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Late report...
Last weekend I got to fish with Jacob Munden of Rising Son Adventures for a future NWFR TV episode on shad fishing the Columbia River. Joining me were Rob and Hillary Holman and Rob Phillips (Yakima outdoor writer).
We met at 6am on the Oregon side after spending a restful night at the River Lodge and Grill
A great place to stay. I wished I had arrived earlier in the evening to enjoy it more but I did get to watch a beautiful sunset on the Columbia River.
Jacob had a plan (he always does!). Since it was blowing hard downriver he started us out fishing for walleye below the McNary dam. The conditions were definitely better here and we fished for a couple hours catching some nice 16-18" walleye and a couple bonus smallmouth.
With conditions ever improving we ran down river a bit and switched up to shad fishing. I'd never trolled for shad before and decided that while everyone else was trolling I would stand on the bow of the boat and side-drift some presentations. I pounded away for about a half hour, getting not one fish, while my three angling partners caught fish after fish. I admit to being a bit perplexed as I know I was in the strike zone, had good drifts, and extended the drift at the end. I finally gave up and caught my share of shad. These fish are willing biters trolled. Jacob used a diving plug and 5 feet leader, then a small thin blade spoon to get hookups. Chartreuse was the hot color of the morning.
Having caught as many shad as we wanted next up was some soak time for over-sized sturgeon. Fresh shad bait should have been the ticket but after a hour we decided it wasn't happening and went back to fishing walleye. With the winds died down we were able to run several miles down to some spots Jacob had wanted to try earlier in the day. We picked up a few more nice walleye and called it a day as Jacob had an evening shad trip.
Quite a fun day and Jacob says the shad will be around for awhile longer if you're interested in catching some. I took mine and cut them up for mackinaw bait. A few years back I caught a monster lake on Cle Elum using a strip of shad so I know it works!
You can contact Jacob on Facebook, Rising Son Adventures
(509) 492-8852
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