. My fly had weeds on it. If I had waited a bit longer and landed the fly in the channel instead of in the shallow water on the other side, I might have gotten and eat on that one. Had one other shot at a group of waking fish, but couldn't get the fly in front of them. I was using a floating line I bought 20+ years ago for one of the original Echo rods. It worked fine on that rod, but my newer faster 8wt hated it - this was the first time I had tried it on that rod - mistake. Trying to cast a dramatically underlined rod at fast cruising fish has to be one of the most frustrating situations in fly fishing!
I tried chasing random wakes around the flats for another hour but couldn't get in position for any of them. Good day of exploring ended in a skunking. Just not a ton of fish staging at the mouth.
Nice sunset on the way out then listened to election results - that kept me energized for the 4+ hour drive home.
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