The 19th Annual Brewster King Salmon Derby was supposed to run July 31 through August 2. Tickets were printed. The Skippers Meeting was on the calendar. Mike Mauk at Brewster Bait & Tackle was doing what he always does in June, which is order bait and answer the same questions from the same regulars who drive up from the west side every summer.
Then the sockeye counts at Bonneville Dam came in low. Then they came in lower. And on June 26, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife cancelled the upper Columbia sockeye season, which pulled the plug on the derby for the second year in a row.
If you live here, you already know this. What you may not have thought through yet is what the first weekend of August actually looks like when the town's biggest event is off. The short version: the Brewster Pool will be quieter than it has been in nineteen years, and a handful of things that usually get drowned out by boat trailers and weigh-station crowds finally get a turn as the main event.
What the cancellation actually cancels
The derby is a sockeye-directed event on the Brewster Pool, the stretch of Lake Pateros between Chief Joseph Dam and the mouth of the Okanogan River where the fish stack up waiting for the Okanogan to cool down enough to swim into. When sockeye counts at Bonneville Dam started coming in lower than expected, Mike Mauk began hearing talk of the salmon season being cut short, and last week official word came from WDFW that the upper Columbia River sockeye season was cancelled.
The forecast collapse is the story behind the story. This year's forecast of 350,000 Columbia sockeye looked promising enough to allow for four-fish daily limits at the start of the season, but early last week overseers downgraded the forecast to 183,200 fish, and then dropped it further to 172,400. For context, 2024 was a banner year for the species, with a record-setting run of more than 750,000 sockeye passing Bonneville Dam. Two summers, and the run is down more than three-quarters from its recent peak.
Mauk, who took over the derby a few years back, was direct about it in the Spokesman-Review: "I'm not happy, but that's fishing. It's nobody's fault. The fish aren't coming."
What is still open on the water
The cancellation is specifically the sockeye derby and the sockeye season. It is not a closure of the Brewster Pool. Here is what that distinction means for August:
| Fishery | Status for August 2026 |
|---|---|
| Upper Columbia sockeye | Season cancelled |
| Chinook (king) salmon | Estimated season July 1 through Oct 1 |
| Walleye | Open, strong local fishery |
| Bass | Open. One of the best kept secrets is bass fishing at the mouth of the Okanogan River, said to be the best bass fishing in the state. |
| Steelhead | Open when in season |
| Sturgeon | Year-round opportunity |
The regional guide services still have Chinook trips on the books. WDFW is reported to be considering "bubble" Chinook openers thanks to a somewhat larger return of summer kings than expected. If you keep a boat at Columbia Cove, the launch itself is unaffected. What is gone is the crowd. In a normal year, the Brewster Pool during the first weekend of August holds hundreds of boats fishing shoulder to shoulder inside the derby boundary between the Brewster Bridge on Highway 173 and the Corps of Engineers safety marker above the Bridgeport Bridge. This year, that same water will hold a Saturday's worth of casual anglers.
If you have been thinking about taking a kid out on the pool for the first time, or trying walleye when the boat traffic normally makes it miserable, this is the weekend.
The downtown weekend, without derby traffic
The other thing that changes when the derby is off is Main Avenue. Weigh-in weekend usually turns Camperos and La Milpa into overflow rooms, fills the RV park, and pushes the coffee line at Mountain View Espresso out the door before 7 a.m. None of that is happening the way it usually does.
Which is a decent argument for using the weekend the way you would use any other August weekend, only with parking. A short list of what is actually here:
- Camperos Mexican Restaurant, 301 E Main Ave. Open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
- La Milpa, 324 E Main Ave. Market, deli, liquor and restaurant under one roof.
- Mi Pueblo Mexican Grill, 623 W Main Ave, and the attached Mi Pueblo Market for pan dulce and Mexican pantry staples.
- La Perla de Jalisco, 500 Main St.
- La Fruteria Tropical Produce Market, 513 W Main Ave, for the produce that is only in the store in August.
- Mountain View Espresso, 810 Old Highway 97.
- Brewster Bear Basket, 600 W Main Ave, if you want something sweet after the pool.
None of that is new. The point is that with the derby crowd absent, the version of downtown Brewster you get this weekend is the one that usually only exists on a Tuesday in October.
Gamble Sands gets its normal weekend back
The other beneficiary of a quieter August is Gamble Sands, which in a normal derby year is competing with the fishery for every hotel room and dinner reservation in a fifteen-mile radius. This year it is not.
The Sands course itself is the reason people fly into Pangborn to spend a weekend here. The Sands course unfolds along a picturesque sandy ridge overlooking the Columbia River, delivering a true links experience with fine fescue and firm conditions on a scale that complements the wide-open spaces of central Washington. Designed by David McLay Kidd, it is the only reason a lot of Puget Sound golfers have ever heard the word Brewster.
Two food rooms up there are worth knowing about if you have out-of-town family showing up for a weekend that was supposed to be the derby:
- The Barn, 200 Sands Trail Rd. Casual, breakfast through afternoon most days.
- Danny Boy Bar & Grill, same address, the evening room.
If Gamble Sands is booked or not your thing, Alta Lake Golf Resort is fifteen minutes up the highway toward Pateros with, by local reputation, some of the more surprising holes in North Central Washington.
The other August that has always been here
Once you strip out the derby, what you have is a very specific Brewster August: warm water, cold Columbia, the Okanogan too hot for the sockeye but perfect for a swim off the beach at Alta Lake State Park, and Chinook still legally on the table for anyone with a boat and a rod.
Anglers flock to the town of Brewster each July to try to catch the sockeye. The small river town sits near the confluence of the Okanogan and Columbia rivers, where the salmon gather and wait. Water temperatures in the Okanogan River in the summer are usually too hot for sockeye, so the fish stack up in the Columbia and hang out until the river cools enough for them to venture farther north. That thermal barrier typically breaks in September. That is the mechanism the derby is built around, and it is the mechanism that failed this year. It is also the mechanism that means the pool will refill with fish once the water drops, just not on a schedule that matched the derby's insurance paperwork.
The Chinook run is a separate story with a different arc. The King season runs into October. There is a real chance the best Chinook weekend of the year on the Brewster Pool is somewhere in the last three weeks of August, on water that has 90 percent fewer boats on it than it would in a normal year.
What locals I know are doing with the weekend
A few observations from the people I have talked to in the last two weeks:
- Booking the guide anyway. Jerrod Gibbons at Okanogan Valley Guide Service and Brianna Bruce at Livin' Life Adventures are still on the water for Chinook. The people who had derby weekends blocked out are moving them to a Chinook charter instead.
- Using the weekend for the river, not the pool. Steelhead is opening up in stretches, and the walleye holes at the mouth of the Okanogan are the kind of local secret that stops being a secret every time somebody catches a nine-pounder.
- Treating it like a shoulder-season weekend. No derby means the RV parks that fill up a year in advance (Columbia Cove RV Park, Bridgeport State Park, Brewster City RV Park) have room. If you have relatives who have been trying to visit and have never gotten a reservation in early August, this is the year.
The Wells Wildlife Area, at 8,200 acres just south of town, is also more usable in early August than most people realize. Not for hunting yet, but for the kind of long, empty walk with a dog that gets crowded out of your calendar in a normal derby weekend.
A footnote for anyone who bought a ticket
The derby's own policy: should the event be cancelled due to restrictions out of the organizers' control, ticket prices are refunded. Contact Derby headquarters at Brewster Bait & Tackle for the specifics.
Brewster will get its derby back. Runs recover, forecasts revise, Mauk keeps the shop open, and the 20th annual is on the calendar for a reason. The one-year story is this: for the first time in almost two decades, the first weekend of August is a normal weekend. Use it accordingly.
If you have been quietly wondering what a Brewster house is worth in a summer where the pool is not the whole point, or whether the acreage on the bench above town holds its value in a year like this one, that conversation is a phone call away. Find Your Chelan covers Brewster, the Columbia bench, and the rest of North Central Washington with a native's read on how these summers actually play out. Start Your Lake Chelan Search when you are ready.
