I actually do occasionally participate in fishing trips with my drift boat. Sometimes it stays parked my friends and I fish from shore. I fished the Clearwater river in Idaho upriver from Lewiston in late September. It was a fun trip even though the fish weren't in much evidence. The runs are down and the limits for keeping fish that opened up in mid October have been drastically reduced and no fish over 28" may be kept. The big B-Run steelhead that are supposed to arrive later in the season haven't been showing up over Bonnevile Dam either, hence the size reduction.  We floated one nice section of the river that was reported to have fish in it but all we saw was nice scenery.

Our next trip was to the Grande Ronde to the Shumaker Grade section where we fished from the shoreline. The Grande Ronde is also suffering from low numbers of fish. One of our party caught a reasonable sized hatchery fish. I understand it was pretty good eating.

The last trip I did was with the Spokane Fly Fishers. We fished from the Oregon State line down to Cougar Creek campground. there were 12 folks on the float. Ten pontoon boats and "The Challenge". The fly fishers warned me that the river was pretty low, did I really want to float it and damage my boat. I said that I felt comfortable running my boat and that I built it very stoutly. Did I hit some rocks? Yes, but I missed a whole bunch more. The river was flowing at around 800 cubic feet a minute. Challenge took a few good hits but no discernable damage to the bottom. My chine caps are looking pretty rugged but that's okay, that's why they are sacrificial.

Here's some pic's;Here's one of the folks from the club, you are looking upstream back into Oregon from here. I caught a Dolly Varden at the head of the pool in the picture above.

The water was clear, the weather was nice, almost 70 in the afternoons with frost overnight.

Jason and Randy with the "bruiser". Randy has been our steelhead fishing tutor and seems as happier than Jason. He is very considerate and always sends me to the hopefullt best water before him. I hadn't seen him in about 20years until last summer. we used to telemark ski together back in the good old days. Three casts later Jason claims he hooked a native in the same area. No pictures, no proof! :<)

Next trip is to the Hood Canal in Washington State. A little place my buddy and I call "Chumport", on the maps it's called Hoodsport. On Finley Creek that flows into the canal is a Chum Hatchery. I don't care much for eating or smoking Chum but I sure enjoy the fight they provide. Also called Dog Salmon they put up one heck of a battle.

Here's a link to a video about Chum Salmon fishing at Hoodsport. You can see it is an undiscovered place!

http://www.washingtonlakes.com/WatchVideoHD.aspx?id=132

Hope to see some reports from some other folks. I need to get a small waterproof camera to carry with me so if and when I catch fish I can post them.

Rick N