Drained at Drano

I'm way behind in posting. Stay tuned for a multi-part post on the Native Shores Rendezvous of last weekend. In the meantime, re: Columbia River spring chinook fishing at the mouth of the Little White Salmon River in the Gorge last Thursday...

...got skunked.

No surprise, really. It's a boat show there, with limited access for bank anglers. Not really my kind of scene either. The boats circled one productive stretch near the bridge where most of the fish are hooked, putt-putting endlessly as if caught in a whirlpool (maybe that's why they call it Drano Lake), sometimes getting into shouting matches with the old salts on shore who think they're hogging the best water. Some of these old salts even made a point of landing their hardware inches from the hulls of boats that got too close. Whatever.

We tossed mag warts for a few hours and saw seven or eight fish landed by the boats. Considering there were 200-plus anglers on the water, that's not a very optimistic catch rate. Maybe the tributaries will start to heat up soon and I'll take another shot at a springer.