Columbia smallmouth

Have to admit I haven't figured out how to catch them regularly before the spawn. Not for lack of trying though.
 
I like to wait until the water warms up a little....at least enough to hit pre-spawn. My best success has always been once the water reaches high 40s (preferably 50--for me)....usually April at some point.

Just so much starting up all at once though.
 
Right now the fish are in their deep winter spots. In a few weeks they'll move up into staging areas to feed on crayfish. This happens in high 40s low 50s water temps.
Best wat to find staging areas is to work backwards from spawning areas until you find structure in 15-20 feet of water.. offshore out of the current islands are good as are the points along the mouths of coves. Counter intuitively this time of year often bigger, louder and faster presentations are better than slow natural presentations. Getting them to react is easier than trying to trigger a feeding response.. red is a good color.
I personally am not going to fly fish for them until they are a little shallower. Maybe mid April or so.. depends on the weather and how much time I spend walleye fishing.
 
Same as Rob, I like it when they move shallower.
 
Snopro said:
Rob's on it. I'm dirt bagging in 30-40'. Not a lot of action, but what you catch is probably going to be large.
Click to expand...
There have been a couple of years where I've hit it just right, where they're slightly shallower (10-15') yet still have gotten the abundance of larger fish....tough to replicate as each of those years, that has only lasted a couple of weeks at most. But when it happened, it was an absolute blast on a fly rod.
 
After the spawn larger smallmouth go into a little bit of a funk for a couple weeks. After that however they are generally aggressive feeders until November. During the summer many fish do go deep but not all of them. Though even for the shallower fish a boat makes it a lot easier as t some of the best spots are the outside edges of weed beds.
Particularly difficult are hot glassy days in August though early mornings can be great.

If all you care about is having fun there is lots of good wading access between the John Day river and Boardman a little Google maps searching will make access points obvious.. The John day pool has an incredible amount of fish in it and they are easy to catch on poppers all summer long.

I'm still amazed how few people participate in this fishery.
People just don't like brown fish I guess.
 
Columbia River update

Fished yesterday (Gear) I got out for a couple hours yesterday water temps 47-48
The big females are coming out of winter hiding spots and are feeding. They responded yesterday to fast moving baits. I caught my fish in 15-20 feet of water. Another week and they'll be in the 10-15 range getting ready to spawn probably in mid-April this year. Right now they are aggressive, fat ,healthy and pull hard.. this was in the Celilo pool btw.
 
Looks like a nice week of weather on tap too. With the D raging and the winter run being a no show it may be the spring of the bass in The Gorge! Maybe I'll go poke around in my favorite basin this week.
 
I did get a few hours in on the main stream Columbia last week, but couldn’t buy a fish. Seemed to be a lot of weeds this year where we normally toss a fly, so did spend more time out in 15-20’ of water, and saw a few on the finder. A nice, rainy, foggy, no wind day, but I’ll give it a couple more weeks, and try it again….

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