Snake Dancer Excursions - Sturgeon, Bass & Catfish fishing in Hells Canyon is best April through October. Fishing charters can be scheduled from one day to multiple days in our comfortable lodge and jet boats. Fishing Charters leave from Heller Bar Boat launch or Hells Canyon Resort and Marina to be determined at the time of reservations.
Enjoy a fun-filled trip through North America's deepest river gorge! We offer trips tailored for every age and thrill-level. It is no wonder we're #1 on Trip Advisor!
I haven't been to Boren since the spring when it was planted. I went this past Friday-Sunday just to see if there are any trout still left (trout fishing is usually dead during the summer).
To my surprise, I caught lots of trout. Limited on 2 of the 3 days. They're not big (8-10 inches) but there were lots of them. It's almost as if the lake got recently stocked, except the WDFW site doesn't say anything about recent stockings. I did better this weekend than during the spring when the lake was planted.
They were tough to hook though. Real bait robbers--they would grab and spit out, or I would miss the hookset. Since they were small, I had a hard time hooking them with with a size 8 hook and power bait. If I tried to use a smaller piece of power bait (to get more hook exposure), then power bait would not provide enough buoyancy to float the weight of the hook. The bait had to be floating to get more visibility and bites.
I finally came up with a solution: I found some fine-wire size 16 treble hooks in my tackle box (really small and lightweight, so that a small gob of power bait would float the hook). I rigged it so that the points of the hook were exposed through the small piece of power bait (the power bait was about the size of a big pea). I then fished using a slack line so that I can watch my line twitch when I get bites. Worked great.
I'd post pics, but who wants to see a stringer of 8-10 inch trout sitting in the sink. LOL
i havent been there since spring either. they plant fry in there and usually in the fall time they are catchable and they start moving shallow again. i might have to go check boren out.
Thanks tnj8222. Yeah, I was wondering whether those fish were from fry plants, since they were smaller than the typical spring stocker fish. I might try to head out again this coming weekend, since the rivers are dead. I might see you there, if you go.
if u go into the "links" box it has the plants reports for all the lakes they even give the pound per fish so u can kinda estimate the weight of the fish
Thanks for the info. After digging around the WDFW site a bit more, it says on this link that 3000 fry were stocked this past spring. Those may have been the hungry little bugges I was hooking.
Went again today (Saturday). Easy limits within 40 minutes. Same size 7-9 inches. Small piece of power bait on a very small fine-wire treble. They sure were biting lightly today.
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Snake Dancer Excursions - Sturgeon, Bass & Catfish fishing in Hells Canyon is best April through October. Fishing charters can be scheduled from one day to multiple days in our comfortable lodge and jet boats. Fishing Charters leave from Heller Bar Boat launch or Hells Canyon Resort and Marina to be determined at the time of reservations.
Enjoy a fun-filled trip through North America's deepest river gorge! We offer trips tailored for every age and thrill-level. It is no wonder we're #1 on Trip Advisor!