Left out of the Hammond marina at 6 a.m. on board a charter boat, which is a 25'er which will hold up to 4 customers and the captain. Headed out the mouth of the Columbia to about 25 yards west of the CR bouy. The captain turned the boat to a southerly direction and used a 5 hp kicker on the back of the boat. With the current we were trolling at about 4-5 mph. We ran 4 poles, consisting of a diving plane, flasher attached to it, about 24" of leader and a coyote 4.0 spoon ( 2 blues, 1 pearl, and 1 chartruese) about 25-30 feet off the back of the boat, nothing more.
Only 4 minutes after dropping the gear I had my first hook-up. It was a very nice 13 lb. wild coho that was released, bummer.... However, about 5 mins after that I had my first keeper. It was just over 15 lbs, it hit the spoon hard, and trying to get away it managed to wrap the string around itself, made it a tough fight getting it in the boat, but way worth the physical effort.
We made a total of 3 trips of about 25-30 mins from the bouy to the 'pull-in-your-gear' for the reset. There were a couple of charter boats out of Ilwaco with about 20-30 people on board, watching them mooch with no room to move about the boat didn't look so exciting. I was much happier with our charter adventure since there were just the 3 of us on board, me, my father-in-law, and the captain (steve Hunt). Managed to catch about 30 cohos, no chinooks. The captain was going out the next weekend to hunt down a few prospective Chinook areas the following weekend. Kept 6 between the 3 of us on the boat. My first was the largest of the day by any charter boats, and we were off the water by 10:15 a.m. Really calm day at sea, a bit of fog for a while, but mostly sunny enough. Something tells me the columbia will be a great fishery after the August opening. They are fattening up and getting ready to head in now. Good luck to anyone who makes it down to the mouth of the river.

---