Fishin' Reports

You may have read or heard my report about a trip I made to Rufus Woods last week. I didn’t do very well, but I did learn some things. One of the fish checkers with the Colville Tribe stopped by while we were there, and I had talked to another with the same job earlier in the week. They both had said that the fishing had been slow, due to very low flows and still warm water temperatures. This confirmed something that I had already knew about fishing Rufus Woods, or anywhere on the upper Columbia River for that matter. You need current to have good fishing. That goes for trout, walleye, kokanee, whatever. Water temperature isn’t so much of a concern, as we did well at the net pens in July. However, we were reminded that probably the best fishing of the year is in February. I think this has something to do with the number of lines in the water. Rufus gets a lot of anglers out in the winter months. Also, that 14-pound fish that I mentioned being caught the day before we were there had a tag. Turns out it was released in 2015. It weighed less than 2 pounds when it was released. It shows how big these triploids get in four years after release. Consider that the tribe releases 30 to 50,000 of them every year and you will see why so many people are fishing for big triploids on Rufus Woods.