The fall-run salmon bite is beginning to get hot below Priest Rapids Dam. Anglers have been hooking big fall-runs for a while now, but the fishing has definitely improved in the past ten days or so. These salmon are still coming over Bonneville Dam at a rate of ten to twelve thousand a day, and the really big numbers, the twenty thousand a day counts haven’t even reach John Day. Fall-runs are passing over Priest Rapids at up to eight hundred a day, and those fish will be hitting the Wenatchee area soon. I have three trips planned to the Vernita are in the next week or so and I can’t wait to do battle with some of these big, bright kings. I will be taping a show early this week, and it will be on the air in early October, early enough to give anglers some important tips before the season closes on the twenty-second. I have been told to bring along a bunch of Super Baits in the lemon-lime color, and I just happen to have a bunch of them in my box. The steelhead fishing is also good in this stretch of the river. I hope to load up on kings early enough to spend some time getting some these, too.