Snake River

[SlabKing]

(Pics added on page 2....sorry for the long post)

Well, let's get the bad news out of the way. The crappie bite = non existent. The water was still a bit too muddy for them. I didn't hear of a single crappie caught over the weekend around Lyons Ferry. We trolled cranks, trolled jigs, fished the bluffs, jigged over deep water humps and channels, and made cast to every stick up and hidden brush pile I knew of. Not one crappie in the boat all weekend .

The good news....the blue cats and smallies were red hot!!!! Launched out of the State Park around 5:30 am on Saturday and headed up to "crappie bluff" looking for slabs. First cast against the bluff with a red jig under float....bobber down. I set the hook....feels like I have a monster slab on the line! Then it starts pulling a little drag and heading for deeper water. Pull it up closer to boat.....it's a 3lb blue cats:D. This fish was right against the bluff and only 15" under the surface. We keeping fishing the area for about an hour before heading after some cats up river.

We head up to a good hole and setup our cat rods with fresh shrimp. No sooner does the bait hit the bottom before it's fish on. We nail blue cat after blue cat until we run out of shrimp and three dozen worms. They were all between 1-4lbs on average. I started to head back to the Marina to see if my girlfriend needed any help setting up camp so I fished around the marina docks from the boat for about 40mins or so. You could not keep the bass off your line if tried. I swear those fish will hit a bare hook! We caught them deep on docks, out in open water, up against the banks....pretty much every place you could cast held bass. Me and my buddy caught about 20 of them around the marina before heading in around 9:40am.

Went to camp and ate breakfast (the marina breakfast is really good and cheap) that put everyone to sleep. I still wanted to fish so I hopped in the boat and shot to the north bank just downstream of the bridge. There's a nice little side channel that slows the current down and has a fast break into the main channel. I caught so many little bass of that island and drop off that I lost count after 35. Didn't have any catfish bait so I went and fished under the ferry with a crappie jig and caught two bluegill and a sucker for bait. Went back to the island and used the bluegill for cut bait. After about 15mins my rod almost gets pulled out the boat. Set the hook and it's another cat...best one of the trip at about 7lbs I'd guess. I released it and kept one smaller blue to use for bait then went back to camp.

I spent Sunday morning fishing holes in the main river channel. Every hole we tried held cats but one held a TON of cats. Right below the mouth of the Tucannon is a hole in the main channel. The cats were stacked up like cordwood in that hole. From 5am-8am we pulled over 25 cats from that hole. They loved cut chucks of sucker fish and even the belly fat from other blue cats.

All in all we had a blast out there and I'm planning another trip for July if the water clears. With over 150 bass brought to the boat and at least 50-70 cats it was a great trip even though the crappie where a no-show. If anyone heads out there soon give me a heads up and I'll ride over with you.