It is an encouraging sign, but we don’t know what it all means and where those smelt will end up.

We can’t make any guarantees, but the prospects for getting smelt this Saturday are looking good.

I looked back at past yearly catches, and they resembled what we saw last month.

That’s about a quarter of a bucket.

Fishing is still pretty decent down there. The last couple days it’s been like a third to a half a fish per boat average. On some days it’s up to a fish per boat average.

All the rivers are pretty darn high, and the Lewis water flow was up to 30,000 CFS (cubic feet per second).

We had one unsubstantiated report of some guys getting smelt in the river last Saturday, but nothing’s confirmed yet. All I can say at this point is the conditions are right.

The water is dropping, the time is right, and there have been some smelt in there. Everything is pointing in a positive direction for the weekend.

Smelt like it around 42 degrees or higher.

It’s not all doom and gloom. The Wind and Drano are the ones that could show some strength. But we have been fooled by good jack returns in the past.

The water around Castle Rock is not high but turbid, and it’s hard to say what is going to happen to smelt in there.

Conditions looked pretty good a couple of weeks ago, but the smelt just didn’t materialize. It isn’t over yet, but the current prognosis isn’t that great.

They’re going to continue the checkpoints every week. Anything is possible, but those dam counts would have to go up.

We know there are some smelt around, but we haven’t heard of any caught by sport fishers.

It should be interesting if we don’t get too much rain. We were starting to see an increase in steelhead abundance on some streams.

There will be no changes to fishing seasons in the lower tributaries from last year. There will be in-season monitoring of the runs to make sure the seasons are as forecasted.

Sturgeon don’t mind it if the water is high and dirty, and it is probably the only thing to do fishing wise. I’d try in the smelt zone from Longview down, and in the Willamette...

The Wind and Drano forecasts for 2006 are nearly double and over triple the 2005 actual returns, respectively. The Little White Salmon [forecast] is especially strong.