pdxfisher

Thanks again for all the tips. A few Alabama rigs arrived from Amazon today. I bought some 1/8oz jig heads to use with them. I got them rigged up and ready. I am fishing tomorrow. I will give them a try at some point in the day.

Thanks for all the comments. I look forward to trying them. I will report back on whether I have success or not. Thanks also for the comment on legality. That is why I am going to use only 3 of the 5 arms with jigheads and swimbaits. On the other two arms (top arms) I plan on putting shaky head like spring things that will hold hookless swimbaits. 3 hooks is the limit in Oregon so that setup is legal here. I was going to use 1/4oz heads but maybe I will use 1/8 oz heads after reading the post by @A-jay.

One of my best producing lures out here is a 3" white swimbait on a 1/4oz jig. Often I have other fish following the hooked fish all the way to the kayak. I have been thinking about trying an Alabama rig but was curious if folks had any experience with them for smallmouth. In Oregon there is a 3-hook limit so I am planning on getting some 5-armed rigs and putting hookless baits on the top two arms. Seems like it should work well as long as all that wire does not bother the smallmouth. Just curious if anyone uses them for smallmouth. I am also curious if hooking a double or triple destroys them

That is interesting. I definitely see a lot more pleasure boaters, stand up paddlers, kayakers, etc than previous years here in Portland but I would say that the fishing pressure is just a little higher than normal. The smallmouth bass fishing has been as good as I have ever seen it so far this summer. To the original question, the fall offers some of the best bass fishing here in Portland, OR. I would say that through early to mid October the fishing is usually lights out. The bass bite starts to slow at that point but usually the fish you catch are bigger. Around that time of the year I start to do split days of sturgeon and bass or trout and bass, eventually switching to solely sturgeon fishing through the winter. Location also matters. Most of the year I fish a big river here (Willamette) but I have a hard time finding bass in the late fall (November). I have much better success at my local lake (Hagg) in the late fall. Winter fishing for me is throwing a Carolina rig, drop shot, jig'n'pig or Ned rig at timber that is near the creek channel. I am usually fishing 35-50' deep.

Everything that was old is new again In Billy Westmorland's book "Them Ol' Brown Fish" (1976) the "fly'n'rind" was the smallmouth bait. I think it might even account for the world record. I also remember in the old Fishing Facts magazines in the 70s there was always a full page ad for Northland jigs (hair, feather, bucktail, etc). Folks used them for everything.

For me the biggest thing is how comfortable the rod handle is in my hand and how well it balances with the reel weight. The handle comfort is going to be a bit different for everyone. I have pretty big hands so a lot of rods (especially those with the bare blank near the reel seat) are not comfortable for me. My advice is to go to a tackle store and hold a bunch of rods and find the one that just seems to melt right into your hand. When you hear the angels sing you will know you have the right one. Overall, pretty much any medium to medium light, 7', ~4-12lb test decent quality rod will do. Just find the one that is right for you. If you are breaking rods then perhaps you are high sticking fish when trying to land them. With a properly set drag you should not be able to break a rod on a fish.

Thanks guys! This is an awesome site. Seems like most everyone is friendly and helpful.

Thanks everyone. @roadwarrior I think my videos are OK. They are just me reeling in fish. They are mostly pretty boring - glad there is no rule against that

Hey all, I have been fishing for about 50 years and targeting bass for about 45 of those 50. I have fished a fair bit in PA and NC, but I have been in Oregon for the past 23 years. I an in Portland, OR now. I mostly focus on big river (Willamette) smallmouth fishing from a kayak. I own several kayaks and even an old Coleman Crawdad. My main "ride" is a Hobie Outback outfitted with a Garmin Echomap Ultra 106SV + Garmin Steady cast (powered by a one manpower "motor"). I have already posted a few reports and commented a few times but figured I should do the formal hello. This seems like a great site and I have already felt welcomed. I look forward to learning tons and contributing what I can.

I have not fished that area but that is what I keep drooling over. The Navionics webapp of that area and the Google maps views look really good. This fall the wind should die down enough to make it yak-able. It is a pretty long drive from Portland so I want to make sure I can spend a full day on the water - and no time in the water

Thanks guys! Portland has some really good bass fishing. The Columbia is even better than the Willamette but it is hard to find days when the wind is calm enough in the Columbia gorge to get the kayak on the water.

Took me a while to get this written as yardwork and real work have been keeping me occupied. I hit the upper Willamette out of 10th street on Thursday, August 6th. I had taken a week off of work to do yardwork but with rain in the forecast I figured I should just go fishing instead of working on a steep and slippery slope. I got to the river around daybreak and was on the water around 6am. The morning started out breezy and cloudy after an hour or two it changed to breezy, rainy and cloudy. I was a bit underdressed and shivering off and on all morning. I almost packed it in a few times but I decided I didn't want to have to tell my wife what a wimp I had become. I could her her say, "So, you came home early because to were too cold on an August morning". Hypothermia did not seem so bad It rained for most of the morning. A steady rain coupled with a decent wind blowing in my face did not make for the most pleasant of fishing conditions. Wind and current were aligned and I had to constantly pedal my kayak to not drift downstream really fast. There were even occasional whitecaps on the river. Definitely not my favorite conditions. The fishing was decent. I ended up with 47 smallmouth and 1 tiny largemouth. My best fish of the day was a 2lb 11oz smallmouth that I caught on my favorite 3" white swimbait on a 1/4oz jighead. I fished topwater a lot in the morning but I never hooked up. With the wind, rain and waves it was hard to even see my topwater. After a while I gave that up and switched to a spybait. I had never used one before but a friend of mine had tried them earlier with good success so I had ordered a couple and decided to give them a try. One of the great things about those spybaits is that they cast incredibly well. I have to admit that up to that point I was spending a lot of time picking out backlashes in the gusty wind. The spybait was a godsend in that regard. It cut through the wind incredibly well and that definitely improved my mood. I caught a lot of fish on the spybait. My best was a 2lb 5oz smallmouth: I caught a mixture of dinks and nice fish on it throughout the day. A really interesting thing is that I had tons of fish follow it to the kayak and tons of fish hit it right at the kayak. Exploding on it just as I was about to lift it from the water. I think I may have been fishing it a little too fast - mostly because the kayak was blowing around so much that it was dragging the lure on top of how fast I was reeling. I can't wait to try them on a calm day. I would say that they seem to feel a similar role to the 3" swimbait but they do sink faster and seem to stay deeper on the retrieve. Those are nice features. Throughout the day I would move along humps and points and when I spotted fish under the kayak I would quickly switch rods and drop down either a Ned rig or a drop shot. Both worked really well at picking those fish up. A lot of the fish were suspend 10' off the bottom and I would watch them follow the soft plastic down to the bottom on the 2D sonar and then feel the "thump" as they sucked it in. I really love my sonar! Overall, I would say I caught a good number of fish on the spybait, 3" swimbait, Ned rig and dropshot. I did catch on fish on a topwater. As I was heading back to the ramp in the late afternoon the weather had switched to a mix of clouds and sun. I decided to try another new lure (for me). A Berkley Choppo. They are a whopper plopper knockoff but I have been unhappy with the 90 sized plopper (the 110s are grea). The 90 sized ploppers take a while to surface after a cast in the kayak unless I raise my arms straight up overhead as it lands and check the cast just as the lure lands. I figured I would try the Choppo. I am happy to say that the Choppo surfaces really well after a long cast. I did finally catch a topwater fish late in the afternoon on the way to the ramp after missing and losing a couple others. I can't wait to fish that lure in good topwater conditions. After that fish I made a few casts but mostly just sped back to the launch and called it a day. Here are a few more fish from the day:

I guess it is the same in the Portland area, no matter where that Portland is located Fun fact: Portland Oregon is North of Portland Maine.

It is interesting to read the replies. Out here in Oregon I can catch smallmouth in water anywhere from 3' to 40' on the same day. The Willamette is a big river and has depths of over 130' in places. There is no fast water (riffles) like you might have in a stream or small river but there are areas with more or less current but never a lot of current in the summer. My favorite summer spots are humps surrounded by deeper water. Some days the bass stay on top of the humps all day and will hit a reaction bait. Some days that bite ends in the morning. The "normal" pattern is to fish the humps tops until that bite stops then progressively work deeper and follow the fish down with a Ned rig or drop shot. I am not sure if I am chasing the same fish or if the fish at a certain depth become inactive and I am just finding a group at a greater depth that are more active. I would describe a normal day out here as calm in the morning, then the sun comes out and it is calm and sunny for a bit, then the wind starts to pick up (usually rising steadily throughout the day) and it is sunny and windy until I go home. It seems like under calm sunny conditions only deeper fish (15-40') are active. Many times the shallow fish get active in the middle of the afternoon if there is a good chop. There is no magic depth out here that produces all day long. I just try to fish structures that give me the opportunity to work a bunch of different depths until I find the biters and then I pay close attention to if they stop. For whatever reason it is easy for me to be catching fish at a good clip off a certain structure and fail to notice for quite a while that they have stopped biting unless I really pay attention. Not sure if any of this applies to you but that is how it is out here in Oregon.

Oops, accidentally posted the first fish twice and missed a different one. Here is the missing guy

Thanks! I will put future reports in the fishing reports board. I was not sure which board was most appropriate since the fishing reports are smallmouth-centric.

I fished the Willamette river out of Roger's landing in Newberg ORfor the first time this year. The flashboards are in at the falls now and the river has been raised about 3' from earlier in the season. They do this every summer. I prefer fishing this section after the flashboards are in place since the current is less and some rocky spots have a little more water on them. I am always amazed at how different this section of the river is compared to 10th street or the lower river. The bottom is mostly soft with tons of trees on the bottom (here and there) and just a few rocky spots heading downstream from the ramp. The river is far more featureless than the lower in the river. Upstream from the island I think it gets rocky again but that is not where I went. There are some amazing structures around that area to be sure. A couple of spots where there are these huge rocky structures that stick straight up 20 to 30' off the bottom. They are big flats on top (relatively smooth) and sheer walls along the edges. I always think I should catch a million fish off of those but I never manage to scratch out more than a fish or two. The other thing that is strange about that area is that there is relatively little surface activity. Around 10th street and in the lower river fishing are chasing bait all morning and the topwater bite can last into the afternoon on a cloudy day like Friday. I did not catch a single topwater fish, I did not have a single topwater hit! I did see a group of bass chasing bait one time and I was able to pull up on them and toss the swimbait that was on the rod in my hand and catch one. I am sure I could have caught those fish on a topwater but I did not want to take the time to switch rods. Other than that it was mostly crickets on the surface other than the occasional splash of a small fish. The strange thing is that there are a ton of eagles and ospreys in that stretch. I would guess that meant fish were near the surface but if they were they did not like me. I know the above sounds kind of negative but really it is just a different fishing experience. I ended up with 46 bass (44 smallmouth and two small largemouth) with a nice smattering of pound and half fish throughout the day. The thing that is so different is how the fish behave. There are fish on the rocky structures, but those structures are relatively rare compared to elsewhere. I am sure they get fished pretty hard and while I did have success on them it was hard to catch many fish on active baits. I caught a handful of fish on my usual 3" white swimbait, a half dozen on a hot lips express crankbait (dives to about 12'), one fish on a 1.5 squarebill, one fish on a jerkbait and the rest were split between a Ned rig and drop shot. Most of the fish I caught were in 18-30' of water around some type of cover. A lot of fish came off of soft bottoms around sunken trees in deep water. This is not what I would normally consider smallmouth water but they seem to use it in that stretch. I also caught fish on a couple of small rocky outcrops and structures. The fish bit well there but I covered those areas a couple of times and then moved on. Once again, this was a cloudy day with some wind. Fish would have been active and on top in the other sections that I fish but the Newberg fish seem to have a thing for deeper water. They bit well in that deeper water but it is a lot more tedious fishing a drop shot compared to fishing an active bait. I did go back to the topwater and shallower running active baits throughout the day but the fish just did not want to come up and hit them. I think the reason is that in that section there is not much water in 5-10'. In most places the rocky structures are small and drop off into 15-30' of water. Just very different than around 10th street. Overall it was a pretty good day out on the water. The wind made kayak control a little difficult (especially for deep water fishing) but I was able to manage just fine. It was cool that I caught 2 small largemouth. Biggest excitement of the day was the 5 seconds when I hooked a huge fish. It just buried my rod and as I applied pressure the line just popped. It broke about 1/2 way up my fluorocarbon leader. I must have nicked it at some point and not noticed. You can see it at about the 28 minute mark in the video below. Here are a couple of fish from the day: DSCN1682 Here is a link to a video of the day: https://youtu.be/m9_7PV98LfA

I fish out of a kayak and my FF sits on the front about 4' from where I am seated. I had an Echomap 73SV chirp, which I really liked, but recently upgraded to an Echomap Ultra 106SV. That was a big upgrade in screen quality. The 10" screen is so much easier to read - even in the sun. It just seems brighter and crisper. It may not be the best bang for the buck (that would probably be a 93SV) but my old eyes thank me every trip out. The other upgrade I would recommend is a heading sensor. That has made a huge deal in my success. I have all the places I fish pretty well mapped out (that maps that come with the unit are good but nothing beats homemade). I can set up exactly as I want with respect to the structure I am fishing and make sure I am casting where I want to be casting. In the kayak this may be more of a problem but it is really easy for me to get rotated or even be sliding sideways with a slight breeze. With the heading sensor line on and the gps heading line on I can see which way I am moving and which way I am facing and that is really helpful.

I am not sure how you get the waypoints off your phone but if you can get them to your computer you should be able to convert them to a gpx file ( https://www.gpsbabel.org/) if they are not in a gpx file already, put the gpx file on an SD card and load them on the Garmin. (User Data -> Data Transfer -> File Type -> GPX)

Right on! Good smallmouth fishing and down around Salem there are some backwaters of the Willamette that hold largemouth as well.

I had one of my best days ever on the upper Willamette on the 17th of July. It was the mix of numbers, quality and bonus fish that made the day so special. I met up with a guy from another forum who had recently moved to the PNW from San Diego. We launched out of 10th street in West Linn. Conditions were interesting since they were installing the flashboards a the falls and the river had risen a foot overnight. For those of you who are unaware every summer PGE installs flashboards at the summer about this time of year. The flashboards create a mini-dam that is 3' high and the water level in the upper river all they way past Newberg raises by about 3'. This was the first time fishing while the river was rising and I had some concerns about how the rising water would affect the bass and whether they would be hard to find. I got there before him and started fishing fairly close to the ramp while waiting for him to show up. For what ended up being an epic day it started out quite slowly. The river was glass smooth and I anticipated an off the chart topwater bite. While I did catch a few fish on the Sammy (stick bait) I missed way more than I caught. Usually when it is calm the hookup rate is pretty good on that lure but not on Sunday. After my friend got there we moved up river a bit and I put down the topwater and started switching between a jerkbait (KVD 200 series) and a small swimbait (3" white on a 1/4oz jig head). Those lures both produced well and I started picking up fish more regularly. The great thing of it was that the while there were dinks mixed in there were plenty of quality fish: The previous week in the lower river I caught mostly dinks but on Sunday there were a lot of nice quality fish. In that clear water you would often see other bass with the one you had hooked. I love seeing that. I was doing great and the guy I was fishing with was doing great as well. We were fishing a big hump/flat in the middle of the river and the bass seemed like they were roving in schools everywhere. We had quite a few doubles during the day! As I worked near the edge of the hump I made a cast out towards deeper water. As I brought the swimbait back to the hump. I felt a couple of thumps. I was not sure if they were weeds or bass but then there was a solid takedown and I had a really good fish on. It made a couple of really big jumps (you can see them in slow motion on the video at the end) and fought like a demon. When I got it close I saw another similar sized bass with it trying to steal the lure. Nothing warms my heart more than greedy bass I finally landed it and it weighed in at 3lb 1oz which is a really nice summer smallmouth!! I kept fishing and switching between the swimbait and jerkbait and they kept producing well. You would cast for a bit with no bites and then run into a flurry of action. We just kept slowly working our way up the hump and finding pod after pod of hungry bass. One kind of cool thing that happened was that on one cast with the jerkbait I had a hard hit and the fish almost immediately launched itself from the water. After another great fight I got it to the side of the kayak and it was a pikieminnow! I think that is the first time I have had a pikieminnow jump clean out of the water. It fought as hard as a smallmouth all the way to the kayak (instead of the usual hard hit then giving up). I think it secretly wants to be a smallmouth After a bit the breeze picked up a little and I decided to try topwater again. Instead of throwing the Sammy I put on a whopper plopper. That ended up being a winning decision. The bass were loving that whopper plopper and eating it really well. I was now hooking up with almost every bite and the bites were plentiful. We fished the middle hump but also hit some points along the shoreline. They all held fish. Tragedy did strike briefly for me though. I cast the plopper out and bounced it off of a hard spot and the prop part broke free from the sleeve that holds it in place. I had the magic lure and now it was worthless. It was a really deflating moment. I went back to the Sammy, jerkbait and swimbait and caught fish but not quite as fast nor as fun as with the plopper. Finally I decided to tie on a smaller whopper plopper. I bought 2 of those a long time ago, fished them once and never used them much after that. They don't come to the surface immediately (I need to raise my rod straight overhead to get them up) and are generally a pain to fish. This was another one of those really good decision. While it was more work and hurt my bad shoulders they were chomping that thing at least as well as the bigger plopper. From that point on I mostly fished by tossing the plopper and then picking up the Ned rig when I marked a fish under the kayak. It was just such a fun day of fishing. Catch fish on the plopper. See a fish on the sonar, drop down and catch that one. A great combination of topwater and video game fishing. It just does not get more fun than that for me. I marked some fish in the trough at the upstream end of one of the humps we were fishing and made a short cast with the Ned rig. I felt a fish pick it up and I could immediately tell that this fish had some shoulders. This fish stayed down and took drag. I would pull it up a little and then it would take the line back. After a couple of minutes of back and forth I was surprised to see a fat old channel cat on my line! The rest of the day continued with the same patterns. Mostly throwing the plopper and Ned rig. Occasionally, I would throw the swimbait or jerkbait and even caught one a crankbait and a couple on a drop shot. As the cloud cover diminished during the day the wind grew and that seemed to make the bass bite even better (even though kayak control became a lot harder). I had worked my way pretty far upstream by early afternoon and tried to cast beyond a rock that was sticking up out of the river. I accidentally cast over it and as I started to reel I immediately had a good sized bass grab my lure with my line being overtop of this rock. I set the hook and the rock cut the line. The fish jumped a couple of times (trying to get rid of the lure) and it looked like he threw the lure onto the shore. I spent about 15 minutes looking but I could not find it. Maybe the lure flying onto shore was my imagination. At that point I decided it was time to head back . By now the wind was stiff and the river had whitecaps and small waves that would break over my bow as I headed into them. I still stopped when I marked fish to fish the Ned rig and the fish continued to cooperate. All day long there were plenty of quality fish even in the rough water. Here are a handful of pictures. This one had such a cool golden color: This guy was choking on a fish but still hit my plopper: Another nice chunk from late in the day: Here is some video of the day (it is long): If you just want to jump to the 3lber: If you want to see the jumping pikieminnow (holy leaping pikieminnows batman): If you want to see the catfish: It is hard to imagine a better day on the water!

I use Gamakatsu Octopus hooks. I cut a thin slice of surgical tubing and slide it onto the middle of my worm. I hook through the tubing, through the worm, through the tubing on the other side. I like this because the worm is fixed securely in position and orthogonal to the worm. With the rubber band the hook is inline with the worm and I can believe this can occasionally cause a missed fish. I can often catch 5 to 10 bass off a single 3" senko.

Ouch! That is about as painful as it gets. Were you able to get them back or were they gone? Great video! I have a Google Keep list for fishing. I have one list for the day before and for the day of. Every once in a while if I forget something new on the day of I add it to the list. I am down to only messing up once or twice a season now

45 bass is not a hard number to hit for a full day on the Willamette. I have had a couple of days with over 100 bass. The fish on this trip (my first to that section this year) seemed smaller than in past years. I would bet for numbers of bass the Willamette is hard to beat. The best part is that most folks out here don't fish for them and instead they focus on salmon and steelhead. Overall, it was a fine day of fishing but I definitely felt the pain of losing the bigger fish of a double and losing a walleye (rare in that section). At least I got them on the video so they can torment me forever

I fished the lower Willamette river on Sunday the 12th of July. It was almost a great day but I was able to avoid that by consistently snatching defeat from the jaws of victory We have all had those kinds of days where you almost make the great catch. I guess the fish gods decided it was my time. The day basically broke down into 3 segments. The early morning topwater bite was good but a bit erratic. When I was around a school of bass they would relentlessly attack my Sammy but unless I saw them busting in an area I had very few bites just casting around. Usually the bass are spread in that area and fan casting works pretty well, but not on Sunday. The first time I was able to successfully prevent the day from being great was during the morning topwater bite. I saw some fish breaking a hundred yards or so from me. By the time I got there they had stopped pushing bait but I decided to cast anyways. It was like the whole school was attacking my topwater. I hooked what felt like a good fish. It turned out to be 2 good fish!! I had them right at the kayak when the bigger on pulled off. Dang. The one I landed was my best of the day. You can see the double just as I lose one of them around the 7:37 mark of the video linked at the end. Once the topwater bite slowed I started throwing a jerk bait (KVD jerkbait) and they were all over that for a few hours. It seemed they would not hit the surface but that they would hit the jerkbait a couple feet down. A lot of these fish were along steep banks and bluff walls where there was some hidden collapse so that there was a small point under the water. Some of the fish were shallower and on top of the point and some were over 20-30' of water. I never figured out exactly where the fish were but by moving my casts around I caught them. This pattern accounted for a second lost double of the day for me. On one cast I saw what looked to be at least 20 bass of varying sizes following my jerkbait. Some of the fish were pretty big. Two of the smaller ones attacked it at the same time and I had my second double on for the day. I tried to rush them in just to land them but again, one of the fish pulled off near the kayak. Dang a second time. Once the jerkbait bite started to slow I switched to fishing a drop shot in 15-30' of water around various drop offs, humps, rocky flats and ledges. The bite was good on the drop shot the rest of the day. I occasionally threw a Ned rig but with the wind, current and boat wake chop it was a lot easier to maintain contact with the drop shot. Most all of these fish were dinky in size but they still fight hard on a medium light spinning rod. I was using a Z Man Trick Shotz in green pumpkin. I don't think that the bait was particularly critical but the Z Man baits last the longest by far. I can usually catch 15 or more bass before I have to replace the bait. The third and final snatching of victory from the jaws of defeat came while fishing the drop shot. I hooked a good fish and I was fighting it to the surface. I saw a flash down deep and it did not look like a bass. I got it to just below the surface when the hook just pulled out. I watched a 2-3lb walleye bolt back to the depths. That would have been the first walleye I had every caught in the Willamette proper. They are rare in that stretch. You can see the walleye just as I lose it around the 21:21 mark of the video. Make sure you watch it in HD or the walleye is just a blur. I ended the day with 45 bass but there were a lot more dinks than the week before. I will change some things up before I fish there again in an attempt to catch some better quality fish.