The alarm blared at 3:30 a.m. Too early for sure.
I REALLY wanted to stay in bed, but even after four days of the same early morning wake-up call, I rolled out because I knew what awaited in the hours ahead. My son Kyle and I fished for five days up near Brewster, on the Columbia River below Chief Joseph Dam. We were fishing for sockeye salmon in the waters near the mouth of the Okanogan River, along with several hundred other anglers.
We, along with most of the others fishing for the smallish salmon, had some outstanding success. It helps that there are several hundred thousand salmon swimming in the cool waters of the Columbia River near Brewster. At the last count reported by the fish tabulators at Wells Dam, there were over 350,000 sockeyes through the fish ladders early last week.
Wells is the last dam the fish need to navigate before heading to the Okanogan. That’s only about half of the sockeye now in the system. As of Sunday, there were more than 751,000 sockeye salmon over Bonneville, which is a new modern-day record.
The fishing at Brewster, along with other spots on the upper Columbia, has been good from the start of the season, which opened July 1. Anglers reported catching limits of the feisty little salmon on day one. When we let our lines out into the Columbia in the early morning last Monday, it didn’t take long to get a bite.
Friend Joe Lester had joined us and within a couple minutes of trolling he had a bite. Then he had another. Both fish got off.
Over.