Early Summer Fishing Recap

Hey, what's up everyone out there. Thank you so much for tuning into another addicted fishing podcast. It's been a few weeks since we've been in here. Cause we've been doing some live fishing lately. It's been pretty fun out there. We did some, uh, son, son, son, son, Pacific Northwest. Yes. Finally, like summertime. It's funny too. It like stopped raining and then became like 108 degrees like the next day. And everyone was crying on Facebook right away. Wasn't it great? Oh, it's too hot. It's like, shut up, go back inside your pale skins. Yeah. You got AC. Your house is myself. I'm like, once it gets sunny, I'm not complaining one bit about the you I've been loving it. Yeah. Honestly, even if they're like just that tacky, sweaty feeling the last couple of days, for some reason, I'm just enjoyed the hell out of it. You would like being freaking sweaty, sweaty, hippie. Wow. Today was the perfect temperature though. I went up to Bonneville and I went and gawked at the fish viewing window, which is one of my favorite things to do is just go in there and hang out with the fish, um, and watch them all swim by. And there was, I bet, I mean, I, like I said to you guys, I bet I saw a hundred and 150 sockeye in 10 minutes. Go by bazillion shad, every single Chinook that swam by was hatchery. It's like, Oh, let's go fishing. Let's go. But the fish ladder, it looked like it was pretty phenomenal. It looked like the pens of the hatchery. I mean, it was just, it was boiling with fish. It was pretty cool. It's all sorts of different, all sorts of species, everything coming through, you know, and saw a couple of steelhead. I actually even saw some trout. There was some legitimate rainbow trout swimming through there. Yeah. If you notice the steelhead numbers are pretty impressive going over the dam. It's kind of cool. Yeah. It's nice to see. Yeah, but that's what I did today. Went to Bonneville. I actually had a really hard time catching shadow, which is embarrassing after sitting there looking at the, at the viewing window, there's only like 200,000 going by a day right now. And the old lady down below me with her husband actually absolutely smoked me. She was just having a great old time. Just catching fish. And there I was cussing. I mean, I kept losing them was the thing. I kept getting them right to the bank and then losing them. But I ended up, we were doing a catching cook for these. So you'll be on the lookout on the addictive channel. Uh, we're doing a shad catching cook. I have a recipe that, um, this little Asian gal told me about when I was down there and she said it's delicious and amazing and it sounds good to me. So tune in, but it's actually what we went down there today to do. Not just catch them. At least he seems to actually, I kept two to eat. It was enough for the crock pot. It's going to be a crock pot recipe. So I did catch a couple. I'm going to be anxiously awaiting your opinion on that. Well, you know, I just, I'll like, I always say I'll try anything twice. Um, and everyone's mind just went everywhere else. There's only one thing. And I'm not going to say this cause this is a family podcast. I won't try it twice. Only once. Um, and, but the recipe sounds good. I'm going to do like a tomato, basil, um, and veggie deal. Most of the stuff they do, like with the shad, it's always like either pressure or canned or something like that to the way it sounds. It's like what she explained it. You just put it over white rice and make this whole dish. And it kind of makes like a stew in a way. And like a, like a fish, I don't know, jambalaya in a way. And then you just put it on some rice. And I mean, it's going to be good because you can basically use any kind of protein in a recipe like that. And I'm sure the tomato sauce can cover up a lot of the flavor, but it's I've had a can and it's just, there's nothing gross about a shot. That's like, we all say gross, but there's a lot of like eating walleye out of the Umatilla pool is more gross than eating a shad below Bonneville, theoretically. And you know, you know, statistically some fish though, just have like a very fishy and some people love that. I mean, like the end of the day, like at the end of the day, like some of these people, like they like that they like that intense fishy flavor. So it's more than twice. And I'm not one of them. Like, I'm sure the person that told you that recipe is all about this raw fish, fishy flavor. Oh, I sure as heck ain't wrong. Why not? But yeah, shad, sushi, shad, shishimi, shad, shishimi, shad, shishimi, shad, shishimi. What's that stuff where you like cook it and just like lemon water or fricking ceviche? Yeah, some shad ceviche, dude. But you guys, I'm not going to spoil this to you, but you're going to have to see how I scale these things because it's something I saw online a long time ago and I'm excited to try it. But I'm not going to tell you what it is. It's like pressure washer or drill brush. No, they'll tell me. Even better than that. So that's what I did today. Nice. You got to go steelhead fishing. Yeah. We went out and ran some lines pumpkin and it was really successful. There is a lot of fish in the river. Sockeye, steelhead, Chinook. Lamprey. Tons of lamprey. Yeah. It's pretty phenomenal how many lamprey are going up the river. I saw a buddy that posted, we're going to use the river name, but posted a video from the Deschutes River, uh, from Shears Falls a couple of days ago, and there was hundreds of them hanging from the rocks. Just, just, just real fast. You go like, I'm not going to say a river name. Oh, you're good. I thought you said you're not, but yeah, there was probably a, there's probably 500 of them hanging from the wall, climbing the falls, which is cool. I mean, it's not often you see that. Cause that's like up on the Owyhee River back in the day, before a lot of the dams were in, you'd see that some of the bigger waterfalls, there'd be thousands of them climbing up the walls of the waterfall. I'm sure Willamette Falls has got to be just infested with them right now. Which is a great sign of a healthy, healthy ocean. You know, those lamprey are one of the base models of like healthy water conditions. And they say like the lamprey, like sometimes like, it's kind of like the canary in the coal mine. Cause that's like the first thing that freaking kind of like not show up when the ocean kind of gets, kind of gets wonky. Cause then the salmon are right behind it. And I actually had some, a native friend of mine had some that was canned, um, the other day and it was, it was really good. I, it was actually delicious canned. Unagi. Yeah. I guess that's salt. What would be a fresh, I guess. Freshwater eels. Like unagi. I don't know. Some kind of, they'd call it that, but I, I sure enjoy it. So I'd love to try to get my hands on some of that. No thanks. Nothing, but there are nothing but meat. Eel sauce, eel sauce, the way it tastes good. Very greasy. But yeah, there's a lot of fish around, you know, the other thing, Cam, that's interesting is it seems like there's more than I've seen in previous years. A lot of jacks. Oh yeah. So yeah. So let's just, let's get on the topic of jacks because this is going to tie into like some of the sockeye stuff. So last year, yeah. Jacks are a good indication, obviously, of what's going to come the next year. Um, and last year, you know, with the sockeye run that we're seeing right now, that's just been upgraded and upgraded and upgraded. We started at 198,000 above Bonneville. We're already over 450 predicted. We are at like the 50% date, like it's, and we just shattered the record with 52,000 sockeye over the net with a huge, with a huge shot count. And what's funny, what's, what's funny and kind of weird. And nobody really knows why, but they, they missed yesterday or the day before his count. So like, are they still counting it? Like what, what happened there? Like that usually doesn't happen. I don't know if they combined the two counts for today, but I don't think they did because everyone, everything was posting like a record, those people in three hands. So for the record, they don't count every fish. They count two windows. They count one on the Washington side, one on the Oregon side. And it kind of extrapolate like for the other two ladders. I think there's a total of four ladders. And then they only count like certain hours. And then like they, because I mean, they don't count the 200,000 individual shad that are going over every day right now up to, I think, I think the record one time was like 600,000. So like a day, a day. So like, they don't count everyone, but they do count a lot. Well, then they can't account for what goes up the locks as well. Every time the bar. Yeah. But they have, they have numbers and they kind of like, you know, like I said, it's just representative samples. There's no different than what they do with like a sport Creel and no different what they do with a stream survey. They sample and then extrapolate. And so like, but the bottom line is jacks, you're right. Jacks, jacks, jacks everywhere. Well, last year there was a bunch of jacks and everyone was calling like, how in the hell are you guys predicting 198,000 fish for sockeye when. You're having record number of jack counts. The Bering sea is projecting 75 million sockeye, which is a record number of sockeye. And that was on the cusp of last year's 52 million. And then sockeye in the North part of Washington's just was forecasted to be huge. Like everywhere across the board was forecasted to be just monstrous sockeye except the Columbia river this year. So the question is, so the, so, so, so right, wrong. So, but there's, there's two theories floating around out there that I'm seeing in some of the circles. And one is being that they knew that one component of that sockeye run was probably forecasted not to be that strong. So they purposely downgraded the run under what they could have a sport handle on below Bonneville, just to make sure they get escapement or so it's either that, or they're just that terrible at predicting sockeye. So it's one of the two. This has happened in years past though, too. I remember specifically one time one day, like they have a hard, hard, and I don't want to necessarily believe the first because we have to manage our runs based on like those forecasted numbers. They're kind of the Holy grail until the fish show up. But now we're in a situation right now where I think a second grader could have realized a week ago that we were onto something special again, and yet our states didn't react, have not reacted to it. And in fact, there were, there was some calls for meetings last week. There was calls for meeting earlier this week, but there was already a preplanned compact for, well, tomorrow. We're actually, we're recording this on the Wednesday before. And like, if we open tomorrow, then why couldn't we have opened like 10 days ago? Now, most of these fish are by. I mean, you're talking an absolute miss of like thousands of angler days that with a run this big and this size is not going to affect the damn thing to the upper catch, the lower, like we're not going to be able to catch enough. The same exact thing happened in the spring Chinook run. This spring Chinook run, after it was all said and done, we only caught about 65% of what we should have been allowed to catch, which is why like the season opened up late and we had five weeks of great springer fishing, no complaints. And then it even went to two fish limit. Then they even opened above Beacon Rock to Bonneville for boats. They were giving us, they were affording us every opportunity to catch fish, but it was late, it was late. I mean, these, these state managers, like at the drop of a hat will push the switch and close a fishery overnight within less than 24 hours notice it's been done. They did it. Uh, when did they do that one? It was like immediate closure. When was that? Dude, I don't know when they do. Hold on. Let me think about this. No, no, no. They had one that was like surprising as heck. And it was like overnight they had a meeting and then, and it was a joy. It wasn't even a meeting. They didn't even have it. They didn't have me in a joint state action. They just closed it. But now to open it, it's all, it's like, to me, it's like, it's like gas prices. Like, you know what I mean? Like they'll, they'll shoot up for any reason whatsoever, but then it just takes forever to come back down. It's just like fish, they'll close it for any reason, but for sakes, you know, it takes forever to open it and it's like, what is the disconnect? Um, so it's, so I've got some ideas. I'm going to kind of like two was right. There's some run. That's like not going to have like any going back to it. And that's one of the reasons they're keeping it closed and they've kept it closed. Yes. So that was the reason why. So if, so, and here's how they project that run, they only project that run off of basis of what is projected to come back above Bonneville. We cannot go fishing below Bonneville. If the run is projected to be over 200,000 fish, you know what the forecast was this year? 1 98, 1 98. You know what we have over Bonneville dam right now at this date right now? And he's like 350 and they're still coming. So tell me like, what's going on there? Like, are we just that bad at predicting the sockeye run? Because if we would have got an extra 2000 and forecast, we could have gone fishing for a 1%, which we would have been allowed 2000 fish down in the lower Bonneville area, which then would have turned obviously into an absolute. Wrecking ball blood bath. I, but now at this point, even, even if we would have gone in 10 days ago, two weeks ago, I think it's going to be like, we could have fished our brains off, caught as many help, make it a four fish limit ain't going to matter. We're going to catch them all now. And not that we need to catch everyone, but when we're only allowed a 1% rate on sockeye and like, we're not even going to get that, like, give me a break, bad miss botched run, terrible forecast, slow to react, not good. 294,000 with a day that's missing in that count. Right. And the day that's missing the day that's missing had what? 42 on one side or 40 on one side and 52 on the other. So let's just take the average and say another 45. So you're already staring at 350,000 fish over the dam. And it's not even July one yet. Yeah. When's the peak normally? Uh, I think the 50% day is July one. Holy crap. That was a miss. Yeah. So like I said, so 600, 700,000 easily, easily. I think tack already updated. So like tackle readjust as the runs coming in and they already adjusted it to 450. And it's like, Whoa, now this big, yep. They adjusted summer Chinook. They adjusted it to 60. I'm hearing already things like they're going to bump it to 80 because we just had 5,200 summer Chinook go over in one day. And that's what I was talking about with like, I have never seen this many summer jacks and what's scary crazy. Just one more point to your jacks is you're out there fishing them right now. Guys are still wrecking them in the lower Columbia trying to fish, steal it. Like this thing ain't over. No, not even close. So it's pretty like, it's pretty eyeopening. It's kind of like, Oh my gosh. Like, and I'm just going to bring it up. Cause like I said, you, cause you got me on the topic now, damn it. I just went bass fishing today, man. That's all I wanted to do. But here's another thing that here's a real, this is another big eyeball to start looking at right now. And I need people to start kind of paying attention to this because right now, the lower Columbia between Bonneville and, and, um, the top end of PGI is closing for Chinook on September 7th. And then warrior rocked model, September 13th. They've already botched every single run this year. As far as the forecast goes. How fast are our managers at what trigger point are we going to be able to look at that fall day and to continue to let us fish in the lower river, because most of the toolies are gone usually by about the second and third week of September. So we're probably not going to have tooling impacts. And even if we are, they're probably going to be more toolies than they predicted. So guess what? We're going to catch more. So get ready for that debacle river fish that are going to be coming with that, but there'll be much less impact on toolies. Well, but it's easier than any other fish. Well, no, they do in the concentrated areas, like the mouth of the Cowlitz, which has the biggest tag recoveries in the whole freaking below Bonneville. So like, which is why they actually kind of proposed to fix that, but that kind of got pushed back regardless. So if there's, but if there's more of those tag recoveries, because that toolie component is bigger than what they forecasted, where are we seeing this? Oh, that's right. Every run this year and all of a sudden these tag recoveries start showing up and they don't readjust. We're going to get closed down for upriver brights and for everything else going up river. So there has to be some like, okay, guys, we're really kind of sucking this year. We have to fix that or make the right call on one season. Still waiting for it. I mean, let's be honest. They botched winter steelhead. And it started from there. Winter steelheading was the best winter steelheading I've seen in 10 years. One even showed in the areas where this is the biggest worry, the North coast. They had a lot of hatcheries in particular that had record runs. And those guys, and those guys didn't fish. And what was even more hilarious is the guys that were like, still like touring the rivers after we were saying they'd never seen as many reds. But I'm wondering if that's going to reflect in some of the surveys. Yeah. Another conspiracy theory and another for another podcast. Paid science. We can't show that all these fish are here. There's no money in grants for that says the wild fish conservancy and trout unlimited. Yeah. What a joke. So pretty, pretty, I mean, good time. I mean, I guess it's a good problem to have. We got a lot of fish. I mean, a lot of Jack and the, and they're like going back to Warren's point, the Jacks. Who would have thought we'd be at this point right now, after what we've seen the last couple of years of fighting to actually fish for right over there. Well, and I'll leave you out there and kick the dog, but now we're fighting to just fish for them and that's where we've ever seen. Right. And I'll leave, I'll leave this for you. Like I said, in the spring Chinook run, we only caught 65% of what we could have caught last year in the fall run. We could have caught 30,000 more fall Chinook and we didn't. And unfortunately, and everyone's thinking, well, you guys don't have to be greedy bastards and try to kill every last one. But unfortunately what we do understand is from 2014 and 15, when we had 1.6 million Chinook enter the Columbia river mouth, what happened in 18, 19 and 20. It fell. And the reason why is because you have ocean conditions. So just getting more fish back to the spawning gravel, you need to meet those maintaining leveled out, like, you know, basically like your escapement levels, like, you know, but your, your spawning capacity levels and your hatchery capacity levels, you need to hit that. But after that, guess what? Those fish are all sturgeon food, which I guess isn't a bad thing, but yeah. So it's not like we're just being greedy sportsmen and asking to kill every last one, but when you look at anglers days, the amount of money, the economy, the thousands, you just let them go by. It's fine. My favorite comment. Why don't we just close fishing for five years and that'll fix everything? Well, well, well, Timmy, because it won't, it doesn't work that way. Well, it wouldn't, it would be Alaska does that a lot. They will just close rivers for like three, four years, five years sometimes. Yep. And then, and meanwhile, they'll set net and they'll gill net and they'll travel net everything out in front of it. And then guess who takes the, guess who has to meet the conservation goals, the sportsmen, right. And how, and how has that worked from over the last 20 years? Right. And it hasn't really worked at all. There's still a lot of take there. What does that vaguely sound like to you? Name North coast steelhead, maybe because a few big percentage of them kind of disappear every year just to come tribal net stuff, which I'm not necessarily saying is good and bad, but if you don't manage for it properly, there you go. Yeah. Always bite you in the ass bites you in the ass. Yeah. But this fall is going to be wicked. It's going to be I would be pretty, I would be preparing their wives, honey. I'll see you in about mid November. Well, no, wait, that B run's going to be good. I'll see you about mid December. Yeah. It's going to be a good one though for Christmas. Definitely stuff to be positive about. I picked a bad year to go hunting all over the place. I'm sure you'll be able to catch just as many when you're home, but that's definitely going to fill up my fall. Big time. Yeah. It'd be out a lot. Well, that's, that's the goings on and keep in mind guys, this all might change tomorrow after that meeting. So by the time you're hearing this, hopefully you're hearing this. Hopefully Clint gets this one out. Nice and fast. Catching some sockeye. Yeah. We'll be live. We'll be live fishing. Now you're any more podcasts. We'll be live fishing you next. We'll be live fishing next week. Uh, if that's the case. That's a fact. Well, this is a good time to switch to another subject guys. Cause I have to give you guys a sneak peek and let you know that July 10th is our summer merch drop. This is going to be officially the biggest drop that we've ever done. There's more apparel, more lures, more things in this drop than we've ever, ever done in our drop. We put tons of effort into it. So mark your calendars, July 10th. Everyone's been asking, do you have plugs? We do have killer fish, KF 14, 15, and 16s in this drop. We have super baits. We have custom worms with a new company called Dylan rush outfitters that has made these worms that are so incredible. They're basically called core shot worms. And it allows you to basically. Inject an, a center color of the worm and then inject another color around the center color of the worm. So it creates just a really, really unique, cool color of worm and they work really, really well. So we did a collaboration with him this year on his worms and his beads. I love how he puts a lot of that kind of like that blue shimmer there. I mean, I see that across a lot of his stuff and Oh boy. They look good. They look really, really good guys. We did kind of some summer steelhead themed worms. They are limited again. Like everything is limited guys. The plugs are most likely going to sell out in minutes because that is what has happened in years past. So make sure you get on there, mark your calendars, July 10th, it will be 7 PM Pacific standard time. And as always addicts, we appreciate the support so much. So, so much wouldn't be able to do it without all you guys that watch us and listen to our content and yeah. We're still chasing our dreams. We'll get there someday. Jordan's already there, but the rest of us are still working. Okay. Oh, anyway guys, anything else you want to talk about cam? Anything? Any updates? Nope. That was it. Exciting times, exciting times. We got to go get to a live feed guys. So unless Jordan has any last minute, check out the YouTube channel guys, we've been kicking butt on some videos. So if, uh, if all you do is listen to this podcast, if you get a free minute on a, on a nice evening, go check out some of the YouTube videos coming out because they're, they're all bangers. Yeah. We just put out a Peacock episode that you guys definitely need to go check out. We put a ton of effort into it. And then also don't forget if you have not yet head over, if you like to watch Jordan's content on our addicted channel, he has his own channel now. Stay fishy adventures head over there on YouTube. Check it out. He's got a really lot of cool content on there. Actually, the video that launched today is absolutely hilarious. I'm not even going to tell you what it is. Just know that it's really, really funny and you need to go check it out. So thanks so much for listening. Everyone. We appreciate you so much. We'll see you on the river.