Spring Salmon Fishing & More!

What's up everybody out there. Welcome back to the addictive fishing podcast. Before we get this thing started, we want to throw out a big shout out and a thank you to our sponsor, Nick wax for sponsoring this podcast, like wax is a cortex replenisher saves your butt in the winter time. I just finally did my coats again. Talked about this almost every day, but I did it. You finally did it. And I did it right. And it worked really good. Okay. I was getting soaked. And how often after once a season, I would say, I mean, you know, but a good year like this where you get a lot of rain, I have a couple of different jackets, but I did all three jackets at once and it worked really well, so, but we're talking about something a little different than the cold and the rain, even though that's what's coming, we're talking about spring boys, we've got Eric Swanson in the house, of course, as always, we've got cam sitting here next to me and we're going to talk some spring prep. That's right. It is a time of year. I mean, if you really think about things in the Northwest to be, whether you're, you know, Washington, Oregon, or honestly anywhere, I mean, I get that the great lakes guys are probably itching to start talking about spring. They're probably tying leaders, wrapping gear, melting bud snow to melt. Whoa. When the runner up, but no, it's just time to talk about it. Yeah. We got Eric Swanson in the studio for that voice. Yes, yes, yes. So spring, spring Chinooks. I'm Eric Swanson with Eric Swanson outdoors. I'm here in the studio with the boys talking spring and looking forward to it. It's kind of one of those seasons where everybody's excited to get out of the house and, uh, get it going. So I can't wait to just have those. Nice bird chirping afternoons, those 60 degree days where it's sunny and everybody's mowing the grass and you bring the shorts for it to take off on over the waiters and, you know, but then you're still freezing your butt off and yeah, nice brisk nights. That's great. Yes. Good. When it's like 60 degrees and you're out there trolling on the Columbia and then you look to the South and there's a black cloud and then it's hailing on you and 30 degrees less. And then 20 minutes later, everyone runs off the river. And then 20 minutes later, it's sunny and nice again. Oh my gosh. Cool. That's one of the most dramatic weather of the year for sure. Those days where you're just sweating and all of a sudden, like you say, Cam, that storm rolls in and drops 30 degrees and you're freezing and. And then you catch your little mood of fish, right? And then they bite. Storm bite, baby. Yes. So what these guys are really talking about the most, um, is spring Chinook salmon that we have out here in the Northwest. I know you guys get some of the great lakes. A lot of you guys get them, um, all the way up into Canada and into Alaska and all the way down to California. It's, I mean, it's a big thing on the West coast. Cause really it is hands down the best table player of anything that we get an opportunity to catch. So definitely it was right. The, the, the, the freak out is on, as I call it, there's already been a few of them caught in our neck of the woods. And honestly, I was kind of disappointed that there was a couple caught because I mean, they, they got caught one, got caught on the first and another one got brought in, I think on the second, the day after, and it's really disappointing because most of the time. You know, those first fish kind of trickle into the, to the fishermen's breed does a couple of contests where the first guys bring keepers springers and get that a hundred dollar gift card. That's right. And it's like, but usually you get like this week of like rumor mill and people posting old pictures with your buddies, right? They're like, Oh, you get a screw with your friends for a couple of days. Yeah. Post post some old pictures. And I heard there was two cop, but they were both wild. Darn. Oh shoot. Yeah. Guy just walked right in on February 1st and game over the whole thing. Here we are. Yeah. Nice. Both those fish are nice quality. What's funny is though, the second guy, the Kerry Becker guy, I played volleyball with that guy. I've known him. Oh really? Known him for 20. I saw you comment on the picture. Like you knew him. It's just crazy to think that, and he's a, you know, gone. Ex beach ball player. Yes. He's out grinding for springers in February. He can't get enough of the beach, man. Yeah. This area. You can't, you might as well find something else to do. I heard somebody say, it's not called the beach here. It's the coast. Yeah. That's those guys are pretty hardcore for springer fishing on the 1st and 2nd of February. I mean, that's dude, I think so. When I start springer fishing early, I consider early for me, like the end of February, you know, these guys are out there the 1st of February. I mean, good for them. It produced. Yeah. There's been some years though, like where we've had like productive fishing the last week of February, like productive, like guys going out and getting two and three chances. And I know for most of you, salmon anglers, if you're not from around here, that doesn't sound like a lot are really good, but if you're a springer fishing and you're given time in February, two, three chances. That's hot fishing. Very hot. And you know, springtime, wintertime, blackmouth fishing, like in a lot of Alaska and Northern Washington and Canada, um, they're still not getting more than two or three days. I mean, that's, I'd say that's damn good fishing. And it looks like, you know, we say that all the time. Hopefully we're, we're getting forecasted on the West coast for a better than what we're used to salmon right here in the spring and good run shows early. And that's, that's cool to see well, hatchery fish going up and hatchery fish at a point on the Willamette river, where it's a pretty long ways. They came quite a ways. They're going and good quality. They're going to show up to a dam here pretty soon. Right. Yeah. You know what I mean? And both of them, you know, weren't dinks either. They were nice fish. Oh yeah. Good quality fish. So what's cool about that is like you said, early run shows early and it's just not a coincidence that are a big run, excuse me, shows early and, and there you go, really, really man knocking it out of the park. You're welcome. But no, the Willamette's projected is supposed to have 50,000 springers, which means we could probably catch a springer in there solidly the next four or five months. Yep. Straight. In the last couple of years, I've noticed, you know, in that Portland harbor area, June has been the hot month. I mean, those fish definitely kick up there in June and it's, you know, it was, you know, we had a pretty good season last year and you know, predicting 20% more this year, we could have some real beat down days. Oh, no kidding. So if you guys aren't from around here and you're not from around the West coast and you're looking to get an opportunity to maybe travel out and fish with some of us in a, in a year, we're not very many people are getting to travel outside the country or do any of their, any of their fun trips that they have planned, don't hesitate to give one of the guides or somebody in the Northwest, whether it be California, Oregon, or Washington, or, or even in Idaho, Idaho fishery should be awesome this year as well, because they're actually going to get to fish and, uh, we have a good snow pack coming. It might be the year to come out and try your hand at some of the best tasting fish in the world. Yeah. And we can, I wanted to touch on that a little bit too, because like, you know, we get these guys, I was talking to a client today and he's, I want to kill winter steel. I don't want to, he's like, he wants calls up, wants to book a trip, whatever. And I'm like, he's like, I just want to catch him. I just want to keep him. So I'm like, okay, well, wild steelhead off the table. That's kind of what we're going to be picking on the next couple of weeks. They go, oh, there's some hatchery fish. Like I want one of those. I'm like, well, no, if you wait like a month or two, like might be able to get you on a Springer, which is a fish that's going to get caught and not spawn for six, seven, eight months versus a winter steelhead, which you're going to catch and it's going to spawn in like a week in your hands, right? Yeah. On the bottom of your boat. But yeah, that table, that table fare is just super, super important. And at the end of the day, you know, when these fish are showing up in February, March, April, and May, they're still not spawning until September. And they just make the absolute best salmon in the world. They don't even have these fish running in Alaska, but I think it's a lot of snow and ice up there, right? There's a lot of snow and ice wherever they catch these particular salmon out in the ocean and some parts of Southeast. That's a good point. All the, they do, they do intercept a few of them on the way down, but they're not, we're swimming up their rivers. Those are our fish. Leave them alone. All you Alaskans listening to this podcast, leave them alone. They're ours. Just kidding. And all you in Puget sound, leave our Columbia river fish alone too. Yeah. Everyone just said, yeah, right. So you were talking, I heard you guys talking earlier about, you know, the, the, for those of you that live out in the Northwest and are really loving this podcast, because we're talking about the springer stuff, you said we're going to get to fish lower in the Columbia system than we ever have. Rumor. Yeah. Cross our fingers. Okay. I spoke too soon. No, no, no, no. Hopefully we're going to hear, what does that do for the anglers out there? I mean, obviously it puts them below more big rivers, so on and so forth. Spreads everyone out. So just to talk, you know, just to talk about the Columbia, you know, the last few years we've, we've got, you know, a bunch of tributaries that entered the big Columbia river. And, you know, we don't talk a lot about river names, but I mean, it's pretty obviously what they are on the Southwest Washington side. And when those runs have been the, when those spring Chinook runs have been depressed or when they don't meet their hatchery escaping, because those are hatchery runs, those aren't, those are not wild spring Chinook runs, but the hatchery still need to get their allotment to basically procreate the run and make it again. And so those, those, those amounts are anywhere between a thousand and 1200 fish, depending on which one of the three hatcheries need it. But since the forecast, the last three years have been coming in right at that level, they haven't really been able to allot any lower river fishing. On top of that too, the Willamette runs were coming in good, but not like crazy good, and then also the upriver runs aren't coming in good, so they didn't have a real reason to open up down below and just to take on a lot of that risk within the fisheries. Right. So they've honestly, they've been pigeonholing us. Yes. Pigeonholing us all up into one spot. And, you know, most of those trolls being on the Washington side of the river, you know, we're cutting all those Willamette river fish off from being able to catch them. So fishing down below the Willamette in that lower river, we're going to get all the Columbia fish and, you know, 50,000 Willamette fish to target as well. And the key to that is the 50,000 Willamette fish. When, when you have those mixed into the catch, like our season is set always can do it, our seasons are always, our quotas are always based on a constraining stock. So like the constraining stock for the Columbia is like the upper Columbia river fish. Well, the more of these other fish that we catch in the lower Columbia, if we mix those in and we can fish below there, like that buffers that catch. So instead of a hundred percent of the catch basically being considered upper river fish or a very large percentage of it, you know, 90 plus, if we're fishing below where those Willamette fish are going to try for that big runs, going to 50,000 is a big run for the Willamette, we get to kind of add those in the mix. And those are essentially freebies. Like statistically they're freebies. Which keeps you guys, which keeps everybody fishing longer. Keeps the season open. Yep. Keep us. And those, those fish also are predominantly hatchery fish as well too. So it's, you know, I mean, that's the end of the day, like after the hatcheries make their escapement with a 50,000 fish in the line, they're all going to make their escapement. Every extra fish really, if it gets on the dinner table, somehow, some way it's, it's a win. And I need all the help I can get with hatchery fish. Cause I had one day last year, a bachelor where I released five wild fish in a row. And I was like, this is the best springer day I've had in a while. And I couldn't keep a single fish. So I, I yelling in the boat, like, I think it's clipped. Yeah. And then they sprout that fin. Oh my gosh. Yes. Yeah. You, you see a flash next to the boat and they're like, this is the one, get it in the net and you'd scoop it up and has this big old rudder on it. It's 20 pounds and you're crying. Oh, that's disgusting. So I I'm looking forward to, you know, crossing our fingers that we have that lower river cause I, uh, I like, like to catch and keep. And you know, so just, just to everyone on this podcast, we may not get it. It was just some discussion that was brought up earlier. There's no way of telling. Um, so we've got to keep, we got to throw that in there for you guys, but, uh, it's, it's, here's the wishful thinking. Yes. Uh, cross our fingers. So what else then? What else happens after the spring should come? They shut you guys down in April and, and we can't go out there and play anymore. What else, what else is on the docket? I know we talked a lot of walleye and a lot of trout here that are addicted. Yep. So, well, fortunately, the, fortunately the springer run like that, you, you chase them into the tribes, like our Columbia season ain't going to go past the first week in April, might get a day or two, one way or the other on that. But that's generally been the kind of the common and with what we have for upper river fish, you know, if the lower river fish show up real heavy in the catch and the upper rivers don't, maybe we'll get an extension, but that's first week April, but we can chase those fish into the Willamette and some of those tributaries that we talked, I talked about earlier, um, all have pretty much almost double, if not more of the forecast of what we've seen in the last few years. So there hopefully will be opportunity there. Now, some of our friends above Bonneville, though, like some of those runs that they're, that everyone's very used to having, uh, those ones look pretty depressed and it's going to be real interesting to see where the effort and where the fish basically show up. Cause it could change a lot of things, but right. Interesting. And everything's a prediction. I mean, I remember this last fall where they predicted, you know, X amount of fish and we saw like, it was like 20% higher or something than they had predicted and under predicted big time. But after the Columbia closes down to, I, I kind of transitioned for about three weeks, you talked about spring trout and I'm thinking kokanee, so I'm thinking spring walleye, you know, and the thing is, is, you know, after we chased springers for two, you know, two and a half months, kind of looking for something different to do. And, uh, so it's nice that we have multiple opportunities in the spring, different species of target. Well, and I think it's something too, uh, Cameron, I feel like a long, a long time ago now kind of encouraged this thought process of, and mainly because of depressed summer steelhead runs and stuff that we couldn't go out and utilize. Um, but being able to branch out and use all the resources that the state gives us for fishing opportunities. There's a lot of stuff that is ignored. Obviously everybody goes to the stock ponds and stuff like that, but these kokanee fisheries, these past fisheries, these, these walleye fisheries, and are a ton of fun to do and super interactive fishing that we're forced to do now, but still create an awesome opportunity for everybody to stay out there and wanting to get younger and younger anglers into fishing. I have never, I have not seen a year in the last six, seven, eight years. We're looking at the scope of like what's going on this year and not just with like what I'm doing personally, cause I'm gonna fish a bunch of bass tournaments, so I got them littered all over the schedule, but like spring the lengthy season that we're going to get out of the 50,000 fish. Um, some of the kokanee prospects that I'm seeing and not just my local lakes, but everywhere, the size of those fish this year, you're going to get spring anxiety or the wall, the walleye fishing and what some of the guys are doing on some of these staging walleye, right? The summer Chinook forecast is bonkers. 80,000 sleep for the fall forecast for coho just came out at 1.7 mil. Wow. It was, uh, remember what, remember what happened when we had the a 1.6 mil. Yeah. Remember the three fish limit that went all the way through August and green area one. Excellent. Like, we're like, do we want to fish, but we tend to, we want to go catch three silvers. If we even get a shred of that. And yes, before you guys all start poopoo in this, Oh, I remember two years ago when they predicted a million and we only got four 50. Yeah. Guess what? There's not a giant blob out there to kill him. That's right. And you know, if one point, you know, if, if they're off by 500,000 and you know, a million, two, that was still an epic run last a couple of years ago. I'm sorry, it wasn't in the Columbia, but every tributary that he was fished was a good year. It was, yeah, it was good. And the thing was, we didn't have the water though, that fall. Remember like, like if we would have had that run, right. We were fishing water, lowest waters I've seen in December. And it was so, yeah, I mean, we had some different things. That's right. It was too, too, too little water, but the fish were there and ultimately, you know, and then also, and little insider stuff, not going to throw numbers, but URBs for the Columbia river look fricking awesome. Really? And it's like, I'm looking at the scope of this year and you'll plan and like stuff and planted, you know, we've got some other announcements we're going to make later on, like what we're doing with addicted and just, I mean, just looking at the next like eight months, it's like, Oh my God. Yes. I mean, we've got different entities coming up across the country. We're doing, it's just going to be so much to get out there and get this spring run started. It's not even crazy. And just hit the ground running. And before we know it, it'll be October. And yeah, say you blink and it's already October. Oh, and then we'll be wanting to sleep for two months. Yeah. But you know what? Yes. Well, in this, in this well-deserved after last year and missing out on the whole spring run for the COVID thing. Oh my gosh. I'm going to take it to them. Like, it ain't going to be funny. Yeah. So we won't even exist by then. Anyways, we'll all be healed. I hope so. Sure. Tired of it. Stay safe out there, folks. Yeah. Stay safe. All right. Well, I think it's obvious that there's going to be a lot of fun fishing to be had all, all across the country this year and going into the spring. So it's been a long, but still is winter. Let's not, let's not kid ourselves. The groundhog hasn't seen a shadow yet. Hasn't even really been winter yet. We're expecting some snow this week around here. And I'm looking forward to some snowy days on the river for sure. You do. Get us, get us conditioned for Michigan. Well, Eric, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, you're welcome. Thanks for having me. Thank you guys out there for listening to this podcast. If you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe and we'll see you guys out there on the water. See you guys on the road.