The largest run of summer steelhead in decades is roaring into Columbia River tributaries -- including my favorite Deschutes River.
Millions of pink salmon -- the biggest run in decades -- are swarming along certain Puget Sound beaches.
And about 1 million coho salmon are rumbling along the Washington Coast on the way to the Columbia River.
So why was I happily hopscotching through thorny brush -- while wearing shorts -- and rockhopping along the shores of the John Day Pool on the Columbia River?
Why did I drive right past the Deschutes River to get to this sun-baked panorama of black basalt rock, bleached grass and glassy water?
Confession time: I really wanted to see smallmouth bass wallop chugging bass bugs. And these were not ordinary bass bugs -- they were Day-Glo Green with black stripes and electric-yellow feather tails.
In short, I wanted to see smallmouth bass clobber poppers that didn't look like any life form on this planet. A proper bass popper -- to my mind -- looks like an alien creature from the "Men in Black" movies.
I'm halfway convinced that smallmouth and largemouth bass evolved on some other world and were brought to this planet by the same aliens who show up in pyramid rock carvings. Bass have a preference for food that looks as though it comes from another planet.
My partner, Heather, shares this deep, primal need to pester bass with floating, chugging poppers. Heather loves to cast big floating flies -- hoppers and beetles -- to big trout lurking in glassy water. When she can't do that, she likes to chug a popper for bass.
Yes, Heather likes to have a very clear view of the fly and the strike -- and who can blame her?
Heather, who grows cherries, apples and pears in her family's orchard business, also had to check the progress of Gala apples at a farm near the Columbia River, so there was some reason to our silliness.
On Saturday evening, we scratched our bare legs in the brush -- someday we will learn to wear jeans when we rock-hop the banks, but it is a crime to wear long pants on a balmy, still, 80-degree night. The ever-present Columbia River wind had died as evening approached, and it was looking really, really bassy.
The John Day Pool on the Columbia River -- about a two-hour drive east of Portland on Interstate 84 -- just might have the best smallmouth bass fishing on the planet right now. Smallmouth bass -- fat on a rich diet of crayfish, baby shad and baby salmon -- swarm along the rocky banks, offshore reefs and weedbeds. I have hooked more than 30 fish while casting along a 150-yard stretch of river.
Smallmouth bass love clear water, rocks and easy eats, and the Columbia provides all of their desires. This is the easiest fishery in the Northwest. All an angler needs is a still night or morning, a box of poppers that outshine a Las Vegas neon sign and a rocky stretch of Columbia River.
Eager smallmouth attacked our poppers while the August sun still lashed on the glassy river -- but the bright light had the bass striking short.
Heather loves it when a bass whacks her popper, but the sudden explosion on calm water always startles her into some creative cussing. Heather is an educated, sophisticated, successful woman -- I wonder what she sees in me -- but the first few strikes of every evening bring out the salt in her.
"S@&%$!" Heather said as a big smallmouth boiled on her gaudy popper. "These $%&U^#V fish startle me!"
Heather, like the rest of her family, thrives on shock, adrenaline and the exhilaration of sudden change -- such as when a bass blows up a glassy river. It is as much fun to watch Heather cast and cuss and catch bass as it is to catch them myself.
Then the sun dipped toward the horizon, and the shy bass became eager -- and silly.
We rock-hopped up and down the basalt bank, gouged our legs on sticker brush and chugged our gurgling poppers across still water -- until a smallmouth bass blew up the surface. We missed or bungled all the big bass, but we caught lots of smaller fish.
We laughed like kids -- and we didn't see another angler for miles.
Who needs the ^Y*&%&$$ steelhead and salmon right now anyway?
