I had a spectacular time fishing on the Columbia River last week. I fished from above Rocky Reach Dam to Chelan Falls and I even got all the way up to Rufus Woods Reservoir. Although I didn’t catch fish at all of these locations, I still put a load of fresh fish in the freezer.

It had been over a year since I had the chance to fish with my good friend Shane Magnuson. He fished in Alaska last year and we missed our usual opening day trip to Chelan Falls which had become a tradition spanning many years, over a decade actually. When he called and invited me on his boat, I was thrilled and on Thursday I met him and his other fishing buddies Kevin Fehl and Tom Redifer. I have fished with Shane and these two friends many times and we always have a great time. Kevin had to leave early to go to work but he took a nice king home with him. Tom and I added to the total, landing two more kings each. Shane was running lead balls instead of downriggers, which is a technique that he pioneered on the upper Columbia. You will now see many anglers fishing with this method for both kings and sockeye with great success.

He had a variety of Super Baits on our rods including the original banana shape and the “mini” plug cuts. The Super Baits were stuffed with Graybill’s Guide Formula and he mixed Sand Shrimp and his new Tuna Belly flavors together to make them irresistible to the kings. The action wasn’t fast and furious but we had five fish weighing from about 12 to 18 pounds in the boat by a little after 10 a.m. This week’s photo is of Shane and I at Chelan Falls.

When there is a sockeye season, we will often run up to Wells after getting our kings in the morning and get a few sockeye before calling it a day. However, there is so much water being spilled at Wells that the water is like a stormy day on the ocean. Very few are willing to put up with getting bounced around and trying to fish. Most just take one look at the rollers in the big eddy and turn around and head back down river. We all hope that it will settle down soon. The sockeye fishing below Wells is usually fantastic.

The following day I was right back at Chelan Falls. This time I had my long-time fishing partner Dr. Brian Anantatmula along. We have been fishing Chelan Falls together for many years and this would be our first trip of the season. We launched at the park on the Chelan Side of the river and slowly ran up while getting our Super Baits stuffed with tuna to a point just below where the Chelan River enters the Columbia.

When we had our gear out, I turned to Brian and told him that everything looked just right. The rods were bouncing with a good rhythm and I really liked the place we were in on the river. It said, this really looks good—Wham! The inside rod buried itself in the water and Brian hooked a really hot fish. I thought I had the drag set tight but the fish was tearing off yards of line. Brian snugged the drag down a bit tighter and got the fish under control. I netted it and we looked our watches. It took just ten minutes after the rods were set to hook a fish!

However, our good luck ended there. I talked to several people who had caught fish first thing in the morning but things had really slowed down by the time Brian and I got on the water. We thought, since it was slow here now, why not run down to Rocky Reach and try for some sockeye? So off we went.

We launched at Lincoln Park and started rigging our gear as we slowly motored around the corner to fish above the buoy line above the dam. I looked down below us and saw a boat close to shore and it looked like someone was using a paddle to get up the river. We ran over and sure enough, we learned that all three batteries had gone dead on their boat. They couldn’t get their gas motors started and their bow mount was pooped too. We put together a tow line and got them back to the dock.

Once we had dropped them off, we headed back to the dam and started trolling. I should have got a clue about how the fishing was at mid-day by the number of boats that were still on the water. There were just two other boats trolling along the highway. One had caught a couple of kings first thing in the morning and the other fellow hadn’t had any luck. We didn’t either.

I set my alarm for 3:30 a.m. for the third day in a row to get ready for a trip to Rufus Woods. I was going to meet James Lebow and Brian Nielson in Coulee Dam to run to the net pens from Seaton Grove. James had just been there and had a terrific day catching a mix of triploids and walleye.

James shut the big motor down just below the net pens fairly close to shore and we put our lines out. We were rigged for walleye and figured we would probably get our triploids on the same gear. Sure enough, the first two fish we landed were nice fat triploids. We were watching the depth finder and were seeing some walleye marks, so we kept our baits close to the bottom. We picked up another triploid and not long after we got our gear back out—chaos! I hooked up, then James and then Brian—we had a triple going and we didn’t know what we had on our lines. It turned out we had two walleye and a triploid. It was a scramble trying to net all three fish but we managed.

It was about noon when we finally got our last triploid for our six-fish limit. We headed home with six triploids weighing from 3 ½ to 5 pounds and six walleye that were 17 to 23 inches. Not a bad day.

Boy, I can’t wait to see what happens next week!