Salmon River Epic

[ColdWaterFshr]

Neat shots.  Will have to look into this trip.  Would make a nice birthday for my wife to give to me.  😀

[Quillback]

Beautiful country, I miss it.  

They had a squawfish bounty on the Columbia while I lived there, they were trying to get rid of them as they are a predator of salmon smolts - that was the thinking at the time.  $3 each.  Supposedly there were people making $50-60K per year fishing for them.  

I've always heard that if you want to do a smallmouth float, do one on the John Day in Oregon.  Remote country and many smallmouth.  There are guides will take you on a multi-day float on the John Day and target smallmouth.  

[Al Agnew]

6 hours ago, Quillback said:

Beautiful country, I miss it.  

They had a squawfish bounty on the Columbia while I lived there, they were trying to get rid of them as they are a predator of salmon smolts - that was the thinking at the time.  $3 each.  Supposedly there were people making $50-60K per year fishing for them.  

I've always heard that if you want to do a smallmouth float, do one on the John Day in Oregon.  Remote country and many smallmouth.  There are guides will take you on a multi-day float on the John Day and target smallmouth.  

I’ve done the John Day three times...had one mediocre trip, others were great.

[Deadstream]

On August 14, 2018 at 1:27 AM, Al Agnew said:

Had to reserve space more than a year ahead of time.

Did you get to pick dates?  I figured it would take a year or so.  Some of the pictures look like you had several rafts, all OAR or other outfitters? 

[Al Agnew]

OARS runs two trips like we took each year and dates are set. The other one is in June when the rivers are much higher. Didn’t want that one because the fishing wouldn’t be good.

They also run shorter trips on the Middle Fork, and both sections of the Salmon.

There were other outfitters running trips at the same time as ours. We’d see them from time to time. Plus some private groups.

[Haris122]

How do the squawfish fight, and are there no salmon or trout? From the pictures, the area looks like prime trout/salmon country but no pics of them.

[Al Agnew]

The Middle Fork is trout water, westslope cutthroats.  I brought the fly rod along and fished for them, and they were easy to catch but small.  Biggest I caught was about 14 inches, everything else was under 12 inches.  There are bull trout, which get big, but I only saw a few and caught none.

Once you get to the main Salmon, the water is getting too warm for good trout fishing.  There is fishing around the mouths of feeder streams which dump in colder water, but as we were passing all the feeder streams at full speed, it wasn't possible for me to fish for them.  The river gets a good steelhead run and a salmon run as well, but this was the wrong time of year to take advantage of it.  I did catch two rainbows, possibly young steelhead, on spinnerbaits in the main Salmon in the wilderness area, but I doubt that there were enough trout to make it worthwhile fishing for them other than at the feeder creeks.

By the time you get to the lower end of the wilderness section, at the Vinegar Creek Access 20 or 30 miles above Riggins, the water is definitely too warm--it was around 70 degrees at that point.  It's all smallmouth from there on.  It's turning into a low altitude desert river by then, even though it's in Idaho.

The salmon and steelhead would do a lot better if the four mainstream Snake River dams below Lewiston were removed.  They produce a negligible portion of the Northwest's energy, and were actually built partially to make Lewiston a seaport!  Some grain and such is transported from Lewiston, but there are many great arguments for removing these dams.  They have barely adequate fish ladders, but their biggest effect on salmon and steelhead is that they impede the downstream progress of salmon and steelhead smolts (fingerlings).  Not only do the little ones get lost in the still waters of the reservoirs, but they get eaten by bass and walleye.  Various schemes have been tried to fix the problem, including capturing and trucking them around the dams, but trucking them makes them even more lost and unable to find their way back once they are adults.

Once, hundreds of thousands of sockeye salmon went all the way up the Salmon River to Redfish Lake near its source each year.  The river was far different then...not only did the fish feed the Native Americans in the area, but their carcasses and the excrement from all the critters that ate them made the canyon bottoms incredibly fertile.  Now, in recent years the number of sockeyes making it to the upper Salmon are numbered in the hundreds at best.  The canyons are "hungry country", not a lot of wildlife because there just isn't much to eat.  We saw quite a few bighorn sheep, a few mule deer, the occasional eagle and osprey, and nothing much else except a lot of non-native chuckars.

The squawfish are a cold to cool water species.  They declined as the smallmouth increased.  They hit spinnerbaits like a ton of bricks, fought hard for a bit, then just tried to stay deep.  Interesting fish, but not terrific gamefish.  Nice thing about them is that they are easy to handle...they have NO teeth, not even sandpaper like teeth like bass, and they calm down when lifted by the lower jaw, just like bass.

[Quillback]

When I lived there I can remember a petition drive that I was part of to get those Snake river dams removed, I think that was around 1990.  They're still there and people are still trying to get them removed.  I would love to see them go, but beginning to doubt it will happen in my lifetime.

Used to see estimates that about $1 billion per year is spent on Columbia/Snake river basin salmon restoration.  It's not really restoration, it's more about keeping a remnant population alive.  

[tjm]

I'd sign a petition to remove any dam anywhere, is there one to clear up the White River? The Osage? 

[Gavin]

Wow! Thanks for the report and the eye candy. Looks like a bucket list trip!