Columbia river shad fishing

[nativefish]

I have never gone before so i am curious about a few things. From what i have read i can tell you basically drift fish grubs or shad darts (correct me if im wrong). I was thinking about going to the columbia and was considering either ditlers beach (airport), chinook landings, or rooster rock state park. Does anyone have an experience fishing for shad from any of these places that could help me decide where to go? And I was curious if shad fishing has been decent or if i should just trout fish instead.

Thanks

 

[Toyracer38]

Not sure about where you should go, but there should be plenty of them all over up there. Down here (Rainier/Longview area) they been catching them for a couple weeks atleast. I caught some from the shore by plunking a tiny Dick Nite spoon, around 3' of leader with a cork float right in the middle of the leader. I was tossing 8oz of lead. Best time seemed to be on the incoming tide. Of course I also hooked some on my Steelhead gear. They like prawns and kept stealing my bait. Orange and white and chrome with red, were productive colors for the Dick Nite's. Imagine the shad dart set up the same way would be deadly also.

 

[Otto]

I just looked at the Shad count at Bonneville. 127076 shad just yesterday passed the fish counter. That's a lot of fish in one day. From 5/30 to 6/08 the have been 335449 total Shad counted. There Here!

 

[Green_Tackle]

We were just out this morning testing some new styles of our lead free shad darts at Bonneville Damn this morning. There are TONS of Shad in the river right now. We got 20 of them. We were using about 1oz sinkers with about a 3ft leader to the shad dart. Cast and retrieve with the weight bouncing bottom like when drift fishing.

The only down-side is the water level is pretty high which makes for limited bank space.

 

[juggernaut506]

I went yesterday below Bonneville. The morning bite sucked but I put 38 shad in the cooler in the last 3 hours before they closed.

 

[Vlad]

We were using about 1oz sinkers with about a 3ft leader to the shad dart. .

What size and color shad dart do you use?

 

[DirectDrive]

I have never gone before so i am curious about a few things. From what i have read i can tell you basically drift fish grubs or shad darts (correct me if im wrong). I was thinking about going to the columbia and was considering either ditlers beach (airport), chinook landings, or rooster rock state park. Does anyone have an experience fishing for shad from any of these places that could help me decide where to go? And I was curious if shad fishing has been decent or if i should just trout fish instead.

Thanks

June is Shad Month...please make a note of it.
You can start getting into the "scouts" in May.

Not that easy to find a good bank spot for shad....most are caught by the boats.
They like a rocky bottom.
Clackamette Park is a good bank spot.

Keep your bait small.
A bare lead 1/32 oz jig with gold hook will catch shad, for example.