Trolling

Hoglining: Much of the fishing between Longview and Portland is done in hoglines, with boats anchoring up in dozens of established spots off wing dams and river mouths during the outgoing tide, rolling out curtains of plugs and spinners and waiting for a buried rod to interrupt the cigar smoking, beer/soda drinking and socializing.

"It's actually a pretty cool thing to see. There are a ton of different places where you'll find hoglines — basically anywhere you find a wing dam, you'll find a hogline."

The bite in a hogline can be a mercurial thing, with one boat in a line of six knocking 'em stiff for a couple of hours, and another boat sitting 10 feet away, not getting a single bite in that same time frame.

Positioning yourself in line is akin to drafting and passing at Daytona, because every hogline on the river will be set up over some sort of trough or channel that funnels fish through.

If you can position yourself to take advantage of a slot or channel, you're ahead of the game.

"If you have a hogline of six boats, it's not uncommon for them to be fishing at depths that differ from 10 to 20 feet in the space of a few yards, and sometimes only two boats in an entire line will catch fish,"

"Say you're in a spot where the bottom drops from 18 to 20 feet — there'll be a trough there that fish will naturally move into. They'll usually lay in the deep side of any trough or channel."

But you're not absolutely out of it if you arrive at your favorite hogline and find that you're boat No. 5 in a line of seven.

"When the tide first starts to move out, the guy on the inside of the line might be doing really well, but those fish will move as the tide goes out further and the water drops," Mercado said.

"Sometimes being the fourth boat over gives you a better position in the tide because fish will move out to you."

"Put in your time in there, wait for those fish to slide out into your groove, and get on 'em."

Trolling

The drill on the incoming tide is to troll, pulling Fish Flashes ahead of herring or spinner blades.

It's a good idea to run some of both, at least until you figure out a definite bite pattern on one or the other.

"I use a lot of spinner blades when I'm trolling, but I'll never troll without a couple of rods set up with herring,"

"I'll put the top two rods out with herring, one rod rigged with a spinner, and then maybe another set up with herring."

"That spinner is going to create a noise in the water, and if they can hear or feel it and it helps them find the bait, you're going to catch them."

Trolling, hoglining hot spots: Some of the long-established, most consistently productive hogline and trolling locations between Longview and Camas include: