Steelhead/Sturgeon Fishing at Bonneville

Sorry for the late post, been busy all weekend. I had the pleasure of fishing with Gary (Imnaha), for some steelhead on Friday. We got up to the fishery around 7am and were suprised by the lack of trailors.
...Either that was a GOOD thing, or a BAD thing... yet to be determined...



We decided to head upriver past some recognizable landmarks, such as Beacon Rock,


and made our way to a secret locale we clever named the 'shad rack'

We anchored in 15' of water, put back a U20, and some spin-n-glos/shrimp combos.


first bite was on Gary's rode. The thing starts fighting more like a summer nook than a steelhead. larger with the long, pulling headshakes. Didn't fight like a sturgeon...but it was. Nice sized fish too, almost keeper size. Safely released and back to the deep depths of 15'.


Around 9 or so, my rod buries. safe to say this fish is hooked good. The fish rockets straight out of the water with three or four great acrobatic jumps. After her show was over, I grinded her up to the boat, to notice no extra fins.

BONK BONK! (Didn't take much for a 6 lb fish)



"Hey, look at the holdover trout I caught up here at the lake!" is what I felt like saying holding it up.


...just seemed so tiny compared to salmon/tuna/halibut as of recently. But still great fun, don't get me wrong!~ Sometimes its good to scale down.. Its like tying on a #18 caddis to a 4wt and hittin a small creek the day after bloodying the boat with tuna 35 miles out on the Big Blue.
....Brings things into check.

Meanwhile, absorbing the rays of the sun, Gary is brought to his feet by another good bite later that we KNEW was a sturgeon the minute it started poking at his rod.


Another good healthy legal-sized fish.


Again, popped the hook out and let it swim on back to scavenge on something dead.
We made sure to keep the prawn rig up further off the bottom but with their good sniffers, they still seemed to find it.
One random thing I thought was kinda ironic is that the sturgeon both came on the inside rod, and on the bait that was higher up in the water column.. and the steelhead came on the outside rod, deeper water.


Turned out to be a great day on the water.. We ended up keeping one steelhead, and letting two 'incidental bi-catch' (trying my gillnet terminology) sturgeon back to grow larger and maybe keep, another day.

Hope to get up there again.. Just watching the osprey dive for fish, the herons fight for fishing grounds, even the other fishermen attempting to anchor, made for some great entertainment!