The Bridge of Sighs!

Good fishin’ holes are where you find them. When you are on vacation and touring, one of the secrets to finding good fishing is to look carefully at the bridges you cross. Under most of them is some kind of waterway, and a lot of them give opportunities for excellent fishing.

True enough, the bridges you cross on an interstate aren’t going to serve well as fishing piers, but those little bridges on country roads can be a gold mine.

As I drive up and down the Northwest and much of the country, I always keep an eye out for folks fishing from a bridge. If traffic permits, I’ll usually slow a bit and ask how the fish are biting, and what they are trying to hook. Sometimes they may offer a bleak picture, not wanting competition, but if a mass of anglers are hauling in fish, it’s hard to keep a secret!

One other good clue is to take a look at the foliage and any telephone or power lines that cross the waterway near the bridge. One of my favorite plunking holes, off Oregon Highway 202 near Olney, has a telephone line that is covered with lures and bobbers. Even if no one is fishing off the bridge, you can get a pretty good feeling that it can be a very good place to toss a lure. Finally, check out the railing to see if there are empty worm tubs or chunks of line, anything that would suggest a lot of folks trying to get a bite or two.

Easy Access
I spent the last few days fishing the bridge near Olney and had a great time. The bridge is called “Social Security Bridge” by a lot of the locals, since it is a good free place to fish and a number of us old duffers are in residence. Talking to my fellow anglers for a couple of days gave a different story. A lot of the folks were younger, had boats and other access to the water, but just enjoyed an easy fishery that could be an excellent spot to catch a few chinooks or silvers.

We cast with bobbers from the bridge, using salmon eggs or shrimp for bait. My first day I had about ten good takedowns before I managed to hook a fish. The fish was a chunky, 23-inch chinook jack, an early returning salmon that was bright silver and full of fight. It took me around a couple of the pillars that supported the bridge, but I managed to coax it back. Finally, one of the other anglers on the span lowered a crab net eight feet over the side to the water level, and I guided the fish into the net.

The sides of the bank were steep, so hauling anything over a couple of pounds over the side was pretty dicey. The crab net was necessary for anything big, and getting the fish in safely was a challenge.

Fast Action
A little earlier that day, one of the bridge plunkers hooked a really big salmon. Unfortunately, it headed under the bridge and managed to wind itself around a supporting pillar and snapped the line, but most of the fish we hooked were a little smaller and we could figure out how to safely land them.

We usually had a lot of action other that the species we were targeting. In the course of three days, we landed a lot of sculpin, a few trout, some big chinook fingerlings, several large suckers, and a half-dozen pikeminnows, voracious trash fish that consume so many little salmon that they can fetch a $5 government bounty!

I had a lot of fun chatting with the other anglers, and the bridge had a little walkway on it that gave you a refuge from the occasional motorist, many of whom stopped to see how we were doing. Our vehicles were parked just a few feet way, so it was easy to grab a drink or get a little more bait.

So keep your eyes open as you cross over all those bridges—there is a lot of good fishing going on around the country and a bridge full of people can give you a few hours of excitement, a lot of local fishing info, and maybe even a meal or two!

Bob Ellsberg’s column, Fishin’, appears monthly in RV Life and rvlife.com.