Northwest Fishing Reports

In the new issue of Wa. Fishing and Hunting News there is an article "Untapped Westside Bass Fishery: Chehalis Sloughs"
The article stated that LMB are overlooked in the chehalis and there are plenty of them in there. It also claims that the LMB had a smaller than normal mouth. A guy claims to have caught 6, 7, 8, lbers. I guess they fish for LMB between oakville and porter.

Has anyone else heard of this?

SHHHHH!:-$

There are ponds and sloughs all along the Chehalis from Satsop upstream. When the river floods in the winter the fish from these ponds get into the river. I have seen Bass in the rivers and Sturgeon in the ponds. I personally haven't caught any Bass from the Chehalis but have seen a few small ones that have been caught in the sloughs and backwaters.

Coastfishin wrote:SHHHHH!:-$

I was gonna keep it on the DL but it's in the magazine so I figured the word would be out. I will have to try with my little boat.

I know there are some big Bass in the ponds so it wouldn't surprise me if you caught a monster out of the river.
It has probably been 10 years since I fished for Bass in the ponds but we caught some 4 to 5 pound fish back then.
It seems like the bass caught in the pounds were a little funny looking. Kind of like a largemouth but not quite as big of mouth.

Never been to Chehalis River, where can I launch a boat?

There are two launches in the area you are thinking about. There is a launch at Porter on Highway 12. You will see a side road with a bridge across the road from the old tavern. The launch is just across the bridge. The other launch is near Oakville on the Elma-Gate road. I have not been to either of these ramps in a couple of years so I do not know what condition they are in. Both are prone to damage from flooding and erosion.
If you click on links above and look at boat launches, put chehalis river in the search you will get an old summary of the launches.

i had some awesome topwater action on the river here in rochester last summer. no real big ones but a lot of them