I went shad fishing at the Bonneville Dam in Oregon for the second time ever this year with my young daughter and my fishing-averse husband. When I first moved to Oregon, 15 years ago, I read that shad fishing was a sure fire way to catch fish. I thought it would be a great way to teach my fishing-averse boyfriend, now my husband, how to fish. We did not catch a thing.
Not willing to give up, I decided to try it again as a way to interest my young daughter in fishing. Currently she is only interested in fishing if the family has a catch rate of at least 2 fish per hour. This time I did some web research and felt better prepared. There is a great article on shad fishing at http://www.abproguides.com/shad_fishing.htm that served me well.
When I got to the Bonneville Dam guard, we just told them we were going fishing and drove out to scout out the two islands that you can fish from in the middle of the river. Even though it was a rainy day in Portland, the view there was almost worth the drive in itself. I figured if we got skunked again, we could at least make a day of it with the hatchery fish feeding and a tour of the damn.
There were tons of people there and we saw people walking with huge buckets of fish, so we knew that it was at least possible to catch a lot of fish. We soon realized that the area where everyone was fishing was VERY steep and dangerous for a young child.
We went off to the tail of the island which had a quiet eddy and a gentle slope. We were able to catch a small mouth bass there but no shad. This may be a great place to take young kids fishing though, since I have since read that it is a fairly easy place to catch small mouth bass.
We finally decided to risk it and go to the steeper areas
where the water was moving faster and where the shad where migrating through to
get to their spawning grounds. We finally did each catch a shad to the delight
of my daughter, but I don’t think I would take her again until she was older and
wiser since the bank was so steep and rocky and the water was so swift and cold.
It truly was an exciting time with the rangers driving their boats up and down trying (unsuccessfully) to scare off the shad and salmon eating sea lions with loud bangs of their fire cracker shooting guns. We also saw birds of prey diving, giant sturgeon within a foot of the bank eating the shad and the more experienced fishermen on the bank near us hauling in one shad after another.
Afterwards we did go to the damn and see the shad migrating through the ladder, which we all enjoyed and which was very safe and family friendly.
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