Does anybody have any advice for fishing technique on the Yamhill? Especially near the mouth and the Willamette.
For smallies, crankbaits in a crayfish pattern are hard to beat. But they were hitting perch and rainbow colors last week as well. The first quarter mile of river above the mouth is a wide, long section of the yamhill that runs about 10 -14 feet deep and it's great for trolling crankbaits. I like to troll crankbaits with at least 100 ft of line out so they dig deep, letting them bounce along the bottom every now and then. The bass go nuts when they see those little puffs of mud kicking up along the bottom. Trolling for smallies is similar to trolling for trout and I use the same gear for both: a 6 1/2 to 7 ft medium action rod with 10 lb mono, and i almost never set the hook. When trolling, smallies hook themselves and all their head thrashing drives the hooks in further. Once you locate smallies on a stretch of river by trolling, you can run back through that same spot again and again and often pick up more fish. Or you can kill the trolling motor and start hitting the hot spots you found with Texas-rigged soft plastics -- senkos/curly-tail worms/crays/lizards.
Trolling, especially with a depth finder, is a really fast way to learn the fish-holding structure in the river along with spotting both visible and submerged cover. Plus your lure is covering a lot of water, passing by a lot of fish, for a longer amount of time. On a 4 hour fishing trip, my trolled lure is in the water fishing probably 3 1/2 hours. When casting, my lure may only be in the water for 2 hours out of the 4 i'm on the water, maybe even less due to all the boat adjustments, paddling, bad casts, etc.