Willamette River smallmouth are on fire, Portland OR

[pdxfisher]

I hit the upper Willamette out of Willamette park in West Linn (10th street) on Thursday and had a fantastic day on the water. I got to the ramp by 5am and was fishing shortly thereafter. It was breezy right out of the gate with the wind out of the South and pretty dang cold for a July morning. I started out throwing a topwater (Sammy) and I was getting a ton of bites but with the chop on the water I was having a hard time hooking up.

The fish I did land early were mostly all dinks and that may have been part of the problem. I would occasionally put down the topwater and make a few casts with a swimbait or a crankbait but I quickly set those rods down and picked the topwater back up. It is hard to put down the topwater when they are smacking it so good even if the hook up rate was poor. 

 

I worked my way along the hump that runs down the middle of the river and it was clear that the bass were traveling in wolf packs. No hits for a while and then all of a sudden I would get bites on every cast for a few minutes. They were mostly dinks but I would occasionally get a nicer fish thrown into the mix:

 

 

Eventually I was up close to one of my favorite points in the river and I worked it over with the topwater but I only missed a few fish. Since I love that spot I went back over it with the little swimbait and that turned out to be a good call. I picked up 4 bass off that spot including this nice one:

 

 

I went back out to the hump with the swmbait but after grabbing moss on a couple of casts I switched back to the topwater and they were still all over it. The topwater bite lasted until about noon and was best for me later in the morning. The breeze backed off a bit and the hits started turning into fish more often than not. I still missed my fair share including one maniac that jumped clear out of the water twice trying to eat it. It was probably the best topwater bite of my life. I have never had so many fish bite the topwater for such a long period of time. I even caught a good-sized pikieminnow which I know a lot of folks hate but I still think that they are an interesting bycatch.

 

Here is one of the nicer topwater fish:

 

 

Around noon the skies cleared a bit, the wind died down and the topwater bite slowed down. To be honest I am not sure if the bite slowed or if I just had finally moved myself up to less productive water. In any case I decided to take a break for a while, give my aching shoulders a well-deserved rest, and to try to upgrade my fishfinder on the water. Garmin units have an app on the fishfinder called Active Captain and a matching app for the phone. It took two tries but I was able to download the update to my phone, then transfer it to the FF and upgrade it. Overall it was pretty cool to get that to work.

After that I decided to push up river further than I usually do to explore and map out the river there. There is just so much cool and interesting structure with tons of steep drops and deep water rock piles. In the morning I was fishing in 5-10' of water so it was kind of fun try a little deep water drop shot fishing. I spent the next hour or two going along the edges of steep drops. I would dust off the adjacent flat with my swimbait and then drop shot in the deeper parts.

The day had turned calm and mostly sunny and I caught drop shot fish in 15', 20' and 30' of water. I just could not find a place where there were not fish that wanted to bite. It was just a crazy day.  I ended up catching my best fish of the day (1lb 15oz) on the swimbait on a shallow flat right next to a steep drop.

 

 

To be honest by the time the afternoon rolled around I was kind of burnt our on catching fish. I spent more time mapping than fishing but that is an important job as well. The built-in maps are not horrible but they are missing tons of small humps and the locations of the drops are often off. I really love going back and forth and remapping everything with the quickdraw contours. It always pays dividends later!

 

After a while I decided it was time to head home. I pedaled some and just drifted some. The wind had picked back up a bit and was now out of the North. As I made my way back I decided to fish and map a point on the river that I had never fished before. It was sunny and bright and the fish were all over that point, once again in 5-10' of water, and just aggressive as could be. I was throwing the swimbait and they were hammering it. It is about as easy as fishing can get. Cast and retrieve, nothing fancy.

 

I ended up with 51 bass and if I had fished hard all day I am sure I could have easily surpassed 70. No big fish for the day but I would guess I had about 12 to 15 bass in the 1.5 to 2lb range. Surprisingly, the morning bite was the worst. The fish were almost all dinks and I was having a hard time hooking up. The bite picked up in both numbers and size as the day wore on. The sun coming out in the afternoon seemed only to make them bite even better. They were still biting like crazy when I left. Both my shoulders were hurting like a toothache and I just could not reel in another fish. That is not a bad problem to have!

 

[pdxfisher]

Forgot the video link: 

 

[archman]

Sounds like a great day!

[pdxfisher]

Thanks, the smallmouth fishing is like that until late fall. More fish in the rivers than you can shake a stickbait at

[archman]

My sister used to live out in Salem. I wish she still lived out there. What happens to the smallies in the fall? I would think they would put the feedbag on for winter. 

[optimator]

We caught a ton on Friday here in Southern Oregon at Applegate lake. Good times!

[pdxfisher]

10 hours ago, archman said:

My sister used to live out in Salem. I wish she still lived out there. What happens to the smallies in the fall? I would think they would put the feedbag on for winter. 

The bass bite slows in November around here. Starting around then I spend most of my time sturgeon fishing out of my kayak. Bass fishing is fun but whooping a 7-8' fish is on a whole other level

4 hours ago, optimator said:

We caught a ton on Friday here in Southern Oregon at Applegate lake. Good times!

Awesome! Are those largemouth or smallmouth (or both) down your way. Not many largemouth up here around Portland but tons of smallmouth.

[optimator]

11 hours ago, pdxfisher said:

The bass bite slows in November around here. Starting around then I spend most of my time sturgeon fishing out of my kayak. Bass fishing is fun but whooping a 7-8' fish is on a whole other level

Awesome! Are those largemouth or smallmouth (or both) down your way. Not many largemouth up here around Portland but tons of smallmouth.

We were catching both. Mostly smallies in this lake though. 

[Swamp Girl]

What a great day! I like the idea of sitting atop the water and fishing. I've done a couple long kayaking trips (more than 4,000 miles in total), but didn't fish. I fish out of a canoe, but that elevates you a little above the action. I also love river fishing, river smallmouth, and oodles of action!

[OkobojiEagle]

This post should be in the "fishing reports" board

[Oregon Native]

Fished the Willamette and Columbia many years.....enjoy....great area and times.