by Dave Graybill, July 04, 2013

Summer run season is off and running now. Anglers caught a nice mix of kings and sockeye below Wanapum Dam on the opening day of the season, and there were some very nice catches turned in at Hooked on Toys the same day.

I fished below Wanapum on the opener with Shane Magnuson of Upper Columbia Guide Service, along with TJ Hester of Kennewick and Audrey Kelly of Leavenworth. This is pretty much a tradition for Shane and me. This was the fourth or fifth time I have been below Wanapum with him for the beginning of salmon fishing. We typically have pretty good success and Monday was no different.

We had a very busy morning. Magnuson ran four rods on his Scotty downriggers. The two side rods were dedicated to kings and were set up with Pro Troll flashers and Super Bait Plug Cut lures, stuffed with tuna and scented with Graybill’s Guide Formula. The back two rods were set up for sockeye, with size 0 dodgers, 15-inch leaders and pink hoochies tied on a double hook rig. I don’t know why, but the fish sure liked my side of the boat. The sockeye rod went off over and over again over a period of about two hours. The king rods were busy, too. We had four good king hits. We lost one right next to the boat. I still and see the look in Shane’s eye when he nodded to the king rod next to me and said “Stick him Dave. Hit him hard!” I did and the fight was on. This was a fresh early season king and it took some very hot runs before we got it to the net. This is the fish that you see at the top of this week’s column. It weighed close to twenty pounds.

We wound up with four sockeye in our cooler and they were all about twenty inches long and weighed around three pounds. We lost our fair share of sockeye and we saw the same thing going on all around us. There were some other kings landed in the bay below the dam and the sockeye bite was very good. We left the water pretty early on Monday, knowing that there was a hot day ahead. When we pulled the boat in Linda the fish checker was there to greet us and there hadn’t been enough boats off the water yet to gauge the level of success at Wanapum for the opener. Considering that the water was high but there weren’t the big standing waves of the past two years, and really no wind to contend with, I would say the opener here was very good. The sockeye limit this year is just two fish and I am sure there were plenty of limits of these fish. The Chinook limit is two this year and wild fish must be released. I didn’t see any myself but other anglers said they saw fish released, and they also asked me to remind folks that you must use barbless hooks on the Columbia River, its tributaries this year.

When we got to Wenatchee we had to stop by Hooked on Toys to weigh our fish and to see how they did here on the opener. There was a line of coolers in the store, all with nice kings on ice! There was a list of people that had weighed their fish and my king, that weighed 19 pounds, 2 ounces by then, was just fourth on the list. The biggest fish was a 25-pound, 7-ouncer taken by Chad Churchill. The second largest was caught by Jeff Lang and weighed 22 pounds, 4 ounces. The third biggest weight 20 pounds, 10 ounces, caught by Rusty McDonnell. There were some other fish on the list, too, in the 12- to 15-pound class. There weren’t any sockeye displayed by the Wenatchee contingent.

I learned that there was a pretty good group of anglers fishing above Rocky Reach Dam on opening morning, as the current was pretty stiff below the dam. Those that headed up to Wells Dam were disappointed. The waves were so high here that it wasn’t even possible to launch. I heard that there were several boats milling around at Chelan Falls they were likely the guys that got turned away at Wells. No word on success from this group. Fishing in the Brewster area was very poor, which is no surprise. There hasn’t been any summer runs counted over Wells Dam as yet.

You can bet that the fishing at Wanapum will continue to be good for a couple of weeks at least, as the summer run move up the river. In the mean time the action in Wenatchee will really take off as more fish arrive here, and when the currents settle down Wells will turn on, too. I got a report from Ron Oules from Brewster that the water temperature in the Okanogan was already hitting 65 degrees. With the hot weather forecast we can expect a solid “thermal barrier” off the mouth of the Okanogan in the Brewster Pool later this month. This creates ideal conditions for king fishing here.

I want to remind everyone that the Wenatchee River Salmon Derby is coming up on July 19th through the 21st. Fishing was very good last year with lots of big kings weighed in, and this year should be even better. Stop by Hooked on Toys for more information or log onto www.wenatcheesalmonderby.com. A couple of weeks later is the 8th Annual Budweiser-Lowrance King Salmon Derby in Brewster on August 2nd through the 4th. This is a very popular derby with tons of prizes and just plain fun. You can learn all about where to get tickets by visiting their web site at www.brewstersalmonderby.com. Both of these derbies are very well organized and you would enjoy participating in them, whether you catch a big fish or not.

I had a great start to my salmon season, thanks to Shane, and look forward to many more days chasing kings this summer. I am also shooting a video on fishing for largemouth bass for an upcoming Fishing TV Show on Tuesday. Keith Jensen tells me the fishing is going to be terrific. Do we live in a great area or what!


By Dave Graybill

FishingMagician.com