2018 Pacific Northwest Turkey Outlook

March 6, 2018

By Troy Rodakowski I’m going to go out on a limb here! No pun intended but I’m going to go ahead and say that the 2018 Oregon spring turkey season will be fantastic! Why will it be fantastic might you ask? First of all, last year’s dry spring and mild winter made for a great hatch […]

Rodakowski’s Tips for Taking a Westside Blacktail

September 14, 2017

By Troy Rodakowski There are only a few magical days a season when mature blacktail show themselves during daylight hours and if you plan on having some success you need to make sure you are in the woods when these days happen. Every year people ask me what it takes to harvest a mature blacktail and why […]

Columbia River Catch and Release Sturgeon

July 21, 2017

by Jason Brooks The lower Columbia river that separates Oregon and Washington is a super-highway for salmon and steelhead. As fall runs approach most anglers set up and wait to intercept fish. A single take-down makes everyone on board excited but what if there was another fishery where you can catch over a dozen or […]

Central Oregon High Lakes Trout and Kokanee Outlook

May 13, 2017

By Troy Rodakowski  Lake fishing season is upon us once again. Oh yeah baby…….crisp morning air, warm sun, great camping, barbequing and lots of fish for the cooler. That’s what many of us anglers look forward to come June. A few of us enjoy this time of year when we can get out of town, forget […]

Tag Team Turkeys

April 10, 2017

by Troy Rodakowski The companionship of hunting with a friend of family member is half the reason we hunt spring turkeys. The other and most important half, however, is that working as a team is probably the best possible way to put some turkeys on the dinner table. While hunting spring turkeys it is at […]

5 Turkey Musts For This Coming Season

March 31, 2017

By Troy Rodakowski In general, extreme weather patterns are not beneficial for wild turkeys.  In particular, winters with deep snow at lower elevations can impact overwinter survival when turkeys can’t dig down for their favorite foods. “We have actually seen them stay in the roost for days at a time when snow is too deep to […]

Sea Lion’s Invade Lower Columbia

April 1, 2014

On the heels of a record smelt run in the Columbia River there’s a new record, of sorts, being set by California Sea Lions on the lower Columbia River. Yesterday there was an astonishing 1420 sea lions hauled out on the floats of the East Mooring Basin in Astoria, Oregon. It’s the highest number of […]

New Kwikfish Colors That Rock!

September 26, 2013

Luhr Jensen came out with a handful of new color schemes for their ever-lethal Kwikfish last year that flat out tore up the coastal salmon for us last fall. The three K-15’s on the left in the photo below worked great for both kings and silvers last fall and Luhr Jensen just released the new […]

Fishing Pink Rubber Worms for Steelhead

February 20, 2013

The 2012-2013 Steelhead season has, as we’ve discussed on “The Outdoor Line”, shaped up to be a big fish year. Both hatchery fish and natives alike have made more than one fisherman perform a double take because of their eye-poppin’ size. Check out some of the mondo steelhead we’ve taken time to post up in our “Heavy Metal […]

For the Love of the Game!

February 9, 2013

By Josiah Darr Mountain climbing…. Back to the roots When I was a wee little lad, barely cutting my tiny teeth in the world of steelhead fishing, I used to see the armada of drift boat launching at various points in the river and think to myself that there wasn’t anything better being in a […]