Tough day on the Willamette

[pdxfisher]

I fished the Willamette for the first time in a long time on Saturday the 28th. I was expecting a typical 40 to 60 fish day with a handful of decent sized fish mixed in. That was about as far from what I actually accomplished as possible. I fished all day long for only 13 small bass (biggest was only an embarrassing 12.75"). I am just not sure where they were. Most of the fish I did catch came out of 10-20' of water but I did fish deeper and shallower.

 

The only things I did not do was fish the weedbeds and beat the bank. I am not sure if all the coho running up the river have pushed the bass off their normal haunts, if I was just not doing the right thing or if they were there and just not feeding. I usually mark quite a fish around the 15-20' rockpiles but I was not seeing much at all last Saturday. I am still pretty perplexed as to where the fish were hiding.

 

Maybe there is something to that catching one on the first cast being bad luck I was pretty stoked to catch a little largemouth on my first cast of the day. It sucked under my stick bait pretty quietly (not super aggressive). I only had one other bite on topwater. Caught one on a jerkbait and the rest were on a drop shot or Ned rig.  Overall it was one of my most disappointing days of fishing in a really long time.

 

Oh well, I will just have to try hard again next time and hope that the fish make it up to me after realizing how rude they were being on this last trip

 

Here is a short video with some short fish.

 

 

[Swamp Girl]

Dang it. Tough days happen to the best of us ...like you.

[pdxfisher]

On 10/6/2024 at 7:21 AM, Swamp Girl said:

Dang it. Tough days happen to the best of us ...like you.

It's good to get your butt kicked every now and again. Just don't want it to be a regular thing

[Swamp Girl]

7 hours ago, pdxfisher said:

It's good to get your butt kicked every now and again. Just don't want it to be a regular thing

 

Agreed. A humbling here and there keeps us hungry. I've been on water a couple times in my life where the bass were too easy to catch. One time was in Ontario where a cold wind howled for five straight days, which clamped the smallies' jaws. When the cold air finally passed, the smallies fed like fat kids in an unsupervised candy shop. We caught and caught and caught them and then I lay my rod down and simply watched. I did the same thing on the Mississippi River once too. Too much success is the basis of Rod Sterling's Twilight Zone episode where a gambler ends up in a casino where he always wins and mistakes it for Heaven at first: