Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Columbia river Small mouth bass

This weekend My wife and I had some training or practice for the looming steelhead run in Sept.

She has not been a really boat savvy driver or operator to this point. Only a passenger. However with the trolling we will be doing it is important that she understands the steering and control of the boat and reading the depth and sonar at the same time. It's far different controlling the boat at 1.5-2 MPH into the current and wind then it is just steering at 30MPH down the river. Add to that turns must be swung wide so the lines behind the boat don't cross and so forth.

She is my full time hunting fishing partner and suffered a bad fall a couple weeks ago during out bow hunting season. Separating her shoulder and dislocating her collar bone with deep lacerations needing stitches in the middle of nowhere right at dark. (The details are on the bow hunting forum of this site. )
So we are both hoping she can control the boat while I manage the rigging, and then hopefully she can actually handle a rod and reel ( and the landing net) in a couple more weeks.

Well she came through this with flying colors and only a short time into the experience began to see the big picture of depth and control where wind and current are involved. I have an 8HP kicker with a connection rod to the main motor so she was able to use the steering wheel to control the kicker. Over steer and understeer were tricky for her as they are for everyone steering a boat the first time. She soon figured out the slow reaction time and life was good. While she was learning this I had two rods out with deep diving plugs. After a few minutes I had a fish on, a nice 2 lb smallmouth. When that was in the boat and flopping around the other rod went off, another twin brother to this one!

We took turns driving and watching the sonar, at times seeing lots of fish, but no strikes. at other times having a double of small mouth bass. Over the Friday Evening and Saturday morning outing we caught 23 small mouths on worm harnesses and deep diving plugs. Not sure what was better about this trip her newly aquired boat control skills, or the fantastic fishing!

Maybe the best part of this, was finding a giant canyon of boulders at about 30-50 feet deep. Looks from the shoreline like an avalanche in prehistoric times of school bus sized boulders tumbled down there from the cliffs, and hill sides above the shore. I'm thinking thats a fantastic bit of structure for sturgeon, although not sure how you would winch them out of that pile?

Sounds like a good trip. I have never trolled for smallie but it looks like it works. Nice brown bass!

Those are some "CHUNKY" Smallies.

NICE