My wife Connie and I fished buoy 10 with good results Labor day weekend. We
arrived Thursday morning at the town of Chinook. After securing a slip,
launching the boat, checking in at the resort we finally started fishing
about 11:30. The locals had told us the king fishing was good but not many
silvers yet. We had a strong incoming tide and I like to troll with the
current, so we ran downriver to drop the gear then pointed her towards the
bridge. We started hitting fish right away, had 3 fish limits of chrome
bright silvers in 2 1/2 hours. So much for the reports! The fish were nice,
running 10 to 16 pounds and very feisty, all hatchery origin. Friday was
slower, with a king and 2 of those big silvers to show for our efforts.
Saturday morning dawned foggy on the Columbia. The channel out of port there
is very shallow, 3 feet in places at low tide. Sandbars crowd both sides. We
followed a pack of boats out but the leaders lost their way and ended up
spending their day waiting for the tide to come in. We found the route and
ran upriver to the "Church Hole". At least I think that's where we were
because the fog was so thick we could only see about 50 feet any direction.
Connie hooked into a giant that made 3 powerful runs before coming to the
boat. Then it eluded us 10 more minutes as he found fresh energy every time
the net came into view. Finally I squeezed the lunker into my huge landing
net, and after a couple photos, into the fishwell. That fish, along with
some more silvers made our day. The only thing left for me to do was to get
the biggest fish of the day at least once so Sunday morning we ran up to the
bridge for another try. I had my gear down less than 2 minutes when a 27
pounder grabbed my herring and after a valiant battle, hit the fishwell. We
fished a little while longer, but lucky for me (?) the wind started howling
about 30 knots upriver so we had to reel in to fight our way back to port
before swimming became the only option. So with over 100# of fillets on ice
we headed for home with lots of great memories. Don Johansen.

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