Washington State Park ramp to Mammoth Access

[Haris122]

Me and a fishing buddy floated that stretch of the Big River last week, the first stretch of days that weather got nice. I borrowed one of his kayaks and I was quite a bit more unstable in it than in my normal one. Had some technical difficulties with it including some water pooling right under the seat. Right as we were about to get to Mammoth, in the last choppy stretch less than half a mile from the take out spot, I went for an unplanned swim. Had a few prior spots where I almost fell in but somehow recovered from those but that last one got me.
 

We put in around 1, then took our sweet time in the first half of the float trying to catch something , basically making a giant loop near the access, so then the 2nd half from the main portion of the state park on down, we tried to speed things up. Surprisingly we still made it out before it got all the way dark, even with my swim and subsequently trying to find some of my ancillary stuff that had went for a swim as well. I caught first fish, towards the latter end of the first half of the float. It was a 12-13” smallmouth near a deeper pool by a big boulder that was by shore. Then my buddy got one just a bit downstream of the “beach” at the state park, evening it out. Pretty much the same size and also close to a stretch of bigger boulders. Then I got the winner, right after we went past this tricky section where a big fallen tree was causing the water to swirl quite a bit behind it, just past where mineral fork entered. Once we made it past that tricky spot the fast water kind of dumped into a deeper pool that looked real good. I cast around there a bit, and caught that last fish of the day. Another 12-13” smallie. And then a bit below there was where I went for a swim. Not a very productive day by some of you guys’ standards, but we were just happy to catch something considering it was still February. Think next time I’ll just stick to my own kayak though. And next time we might just hit either the first 3 mile or 2nd 3 mile half so we can really take our time fishing around. Hard to find enough river stretches where you can just do 3 miles and take out, but this stretch seems to hold some promise for that. When I do 6 or so miles I usually end up taking so long fishing the first stretch, that I then have to rush to make it out by dark, especially cause I’m generally not out on the water until late morning or noon. 

[Flysmallie]

Probably not the right time of the year for it, but I think more people should embrace floating after dark.