You have gotta love this time of year!

You have to love this time of year!

As I type this there is steelhead swimming up and down the local rivers right now. It's that time of year again when the Wenatchee river and the Methow river and the Upper Columbia are packed full of steelhead.  Right now the rivers are high and muddy but starting to come down and when they do it will be on again! Until that happens we have been spending our days on the Upper Columbia river catching lots of beautiful bright steelhead. On all the rivers its a mandatory retention of hatchery fish and wild fish can NOT be taken out of the water for any reason.

When we are fishing the Upper Columbia or the big river, we are fishing out of  our 19' Wooldridge using mostly a slip bobber set up fishing anywhere from Wenatchee to Bridgeport chasing fish. We are mostly using marribou jigs tipped with shrimp in our own concoction of Pautzkes nectar and some other scents, steelhead love shrimp and eggs so we give them both. We spend lots of time "free drifting" bobbers down long runs and also working eddie lines waiting for the bobber to go down and the water to explode.

When we are fishing the Wenatchee and Methow rivers we are using a slightly different technique. most of the time we are floating the rivers in out brand new Star whitewater raft with full fishing frame.  We use fixed bobbers mostly on the smaller rivers along with small jigs in both dark and bright colors.  We float all sections of both  rivers so we can chase the fish wherever they are and gives us the flexibility to do full day and half day floats.  We have great numbers of fish in all the rivers we fish right now so you cant go wrong fishing any of them. The season should extend through March unless its closed early by WDFW so book a trip now so you don't miss out on this great fishing!