Willamette River Fishing Reports

I guess I forgot to say that we launched at 10th street ramp (also called Willamette park) in West Linn.

I am sure the lower river is fishing great right now but I figure that there are always extra crowds there this time of year due to the springer and shad fishing.

Are you going to fish for shad at all or just fish for bass?

Just going for bass. I’ll only have 2-3 hours so I have to make it count.

Now that's a report!

Welcome back to the water! Those fish should be worried.

NKlamerus said:

Now that's a report!

Welcome back to the water! Those fish should be worried.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

@portlandrain and I hit the Willamette out of 10th street again on Sunday. Things did not look particularly promising as the river had come up a foot, current was stronter, it was a little murkier and the water temp had dropped by 2 degrees. To put the icing on the cake the grass/moss problem seemed even worse.

Fished similarly to the week before. Started off fishing points and flats along the shoreline and with a similar lack of success. I threw a crankbait, rattletrap, spinnerbait, swimbait and topwater without so much as a sniff. If I was a vegetarian though I would have been killing it. Lots of salad on almost every cast. I don't remember the grass/moss being this bad in the past. There are just non-stop balls of the stuff coming down the river.

This week though, I was a little quicker about moving out to mid-river humps but the bite there was really slow as well. I did pick up this guy on a swimbait but the bites were few and far between.



I also tried the deeper spots around the humps to see if the fish had perhaps moved off the tops of the humps. All I have to say is that if you want to go lunker salad fishing that is definitely the way to go. I thought I was getting a lot of grass when fishing the tops of the humps but depressions around them were the real sweet spot.

After a few failed attempts to fish deeper I went back to fishing the tops of the humps. That would occasionally yield a fish but most of those were dinks.

After struggling out in the main river we decided to head back into the slough. @portlandrain caught a really nice 2lb 7oz bass near the mouth of the slough! My best fish of the day was probably about a pound and a half.

As we fished our way up the slough (mostly throwing Ned rigs) one or the other of us would occasionally catch a fish. I eventually made my way as far back as I could to a little section that does not have any current flowing into it. The water temp there was all the way up to 60 degrees (the main slough was around 57 degrees and the main river around 55 degrees).

That little section is also very shallow and I was able to pick up a few fish on a Baby Bull Shad. That is a hard jointed swimbait that runs very shallow. It was fun watching the attack that bait, even though all those fish were dinks.

Overall it was a really tough day for me. 12 bass in 11 hours. Not really lighting it up. I sure hope the warmer weather gets the bite turned on and that the grass/moss starts to die off. I don't remember it being quite this bad in past years.

Here is a short video of a few of the day's fish:

Seems like one of those days you could dump a whole tackle box in the water and they still wouldn't eat anything out of it

Great report as usual though, seems like as summer starts the weeds really take over in this state, could just be I'm not used to having real seasons!

How often do you throw swimbaits like the shooter? I've got some Jackal Gantarels, Duckett Shads, and mattlures soft gills on the way, hoping to throw big swimbaits more often even though it's late in the year for them. (Bluegill baits that is)

When fishing bigger waters for smallmouth (that often move long distances) it is always hard to know if you are fishing over fish and that they are not very active or whether there just aren't fish in an area. I am still not sure what the deal was this past weekend. There were some fish in the areas we were fishing but I have no idea if we did a good job of catching the few fish that were there or whether we were fishing over tons of fish that would not bite.

The grass/moss that is so horrible right now gets better later in the summer. The big problem is that there is tons of it floating through the water column, not just that it is on the bottom. I am not sure but I believe that this is largely due to the flow velocity being strong enough to dislodge it. It sure seems like once the current drops a bit so does the grass/moss problem. Until then though, it is a painful struggle.

I got a late start yesterday, around 10:30. My main purpose was to see if the work I did on my motor took care of the issues I had been having which it did. Fished rocky points from Willamette Park to LO for about an hour. No bites. Threw soft plastics and crankbaits. Water temp was 58-60. Water level was definitely high but not much current. I didn't have the moss/algae issues in the areas I fished that were mentioned above. Got off the water just as the splash and giggle crowd started to arrive. Parking at Willamette Park was about 20% full. No issues social distancing at the ramp when I launched/took out. Hope to get a better start some time next week.

I enjoy reading the posts of several of the the regulars on OFF. I figured it's time to start updating with my own.

Launched at Roger's Landing at about 12:30pm. Water temp definitely on the rise with the nice weather - my FF read between 60 and 62 degrees. Water flow down too. Switched off between a ned rig (Zman TRD) and a drop-shot rig (Googan worm).

Caught 9 smallmouth and 1 pike minnow. A few of the smallmouth were a little chunky - around 2lbs on the scale. Fished till about 4:45pm. Line was Loooong at the ramp to take out - lots of tow boats starting to put in.

I constantly had to fight the green moss in the water and the white cotton on the surface. That stuff is now all over my line in my reels. I find the cotton really hard to get OFF

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Great report. Thanks for sharing.

From the Next-door.com forum:

Golfbum said:

Parking violation. Today we went to Willamette Boat Ramp to put our two kayaks in the the river. All single space parking places around the park were filled. The vehicles with trailers lot was less than half filled and over half of those parked in the lot were not pulling trailers. I returned to find a $30 ticket for parking there. The police officer was in the lot writing out tickets to all the cars parked that did not have trailers attached. I asked the officer why he was doing this and he said because boaters would not like it if they didn't. I tried to explain to him that the lot was not even half filled and he would not hear it. Laws are important I'm aware but there is the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. I was not preventing any boat owner with a trailer the right to park there. It simply was a weekday and not many boats on the river. It would have been along walk to the river on a hot day and it made sense to me to shorten our walk. BTW this is the second time this has happened at a boat dock in West Linn. The last time the police officer wrote out over 30 tickets for the same violation. The tickets were dismissed because of the poor signage at the ramp. We kayaker paid a fee to use the river just like other boaters do. My trailer is a roof rack , what's the difference?

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I got a similar ticket parking in Cannon Beach in January for parking in an RV spot. There wasn't a single RV in the lot and not a single car parking spot to be found.

I think I might have to buy an RV and pull a trailer with it when I go fishing

Thanks for the report and the pics! Sounds like a pretty fun day on the water. I have not hit Roger's landing yet this year. I like that area a lot more after they put the flash boards in at the falls. Great job.

I was able to get out on the Willamette for an hour and a half this morning for a little bass fishing. Launched at Willamette Park - Portland around 9:00. Fished from Sellwood to Lake O. No luck with a paddle tail swim bait or a senko. Caught three between 1-1.5 lb on a Ned rigged TRD tube. Not much river traffic. Lot at the ramp had two trailers in it. When we were taking out around 10:30, the paddle boarders and kayak'ers were starting to arrive. Water temp around 58F.

Thanks for the report.

It seems amazing that the water temp is still so cold. Last year at this time the river temp was 69, 2 years ago it was 68!

I agree. The bites were very subtle, but at least the algae/moss isn't as bad as it was earlier.

That is good to hear! I think that usually clears up at some point in June. Fishing in that moss is really painful!

Launched out of Cedar Oak this morning around 8:45. Fished towards LO for 2 hours. Caught 3 decent smallmouth and 2 dinks. Ned rigged tube and wacky rigged senko, both in green pumpkin/red flake. Parking lot had half a dozen trailers. Ramp was starting to get busy when I pulled out around 10:45. No moss in the water. Water was flat with no wind. Not much river traffic. One of those perfect mornings for fishing.

Thanks for the report. Glad you caught some nice ones. I have been wondering about the moss in the Willamette.