What happened to the Cowlitz

[furbearer365]

There's still coho to had, but man.....This river used to be lights out for silvers, but its just gone down hill.  All kinds of ways to fish em, like casting plugs, twitching jigs, bobber and eggs, spinners, back bouncing mag lips, etc...but just a few fish here and there.  20 years ago you could troll wiggle warts and put 10 fish in the boat by noon.  Now just landing a nice bright fish consistently isn't easy. If watching black Chinook roll is your thing, the Cowltiz is the spot

[Jake Dogfish]

Isn’t it early for coho on the cowlitz? 

[furbearer365]

Isn’t it early for coho on the cowlitz? 

Its far from over, but we were catching chromers in Mid Sept last year. Maybe they run is just late this year

[buglebuster]

I've been fishing drano and outside drano and it's been lights out for coho

[metlhead]

Early Cowlitz coho are notorious for lock jaw. Wait for some cold snaps. Early Nov gets good when river stays below 6k.

[BigGoonTuna]

The Cowlitz still gets a ton of coho but the effort really seems to have dropped off a lot.  I fished the barrier dam area a few times last year and I did a double take, every time I got to the river there were maybe 1 or 2 trailers at the boat launch and a handful of bank fishermen.  I remember the hordes of people 10-15 years ago in October/November.  Fish were around but the catching wasn't great, I think the low water wasn't helping much.

I used to fish down around the mouth of the Toutle out of the sled and I remember lots of people in September / October, I drove down by Longview last week and only saw a few guys parked around the Toutle.

Kind of seems like they all moved to the Satsop.  Last few years over there the pressure has been outrageous.  I drove by the highway launch and down Keys rd yesterday and there must have been 100 people there, and no water in the river.