Drano and White Salmon Report

Since I have to work this weekend, I decided to take a day off and fish Drano and the White Salmon.  With the big numbers of coho's and chinook over Bonneville I couldn't resist.

Coho's are usually a first light early morning thing at the White Salmon and the fish were jumping everywhere.  I fished till about 9:00AM and managed to catch one small 5# wild coho that had to be released.  There were maybe 15 boats above the bridge and I witnessed about 8 fish caught.  Normally the fishing is a little better than this however.  I started with a fire-tiger brad's wiggler, then switched to a metallic pink one and caught the fish.  Most people were using red-orange, metallic pink, or metallic blue.  The majority of the coho's were wild.  Normally about 1 in 3 is a hatchery fish.  The average size of these fish is probably 10 pounds.  Some huge kings were also jumping but I didn't see anyone catch one.  Access is next to the highway bridge on the East side, down a steep bank.

Here is an early morning shot of the situation, followed by a lousy photo of the coho:






I fished Drano in the afternoon for several hours with a flyrod.  There were about a dozen flyfisherman in prams or pontoon boats.  Most of the pram guys are local retired dudes who catch an amazing number of fish every year with the flyrod.  There were probably 20 gas boats total.  Many of them were fishing with the standard slipbobber and shrimp.  Both steelhead and salmon were jumping with regularity. I ended up fishing where most of the flyfisherman were.  Plenty of room to fish.  The bite was really slow and I forgot to bring the med-fast sinking fly line, so I would cast and count down for about 2 minutes before retrieving a scud pattern.  I really  have never seen the pram dudes fly's up close as they are pretty small so I'm not exactly sure what they use.  They did catch a few steelhead though.  I got tired fishing with the slow sink fly line and decided to fish closer to the hatchery in shallower water with nobody in the vicinity.  Then I hooked a pig fish that I fought for probably 15 minutes on the 5 wt. rod (sounds a bit light, but actually works fine).  It towed me around a bit.  Thinking it was a king (due to its size) I netted it and put it on my lap and realized it was the biggest wild steelhead I have ever caught on a fly.  My guess was between 18 and 20 pounds.  I quickly snapped a crappy picture and let it go.  Darn adipose fin!

Here is the steelhead:

Nice work FHM!! That's steelie is a beaut. That's some good action for Drano as the reports have been really slow all summer. Wouldn't mind checking that place out again.

Z

Nice work Mike!!!

Sounds like an awesome day!

Good job Mike, nice looking fishies...