halibuthitman said:
I think you would have been a great commercial fisherman... spydey, one day mabe you will get the chance to push a driftboat down a 35 ft bank into a river you forgot to check the river levels on, drift through a dark lonely canyon.. watching steelhead shoot up or downstream as you pass.. slide up onto a gravel bar with ut anyone elses footprints on it, no empty prawn containers.. a herd of 5 elk will blast across the river downstream and you will hear no cars and see not another soul.. and you will see why we call them magic carpets.
I grew up boat fishing. First was a Clackacraft 16 ft drift boat guide edition. It was a bulky boat that required more effort to row than normal. Through my dad's struggles to control that boat I only remember 2 days I didn't bring home a limit of fish. We often fished diver and bait or back trolled plugs. I caught too many fish in that boat and our neighbors drift boat to remember them all.
After he got tired of muscling that beast of a drift boat around he traded a van we had for an 18.5 ft flat bottom sled. I had some great experiences in that boat as well; trolling spinners, pulling plugs, back trolling diver and bait, kwikfishing. I caught my first steelhead casting a gold spoon onto a ledge on the Clackamas on that sled. It was a fun and capable boat for the small river fishing I'd grown up doing, but I didn't like it nearly as much as the drift boat.
Fishing the Columbia on anchor is probably one of the least fun things I have done in a boat. It's extremely productive when the fish are thick in the channels. I do it on occasion and really like getting the big kings that way because there much less risk of losing a big one as is so often the case plunking these big rivers.
Only in adulthood when my dad stopped fishing did I discover the art of bank fishing. I now enjoy drifting more than any other form of fishing. It takes real skill to drift boat fish, in not only understanding the fish, but knowing the river and knowing your boat. If I had the money I would drift boat fish as much as possible. Bank fishing is just more cost effective and I do well enough to not constantly miss the boat.