Brewster Pool, WA

A must for your kokanee bucket list

Westcoast kokanee anglers have to be content with modest sized landlocked sockeye salmon in our lakes, typically about .75 pounds. To get a taste of what an ocean run sockeye is like on light weight gear, we have to head north to Washington. The most consistent sockeye fishery is to be found on the Columbia River starting in June in the lower reaches and moving upriver through July and into August.

This summer in July I did go on a sockeye (ocean run kokanee) trip to the Brewster Pool on the Columbia River in Washington. The 2024 sockeye run on the Columbia has been the largest since the 1930’s. The count went over 750,000 fish, and most of them ended up holding in the Brewster Pool. These fish are destined to continue their spawning run up the Okanogan River into Canada. During the summer heat, the Okanogan rises up through the 70 degree range and the sockeye will not swim upstream. Once the river cools, they move on but for a couple of months, July and August, the deep Brewster Pool is where they congregate, and so do the anglers.

At the mouth of the Okanogan River the depth is 12’ to 20’ deep. The depth drops off to 60’ in the original Columbia River channel. At this dropoff is the concentration of sockeye and the anglers. The warm river water remains at the surface with cooler water below. On the day I fished “The Pool”, the Okanogan River was 75 but there were surface pockets of 69 degree water scattered over the sockeye who were from 20’ down to the bottom.

The protocol for trolling the Brewster Pool is to use a sinker (4 to 7 ounces) followed by a 6’ rig including the dodger and fly/bait. The reason is to prevent fouling with other boat’s gear by keeping our gear close behind the boat. Captain Austin Moser had us fishing down at 24’ 26’ and 28’.

We were on the water by 4:30 am and the first fish was on the deck by 5:00. The early morning bite is the best as the bite tapers off as the sun gets higher in the sky. Austin runs a 6 passenger boat so a 4 fish limit for the boat is 24 sockeye. We had our 24 fish limit and were back at the dock by 7:15. The fastest 24 fish limit this season for Capt. Moser took 1 hour and 15 minutes the week before I was there.

The average sockeye this year ran from 2.5 to 4 pounds. Austin’s largest fish of the season was 6.25 pounds. I think of ocean run sockeye as kokanee on steroids. In Norcal we use 4” dodgers with #4 hooks, on the Columbia River they use 8” dodgers and 1/0 hooks. In effect it is the same rigs: flies or hootchies with bait or scent. The difference is the scale, bigger fish and up sized tackle in the Brewster Pool. Austin uses 30# fluorocarbon leader between dodger and the hook to transmit the dodger action 3 to 4 feet back to the hook. King salmon travel with the sockeye and are a possibility on any given day. King salmon regs change frequently check before you go. If you are a serious kokanee angler you should consider a bucket list trip to Brewster WA.

Trip notes: The local tackle shop is “Mauks” in Brewster. They have a good selection of gear to fish the “Pool”. There are a few campgrounds in the area. They tend to be filled when the run is on, make reservations. I stayed in Pateros 10 minutes west of Brewster, where there is limited camping along the river. This is high desert with hot summer days.

You can contact Capt. Austin Moser by search Austin’s Northwest Adventures on you tube or social media. He also guides the Columbia for walleye and fishes the mouth of the Columbia for kings and coho August through September.