Carlos and I just got back from Tri-cities and fishing was so-so. It was the first time we had been there and spent a lot of time learning the lake and getting familiar with it.

I have to say it wasn't as challenging running the river as it sounded. There are areas you have to be cautious of, but if you use your head you'll be alright. The marker bouys make it easy running the main river channels and a good map helped when there weren't none.

I looked over the standard "Hot Spots" map before running and didn't have any problems. There are areas were the channel swings sides and the map showed that. Most of the shallow areas were at the point sides of islands. We just took it slow when looking for fishing spots around the tricky spots.

We did manage a ton of smaller fish and several between the 2-4 lb range. Carlos had a 4-2. We ran to Richland up river, down to The Walla Walla and to the dam up the Snake. They weren't pulling any water the last 2 days that was really noticable. The Snake had very little current. This seemed to scatter fish everywhere.

We talked to a guy who knows someone in the conservation dept. and he said the Yakima is as weedy as it has ever been. The mouth is full of weeds and we didn't even try to get up in the mouth. You can see the river full of weeds when driving home on the 82. It looked bad.