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We woke up at 5:45am and peeped outside to check the weather. Cold, but not terrible. Mid forties. Dressed for the day, we ate a bowl of cereal, coffeed up and headed for Columbia Park to launch the boat.  Jerry Ballesteros had the legendary Don Iovino in his boat for the first day of practice. Don is a new acquaintance of mine, however, he's been a longtime mentor and hero. Don and Jerry knew the river fairly well, and escorted us to the Ice Harbor Dam, below the Snake River. We got blocked out of the locks by a commercial barge, and had to kill an hour before we could lock up into Sacajuwea. Cameron and I cranked a little depression below the dam we'd found on the map. Cam got our first fish of the trip on a parrot colored Deep Little N.
We woke up at 5:45am and peeped outside to check the weather. Cold, but not terrible. Mid forties. Dressed for the day, we ate a bowl of cereal, coffeed up and headed for Columbia Park to launch the boat.  Jerry Ballesteros had the legendary Don Iovino in his boat for the first day of practice. Don is a new acquaintance of mine, however, he's been a longtime mentor and hero. Don and Jerry knew the river fairly well, and escorted us to the Ice Harbor Dam, below the Snake River. We got blocked out of the locks by a commercial barge, and had to kill an hour before we could lock up into Sacajuwea. Cameron and I cranked a little depression below the dam we'd found on the map. Cam got our first fish of the trip on a parrot colored Deep Little N. We woke up at 5:45am and peeped outside to check the weather. Cold, but not terrible. Mid forties. Dressed for the day, we ate a bowl of cereal, coffeed up and headed for Columbia Park to launch the boat. Jerry Ballesteros had the legendary Don Iovino in his boat for the first day of practice.  Don is a new acquaintance of mine, however, he's been a longtime mentor and hero. Don and Jerry knew the river fairly well, and escorted us to the Ice Harbor Dam, below the Snake River. We got blocked out of the locks by a commercial barge, and had to kill an hour before we could lock up into Sacajuwea. Cameron and I cranked a little depression below the dam we'd found on the map. Cam got our first fish of the trip on a parrot colored Deep Little N.
Iovino managed to catch this huge steelhead on a crankbait down river from us a ways. He gave it to the men who run the locks at the Ice Harbor Dam. I might mention the courtesy and help the Ice Harbors' engineers had for us. They handed us paperwork on the lock's time schedule, and were willing to work with us for the tournament. The engineers themselves were avid fishermen.
We headed into the locks when the horn sounded.talk about intense. Check out these pictures from inside the Ice Harbor lock. Apparently the worlds second largest vertical lifting lock, 120 feet!  The lock took about twenty minutes to complete. Very impressive, and certainly an example of engineering talent.
We didn't even have a map of Sacajuwea. So we just went fishing. We struggled at first, but got into a few fish later in the day. We started out cranking rip-rap, and the fish just didn't seem to be there. It wasn't until we found some vertical wall that we got into some fish. I nailed this 3lb. smallie on my third cast with a dart head worm. The fish absolutely slammed my bait about 10 feet down the wall. The boat was sitting over 70 feet of water. I got the fish on a 3/16oz. dart head and a Kalin Worm Wennie. That fished got airborne twice, and did some fancy tailwalking, trying to throw the bait. No use, my 6lb P-Line, loose drag, and spinning rod wore the fish out.
Cameron was able to shake up two more keeper smallies with 4" worms on the same wall. I got another keeper smallie down a little further on the same bait.
Jerry, Iovino, James, Cameron, and I all met back at the lock at 3:30 to get back down to the Wallula pool. We compared notes and shared information during the lock down. Jerry and Don caught some fish on vertical stuff too, but weren't impressed with the Sacajawea. In hindsight, Cameron and I agreed we should have gone there in the tournament!
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