Northwest Reel Life April 2023 Volume 2 Issue 10 - Flipbook - Page 9
pressure cooker (which gets rid of
the bones) before canning them.
He said the fish taste very good. I will
have to give him the benefit of the
doubt.
Finished with shad, we next
registered at a check station
and fished around The Dalles for
pikeminnow. We only caught four
keeper pikeminnow (worth $6
each) but since this was our first
time participating, we also each got
to turn in a coupon worth $10 each
after checking in our first fish. Better
still, three anglers from Idaho were
desperate for sturgeon bait and
paid us $20 for a single shad which
they promptly put to use, casting
their lines out at The Dalles marina,
hoping to hook into a monster fish.
Altogether, we made $64. That
covered a good portion of our gas
money getting back home.
One other fun thing about fishing
for pikeminnow are the other fish
you catch. I ended up catching
eight perch, and we both also
caught smallmouth bass on the
nightcrawlers we were using for
pikeminnow bait, fished just off
the bottom of the river with a twoounce sliding weight. Rusty caught
the most interesting bycatch of
the day though, a 30-to-33-inch
sturgeon on a bass rod that was
spooled with braided line and just a
10-lb leader. It took him 15 minutes
to get that prehistoric looking fish
to shore, at which point I snapped a
photo of the fish and he released it.
It made for the end of a perfect day
of fishing!
John Kruse –
northwesternoutdoors.com and
americaoutdoorsradio.com
AUG 2023 | 9