chehalis river around Pe Ell Lewis county

[gon2fsh]

Does anybody have information about fishing any stream or river around Pe Ell? Any ideas would be appreciated.

[Fish-or-man?]

I have no idea, but since nobody else seems to either, according to "The News Tribune" today:

Chehalis [River]: Sand shrimp and eggs have been effective in producing chinook in the river above Pe Ell.

[Bodofish]

I hear bango music............ careful out in them there parts......

[littleriver]

"BANG"- O music Bodo??? what the heck is that????


OK.. I'll fess up, I scoped out that section of the chehalis a few years back and when I say I "scoped it out" I don't mean I took one trip along the siding road looked at the water and came to a conclusion... I invested dozens and dozens of half day kinds of trips to follow all the access roads and cross the bridges and walk down trails that seemed to go to or near the river... anything that looked like access I worked it as far as I could go....


There's a good run of kings that goes up and into a creek (I forget the name) that runs into the chehalis somewhere east of Pe Ell and that's probably what the News Tribune was talking about... some local reported it....


My ultimate conclusion was that this is a very doggone discouraging run of river because virtually all the shoreline is private property and the places to put in are few and far between.... I ultimately abandoned my efforts to fish it and have scratched it off my personal list of "places to go"...


However if you gotta go work this section of river here are my recommendations.


For access purposes I would break this section into "Below Rainbow Falls" and "Above Rainbow Falls"... There is access at the rainbow falls state park but you're going to have to carry your craft several hundred yards and plop it in after getting down a steep clay bank somehow... but once you in you can row up a half a mile or so and you will encounter some rapids... when water is low these rapids can be negotiated by hand lining your craft (canoe or whatever) up the channels... once above these rapids you have another wierd hazard which looks to be a whole bunch of stakes pounded into the bottom just above the road bridge..... not sure how to get around the stakes but the determined voyeur would probably get near the shore and work around that way.. water may be shallow enough to just wade and pull but these need to be scoped out before you go...

however.... TADA...... once you get above the final hazard you are in a long slow pool that has a lot of resident trout and from where you can fish the chinook run very easily... you should even be able to paddle up to the mouth of the creek (Elk Creek.. something like that) and plop your goodies right at the mouth where all the chinookies will be holding........ this is a beautiful run of river.. very slow with the odd negotiable riffle...... There is walk in access from the road going to Doty.. parking area is a designated "rails to trails" spot... park there and walk a half mile or so to the old RR bridge and look down.... during mid summer low flow months you can see the trout finning in the current.. it's a steep muddy walk down to the shoreline from the bridge abuttment but this pool could be accessed via float tube from this trail... forget getting any kind of canoe or pontoon boat in here though.....



I have never been able to find any way to get to the river within the city limits of PeEll without walking across someones private property.. there may be a spot but there are no signs and I followed every road that could possibly get to the river from there with no success....


If you follow the haul road out of town that follows the chehalis on the south side you eventually get to a spot where it's only about a 100 or 200 foot slide down to good fishing water....... but from this vantage you will observe the river and it's structural nature from here down to the city of chehalis..... This river is in a very solid rock river bed..... it runs through a series of long pools that vary in length but always drop quickly via rapids to the next long run... If you can get your watercraft into one of those pools you are in business for that pool... but good luck getting into the next one if that ultimately becomes necessary.....


Now once you are below rainbow falls (not really a falls just a steep run between pools as noted above) there is one interesting spot accessed from a bridge off of river road.... a steep and hazard rich place to put in a boat near the bridge and some parking available and looking at the run from the bridge it looks like it might have some potential.....


but if you want my very honest advice I would say go find some other place to fish....

like for instance.. the north river that flows into willapa bay... lots of good hardworking and honest folk don't know that there's some loon who lives along the upper north river who has a private hatchery and who stocks the river very liberally with coho salmon.... I've been told that what he's doing is illegal but WDFW seems to ignore his activities so what the heck.... these fish won't start going up the river for a month or so but it's something to look at.......


And, of course, there's always the dependable Willapa River..... it takes a lot of pressure but that's because it kicks out a lot of fish every year... ditto for the cowlitz.... they've change things around at the Blue Creek hatchery and it's a lot easier for the shorebound to compete for salmon and steelhead now...

If you want to invest your time looking for new and productive ways to catch salmon and steelhead that's the direction I would turn to, not the chehalis around PeEll..

[gon2fsh]

Thank you for your advice