Available Fishing Guide:
Website: Austin's Northwest Adventures
Wow, I've never seen such a beautiful river that has almost no fish in it. This was one of my most disappointing fishing trips ever. I got to the river at 7:00 at the pool where I caught a big whitefish last year. On my second or third cast I hooked a monster. I don't know if it was a bull trout or a salmon, but this fish had to be around ten pounds and is probably the biggest fish I've ever hooked. It looked off white, so I thought it was another whitefish, but when I got it near the bank after 5 to 10 minutes of fighting it it looked like it had orange on it, so maybe a bull trout? Whatever it was when I got it near shore my lure disappeared- I think it came untied. What a disappointment. I want to see that fish so bad if anyone here wants to try to catch it I will tell you exactly where my "secret" hole is as long as I can get a picture of it if you catch it.
After that I hooked one small trout in the 7-8 inch range that came off because my stupid drag was loose after fighting the first fish.Then I drove up and down the river and didn't see or catch anything except a stupid smolt that was about 3.5 inches. There was no one else fishing the river except at the dam, which I don't know if it's legal to fish there or not. Two people were there in lawn chairs fishing with bobbers! I'm sure they were using bait, that makes me mad. No wonder there's no fish in the damn river. I fished a lot of beautiful spots without even seeing a fish, it is very sad.
Then I tried Bumping lake for a bit, but it was hot and that end of the lake is fairly shallow. I did see several small fish jump while I was trolling, but they didn't like my spinner.
I lost 4 spinners today which is really aggravating because it's hard to find single hook spinners, except online then you have to pay a ton for shipping.
Overall it was a heartbreaking day. I'm going to petition Olympia to change the name of Bumping river to Chumping river because I feel like an idiot for going there.
I did see some animals- squirrel, chipmunk, frog and a brown snake in a tree.
Available Fishing Guide:
Website: Austin's Northwest Adventures