Wanted to label this report, "Smoking hot fishin", but changed it to "Fishin in a fire fog." Had planned this trip with my buddy, Slippery Jack" for a while as the moon phase, temperatures and wind forecast was excellent. Only thing that changed this forecast was the smoke from the fires. Smarter people would have cancelled due to smoke, but?? Spent all our time in the Crow Butte to McNary Dam area. This was the first day of a 5 day trip with plans to target smallies, channel cats, walleye, and sturgeon. We were able to play with smallies a lot and 1 sturgeon. Tried real hard for the walleye with no luck, (very frustrating), and no time for cats. We think the smoke haze dropped the water temps quite a bit, which put the fish into a non-playing mood.
Had zero to very little wind the whole trip, which is unusual for this area. Air temps were in the 60's to 70's due to the smoke. The pics show how thick the smoke was and how little wind there was.
Fished the smallmouth primarily with plastics and crankbaits. There were periods of smallmouth time that were excellent. Walleye were targeted with bottom walkers/ worm harness rigs in a variety of colors, depths and speeds. About a day and a half fishing time for them. Fished about 1/2 day total for sturgeon using sardines, fillets, and shrimp. Found a pod of nice sized dinosaurs on Thursday but could only get the little guy to bite.
Left Friday morning and fished Skootenay Resevoir on way home. All in all it was a good trip although it was more fishin than catchin. But it beats sitting around the house whittling down the honey-do list.

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