Benson lake is weak

[dan88]

I went to benson lake today and it was sorry. my wife caught her first trout at the pond across the street though! but i got skunked once again. I checked the stocking schedule I thought there would of been some left over from the 4,000 they stoked in the beginning of last month. does any one know of any good streams, ponds, or lakes with good trout fishing?

 

[autofisher]

The problem with counting on holdovers from the last stocking, is that 5,000 other people have already fished it. If you're going to go off of the stocking schedules, I always try to be within a week or two of the stock. Unless I'm in a boat. Then I don't care. Benson can be pretty decent fishing for bass or trout depending on what structures you fish. If you're just banking it from the parking lot...... IMO the best bet is to heave some bait out as far as you can get it and hope for the best. If you go around and work the structures (rocks, plants, rootballs) you're going to have a lot better time with hardware or even power bait.

 

[Kais]

So do you use a lure when you fish out at Benson. I didn't even know they had bass out there?

 

[autofisher]

Yeah. The most success I've seen out of there was with either jigging a worm or bait, or you can run a lure. Fish the weeds and the structures that they normally hang out in. It's been years since I was there, so a lot of the fishing has probably changed. There's a couple ponds right off the highway as you're coming back into Troutdale that have some decent fishing in them from what I remember. You have to hike in about a 1/4 mile but it's a gravel road. I don't even know if they're still there honestly.

 

[ShdwmnkyX]

Are you talking about the Cow ponds over by the Sandy? The place where people walk their dogs?

 

[autofisher]

That might be it. Right OFF the highway, little gravel parking area and a decent walk back to the ponds.

 

[Rusty Stern]

That area has changed a lot over the years.

The 'ponds' closer to the freeway are seasonal and do not hold much fish.

However, walk the trails a bit further out and you will run into sloughs and areas where the Columbia pushes back in. Good bass fishing in there, but the banks are pretty overgrown with blackberry bushes. Better from a boat.

 

[CrawfishPDX]

3 years ago I went the day after it was stocked and caught 20 fish within a hour let all but 5 go. I've been a few times since and only caught a sucker fish. I have a feeling the majority get caught within the first few weeks like Autofisher said in the above comment.

 

[Ifishforfood]

i remember catching trout out of benson once with my dad when i was really little, but thats it. the last fish ive caught out of benson were sunfish. also, i have a question. does the creek going out of benson feed into the columbia, or what? and dosnt multnomah creek flow into benson? it seems like since theres a salmon run in the creek they would have to go through benson. just a thought...

 

[Kais]

Ya i have the same wuestion as ifishforfood

 

[Troutier Bassier]

There is no salmon going into that creek. I belive there is a different creeek that the salmon go into.

 

[bassman503]

There are salmon in that creek, there are smolts. One year i went to go hiking, i saw a bunch of steelheads or salmon in there.

 

[Stradic2000]

Well, I was there this summer, and there was a large school of what appeared to be salmon smolts in multnomah creek (the creek that feeds into Benson). Probably about 40-50 of them, definitely not baby bass. The bluegill were guardings nests all over the place, on the other side of the lake, near the mouth of multnomah creek.