Went down sturgeon fishing yesterday out of chinook and covered water from Warrenton to the shipwreck. Just wanted to let everyone know to pay attention to the combination of outgoing tide and incoming afternoon wind......it was ugly!

My partner and I are what I would consider "experienced" as we've spent quite a bit of time down here but even we were caught offguard.

To make a long story short, we were fishing the calm water up by the shipwreck mid-afternoon and decided to call it a day. Heading downriver, we arrived at the astoria-megler bridge, went around the bend in the river....and found ourselves in the jaws of some of the nastiest windchop we have ever encountered. 5-6 ft. waves with 1-2 second intervals and the occasional bigger swell thrown in for good measure. The sphincter factor was at 10 and all joking suddenly stopped. It wasn't fun and was borderline becoming a bad situation. We were in a 20 ft. northriver sled. We made it ok because my partner kept his cool running the boat. But, not 10 minutes behind us, another sled needed coast guard assitance because they were taking on water from the swells and 2 more boats struggled too.

All said and done, everyone made it back ok but my message to everyone is do your homework as best you can regarding water conditions and keep your radio on to listen to reports of water conditions from other fishers/coast guard. The sobering thing for us was that it was a small tide and we figured it would be pretty mild, yet, it ended up being one of the most brutal beatings we've ever taken out there.

Be careful.

Eric:

Yes, my buddy and I have been caught in that east wind before as we ram into that 5-7 foot chop as we made are way from the Astoria bridge back to the port of Chinook. My buddy's boat is only 15 ft, but by sticking relatively close to the port, keeping a cool head, taking it slow, and not panicking, usually gets us back safe and sound, but not exactly dry.

Another nasty spot with some knarly rips can be the B-10 hogline on a strong incoming. Sometimes you get those 8-foot ripswells that just stay stationary just below the stern of your boat. You just pray that your motor doesn't stall and get sucked stern first into one of those. That situation scares me more than the other situation up by the bridge.

A very good heads up to everyone that will be heading down there next month.

BD