Took me a while to get this written as yardwork and real work have been keeping me occupied.
I hit the upper Willamette out of 10th street on Thursday, August 6th. I had taken a week off of work to do yardwork but with rain in the forecast I figured I should just go fishing instead of working on a steep and slippery slope. I got to the river around daybreak and was on the water around 6am. The morning started out breezy and cloudy after an hour or two it changed to breezy, rainy and cloudy.
I was a bit underdressed and shivering off and on all morning. I almost packed it in a few times but I decided I didn't want to have to tell my wife what a wimp I had become. I could her her say, "So, you came home early because to were too cold on an August morning". Hypothermia did not seem so bad
It rained for most of the morning. A steady rain coupled with a decent wind blowing in my face did not make for the most pleasant of fishing conditions. Wind and current were aligned and I had to constantly pedal my kayak to not drift downstream really fast. There were even occasional whitecaps on the river. Definitely not my favorite conditions.
The fishing was decent. I ended up with 47 smallmouth and 1 tiny largemouth. My best fish of the day was a 2lb 11oz smallmouth that I caught on my favorite 3" white swimbait on a 1/4oz jighead.
I fished topwater a lot in the morning but I never hooked up. With the wind, rain and waves it was hard to even see my topwater. After a while I gave that up and switched to a spybait. I had never used one before but a friend of mine had tried them earlier with good success so I had ordered a couple and decided to give them a try. One of the great things about those spybaits is that they cast incredibly well.
I have to admit that up to that point I was spending a lot of time picking out backlashes in the gusty wind. The spybait was a godsend in that regard. It cut through the wind incredibly well and that definitely improved my mood. I caught a lot of fish on the spybait. My best was a 2lb 5oz smallmouth:
I caught a mixture of dinks and nice fish on it throughout the day. A really interesting thing is that I had tons of fish follow it to the kayak and tons of fish hit it right at the kayak. Exploding on it just as I was about to lift it from the water. I think I may have been fishing it a little too fast - mostly because the kayak was blowing around so much that it was dragging the lure on top of how fast I was reeling. I can't wait to try them on a calm day.
I would say that they seem to feel a similar role to the 3" swimbait but they do sink faster and seem to stay deeper on the retrieve. Those are nice features.
Throughout the day I would move along humps and points and when I spotted fish under the kayak I would quickly switch rods and drop down either a Ned rig or a drop shot. Both worked really well at picking those fish up. A lot of the fish were suspend 10' off the bottom and I would watch them follow the soft plastic down to the bottom on the 2D sonar and then feel the "thump" as they sucked it in. I really love my sonar!
Overall, I would say I caught a good number of fish on the spybait, 3" swimbait, Ned rig and dropshot.
I did catch on fish on a topwater. As I was heading back to the ramp in the late afternoon the weather had switched to a mix of clouds and sun. I decided to try another new lure (for me). A Berkley Choppo. They are a whopper plopper knockoff but I have been unhappy with the 90 sized plopper (the 110s are grea). The 90 sized ploppers take a while to surface after a cast in the kayak unless I raise my arms straight up overhead as it lands and check the cast just as the lure lands. I figured I would try the Choppo. I am happy to say that the Choppo surfaces really well after a long cast. I did finally catch a topwater fish late in the afternoon on the way to the ramp after missing and losing a couple others. I can't wait to fish that lure in good topwater conditions.
After that fish I made a few casts but mostly just sped back to the launch and called it a day.
Here are a few more fish from the day:
Here is some video from the day. Most of the video I took was worthless as the lens had so much water on it that all you could see was a blob of colors. Also, I use voice commands to turn the gopro off and on and I guess the rain was distorting the microphone resulted in them working spottily (which I did not realize for quite a while). So I offer my apologies in advance
https://youtu.be/SWta_EG7pGk_________________
Fish tremble when they hear my name
A ship in harbor is safe -- but that is not what ships are built for.
--John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic, 1928
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