Salmon season opens on the upper Columbia River on July 1st and the best fishing spots will be crowded with anglers. I expect to see plenty of boats below Wanapum Dam and Chelan Falls. It’s the busiest time of the year on the upper Columbia.

Anglers in our region are sharpening their hooks and getting their gear ready for the opening of the summer run and sockeye fishing season on the upper Columbia River. On Saturday, July 1st the fishing grounds will be crowded with boats trolling their favorite salmon lures. One of the most popular opening day spots is right below Wanapum Dam. This year, flows are fairly moderate, which will make conditions very good for those who start their salmon fishing season here. I expect summer runs to be caught for sure, although the fish are showing up later this season. Last year at this time summer runs were passing over Bonneville Dam at a pace of 3,500 a day. This year it’s closer to 2,000. Last year the run peaked on June 26 at 5,000 a day. So far, six thousand have passed over Priest Rapids. Sockeye are even later. On the 22nd 10,000 a day were passing over Bonneville. Last year the count was 29,000 the same day. The run peaked with 56,000 passing Bonneville on the 27th. About 3,000 have passed over Priest Rapids as of June 25th this year. It’s still early and it is still possible that the sockeye numbers will take a significant turn upwards.

One of the salmon areas that has gained in popularity in fairly recent years is at Chelan Falls. It is located where the Chelan River enters the Columbia River, just below the Bebee Bridge. A primary reason that this spot is so popular is that there is a net pen placed in the Chelan River that raises and releases summer run Chinook salmon. Salmon anglers at Chelan Falls benefit from the return of these fish. The ratio of hatchery salmon caught compared to wild fish is very high. Although the opportunity to catch sockeye at Chelan Falls is low, many anglers will make the run up to Wells Dam to catch sockeye and finish their day. Another attractive feature of this fishing area is that there are two Chelan PUD boat launches nearby. One is on the Douglas County side and the other is on the Chelan County side. The Douglas County, Bebee Bridge, park offers RV hook ups and camping. The Chelan County park is day use only. The abundance of hatchery fish and the proximity of two launches make Chelan Falls one of the best places to enjoy the salmon fishing season.

The following report is from Paul Hoffarth, who monitors fisheries for the WDFW in Region 3. He shared this report last week, and it should give anglers a perspective on the coming season: Sockeye counts at Bonneville continued to climb and exceeded 10,000 on June 20. Sockeye count at McNary was 2,855 for June 20. It is too early to determine how strong this years’ return will be. The preseason forecast was for 234,500 sockeye and 84,800 summer chinook.

The Hanford Reach salmon fishery got off to a predictably slow start given the numbers of fish present. On the opening weekend, WDFW staff interviewed 218 anglers from 70 boats and 125 bank anglers with 25 sockeye, 5 adult hatchery summer chinook, 1 hatchery summer chinook jack, and 1 wild chinook jack harvested. Three adult wild chinook were caught and released. Anglers averaged slightly under 1/2 a salmon per boat (0.41), 22 angler hours per fish. Four sockeye were landed at the Columbia Point bank fishery, in Tri-Cities.

Based on the data collected there were 1,089 angler trips for salmon the first three days of the fishery with 61 sockeye, 12 adult hatchery chinook, 2 hatchery chinook jacks, and 2 wild jack chinook harvested with 6 wild adult summer chinook caught and released. Fishing should quickly improve this upcoming week as the numbers of sockeye and summer chinook migrating through the Hanford Reach and into the Upper Columbia increase.

I had high hopes for my last trip to Banks Lake. I have had good success this season, and I wanted my brother in-law Tom Verschuren to get in on the fun. He joined me on Thursday, and we started our day trolling crank baits from the Million Dollar Mile campground to Rosebush. I put out the Flicker Shads and Bandits that were proven to be effective. Conditions were good, but the fishing wasn’t. We didn’t even get a bite. I know Tom loves to fish for bass, so I had him bring his gear. We ran across the lake to the south shore and went to work. What we found worked best was to park in an attractive bay and start casting. The watermelon with red flakes are our favorite Senkos and we both tied those on. We made our retrieves very slow, and this worked the best. We have had better days catching bass on Banks, but the size of the fish we got were above average. We finished our day trolling from Rosebush the campground and got just one walleye. Oh well, we had a great day, and are eager to get back out on Banks. This week’s photo is from our trip to Banks.

I didn’t have a lot of time on Tuesday, and I almost ran up to Fish Lake, near Lake Wenatchee. I don’t do that often enough. It’s just about 20 miles from my house in Leavenworth, and it’s a very scenic drive through the Tumwater Canyon. It gets a good plant of catchable size trout in the spring and additional plants of smaller trout and fry later on. There are always plenty of nice rainbow to be caught here. The folks at the Cove Resort have planted triploid rainbow of some size in the lake over the years and it’s a nice surprise to catch one of those whoppers. Brown trout have always been in the lake and something that is fairly new is the kokanee that have been introduced recently. I like to fish for the largemouth bass. Most of the bass I catch are at least 2 to 3 pounds. By far the most popular species in the lake are the perch. These keep people busy year-round. I gotta get up there!