I returned late last night from Ed Iman’s Fish Camp 2014, our annual event of guides, outdoor product reps, and media-type people (that would be me, LOL). As always, Ed and Pam Iman put on a great event, helped by Fred and Lavon (cooks) and many others. I’ll be writing an article on the event soon. This is a summation fishing report for the four days, Monday-Thursday.

We fished salmon most of the trip, except for Tuesday when we went out with Louis McMinds of EZ Marine EZ Marine. EZ Marine makes big river anchoring systems and accesories.

For our salmon trips we fished off of Maryhill State Park (anchored up with flatfish running), and off the mouths of the Klickitat and the Deschuetes hover fishing eggs. The fishing was really tough, not at all what we were expecting considering the record numbers coming through. I can tell you after spending full days out there, people are not catching fish like last year. Sure, you see a few being caught in the groups of boats, but generally, not so much. We did have some of our Fish Camp boats return with catches of 4, 7, 11, and one lucky day 20 fish, but we also had some painful skunks. The fish were there, they just had no interest. Maybe weather patterns, maybe rain? Who knows.

As to the sturgeon, the day we went out we had one fish on (lost) and a steady bite but again, the fish were not hyper aggressive, just mouthing the bait and dropping it. I can tell that for a fact because we got some great underwater footage using our REEL cameras. I’ll have that footage up soon. It will blow you away what we filmed down there! Thanks Louis for helping get the mount set up properly.

So Aaron and I did not come home with much in the way of fish, but none the less we had a great time and will be looking forward to next year’s event. We met a lot of great people and learned about some new products and innovations coming your way. We’ll be posting that information for you soon.

Pictured: Camp Chef Stove grilling up some delicious steak! Camp Chef Ed only uses Camp Chef grills and they work great!
Knives are from Columbia River Knife and Tool Company Super knives, we used the Big Eddy model for filleting fish at Camp. A really nice knife.