Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Owyhee River canyon channel cats

That's a nice trip too. I ran it from Service Creek down to Cottonwood, long float. Shot a lot of chukar and a few quail.
Did manage to land a 21.5" smallie, my personal best.

Longarm,

A 21.5” smallie is a monster! Good on ya 👍

I haven’t been to the Service Creek run yet. There to Cottonwood IS a long float.
The wind can be brutal and we try to find a campsite early.

There were chukars everywhere this year on both rivers.

That trip looks and sounds like one of the finer ways to spend a few days of ones life!

Great post!

I have never caught a channel cat on a spinner, but have caught many with the old Heddon Sonic Firetail plugs and on silver Helena Flatfish.


Is the area where you went anywhere near where Claude Dallas killed Idaho COs Pogue and Elms back in 1981?

We're a few miles over the border in Oregon, but yes... that's where it happened.

Wikipedia has the whole story.

Blacky,
"The wind can be brutal.." a tremendous understatement. I last ran it in August in a canoe. Low water and you walked a lot of the tail outs. The wind on the last few days was just absolutely fearsome.

Longarm,

That’s a great river to canoe.... we saw three peeps on SUP’s run to Cottonwood two years ago. They went by our camp at about 04:30 the last day by headlamp, trying to make the takeout before the wind came up! Clarno rapid would be my only concern in a canoe.

Guys hunt chukar, deer and bighorns later in the year off rafts. I don’t know how you could do that without a lot of dragging through the tail outs. I’d imagine wearing fishing chest waders would be the way to go.

That’s a yearly adventure for us and one of my favorites - Owyhee, too!