HOOD RIVER, ORE. -- The Columbia River, which forms the border between Washington and Oregon, just might be the best place on this watery planet to fly fish for smallmouth bass.
And the best time to cast a gurgling popping bug, rubber-legged Wooly Bugger or Clouser Minnow on the Columbia is during April and May.
That's when the millions of smallmouth that lurk among the billions of rocks on this huge, rocky river slide into the shallow backwaters and tributary streams and rivers to spawn. The best fishing is from Bonneville Dam upstream all the way to the Snake River. That's a few hundred miles of water.
Just about every mile of that water holds the rocky banks, rocky underwater reefs and weedbeds that smallmouth bass love. There are millions of smallmouth on the Columbia River! Fly anglers can find hot fishing -- several red-eyed, tiger-striped, hard-fighting smallmouth bass each hour -- from April through October on the mainstem Columbia.
The fishing -- and catching -- is best early and late in the day, when the wind has stopped roaring and the light is low.
Finding areas with a light current, current seams, rocks, deeper water and weedbeds is the key to finding the bass. It's not hard to find these spots on the Columbia -- even for anglers on foot. State and local parks dot the banks, and a boating angler could never fish every spot on this giant river.
A good map and a visit to the websites of Washington and Oregon state parks is the key that unlocks miles of public water to fly anglers.
An average-sized smallmouth bass caught in a Columbia River backwater near Hood River, Oregon.
Anglers look for the many backwaters -- especially those behind railroad berms or dikes. The huge piles of rock used to form the bed for railroad tracks or highways created ponds and lakes that are connected to the Columbia through culverts or breaks in the rock.
Anglers can put pontoon boats, float tubes, canoes and kayaks on these backwaters and float along banks swarming with aggressive, cranky smallmouth bass. The Columbia is a world-famous salmon river, and few anglers pester the backwater smallmouth.
Backwaters are usually the haunt of largemouth bass, but smallmouth rumble into these neighborhoods during April and May to find warmer water, fat crayfish and spawning beds. Spring smallmouth also invade some of the Columbia's tributary rivers and streams, including the John Day River in Central Oregon and the Lower Yakima River in Washington.
In fact, the John Day and Yakima rivers are world-class smallmouth rivers in their own right. Spring brings more than 40,000 smallmouth into the lower Yakima -- from the Tri-Cities (Richland, Pasco and Kennewick) upstream to Roza Dam. The smallmouth find rocky spots to spawn -- and wallop on young chinook salmon migrating downstream to the Pacific Ocean.
These aggressive smallmouth hammer poppers and streamers all day long. They average about 1.5 pounds, but fly anglers have very good shots at fish ranging up to 5 or 6 pounds. Biologists are starting to worry that the Yakima smallmouth are eating too many chinook smolts, so this is guilt-free fly angling!
Most smallmouth bass fly anglers use 6-weight to 8-weight rods. Floating lines get the most use, but a sink-tip line can get that Clouser Minnow or Wooly Bugger down to deeper fish.
The Worley Bugger Fly Shop, located in Ellensburg, offers terrific guided trips for Yakima River smallmouth bass.
Fly anglers fishing from Bonneville Dam near Portland upstream to the waters near The Dalles can find guided trips, flies and other needs from the Gorge Fly Shop in Hood River, Oregon.
One warning: the state of Washington warns anglers that smallmouth from the Columbia River can carry high levels of mercury. State guidelines say that children younger than 6 and women of childbearing age should not eat more than 2 meals of bass each month. Most anglers follow this advice. Smaller bass are also safer to eat, as they are younger and have accumulated less mercury.
The fishing doesn't end when the smallmouth leave the backwaters in late May and head back to the rocky shorelines and reefs of the mainstem Columbia River. Smallmouth stay close to shoreline rocks -- and most of the Columbia River is rocky -- through late October.
Creeping along a rocky Columbia River bank in the dim light of early morning or late evening puts fly anglers in a new world. Smallmouth bass are on the prowl for crayfish, salmon smolts -- or anything else that will fit into their greedy mouths.
Casting a popper onto the slowly moving water is like lighting a stick of dynamite. An explosion is just a matter of time.
