August 24 column

[Pete Heley]

Crabbing remains very, very good at Winchester Bay. Ocean crabbing, when possible, is usually the most productive, but boat crabbers seldom have any trouble getting all the crabs they want from Half Moon Bay upriver to above the entrance to the East Boat Basin in Winchester Bay. Dock crabbers are having to work harder to catch crabs, but it seems that there are a few dock limits taken each day. Last week, there were some citations issued to people that thought they had purchased crab licenses, but had not and when one group proudly showed me their bucket of crabs - every crab was a large female. I pointed out to them that they had kept the wrong gender of crabs and they said they had thrown every crab they caught with a narrow breastplate back. I urged them to release the still lively crabs back into the harbor, which they did. The crabbing was so good, that they were not depressed in the least to have to start over.
I suppose it was inevitable, but local sea lions have expanded their range of crab baits they are willing to eat. Last fall, a surprised crabber found a sea lion taking his turkey legs and last week, a crabber fishing with chicken was robbed twice by a sea lion even though others crabbing near him were using several varieties of fish for bait.
Salmon fishing continues to improve and the ratio of large chinooks to total salmon caught is astounding. When bar conditions are calm, fishing has been good near the bar, out into the ocean to the Red Can and along the South Jetty. Most of the fishing pressure takes place in the three miles of Umpqua River below Reedsport and when the Umpqua River Bar and adjacent ocean is unfishable, the fishing near Reedsport can get rather crowded. While the periods of fish activity are usually short, they can be intense and sizable salmon are taken every day.
Shore-bound anglers are also getting some sizable salmon. Steve Perry, a local lure maker, landed a chinook weighing well over 30 pounds at Half Moon Bay last Thursday and some good-sized chinooks have also been caught at Osprey Point. A number of salmon have been hooked, but seldom landed, by anglers fishing off the South Jetty - usually for assorted bottomfish.
Curt Burdette, of Creswell, had a great outing on the south or ocean side of the Triangle last weekend when he managed to land a 23-inch cabezon and a 19 1/2-inch greenling. Among the other bottomfish he hooked was a cabezon that was too large to pull through the hole in the jetty rock that he had dropped his sand shrimp into.
A “Meet and Greet” for Master Chief James M. Clemens, the new commander of the Coast Guard unit at Winchester Bay, is slated for Thursday afternoon at the new Marine Activity Center which is located at 263 Marine Way in Winchester Bay. The event will run from 4:30 pm till 5:30 pm and is jointly sponsored by Winchester Bay Merchants, Friends of Umpqua River Light and Salmon Harbor Management. Refreshments will be available.
Fishing the surf for redtailed surfperch, commonly called “pinkfins” has been fairly productive off area beaches with the most popular spot being the North Beach area at the end of Sparrow Park Road which heads west from the top of the hill north of Gardiner. The most popular bait has been sand shrimp, but some anglers arrive at low tide and dig sandworms for bait. Usually the best time to catch these perch is the last two or three hours of the incomeing or flood tide and while most anglers fish a two hook set up, an increasing number of them are putting a hard to remove bait on the bottom hook to ensure that there is always bait on. Such baits might include squid, clam or mussel necks, nightcrawlers or a chunk of Berkley Gulp.
Curtis Reed of Coquille visited Sutherlin’s Cooper Creek Reservoir one evening last week and enjoyed some very good crappie fishing. The reservoir’s bluegills were relatively inactive and did not get in the way of a very good crappie bite. The best fishing was near the dam, but out beyond the range of those casting from the bank. The largest crappies were about ten inches in length with the average size being between eight and nine inches in length. Crappie fishing in Tenmile Lake this season has been very disappointing despite some ODFW optimism that a dominant year class of keeper-sized crappie was present in the lake. Really serious crappie anglers in this area should consider fishing Cottage Grove Reservoir which has good numbers of crappies weighing between one and one and a half pounds with a small chance at even larger crappie. While the best fishing is between late evening through early morning, it seems that the midday technique many of the reservoir’s bass anglers use of casting plastic worms or jigs onto floating mats of grass or weeds and then letting the lure fall into any holes in the “green stuff” would work with crappie-sized lures as well.
The annual Crab Bounty Contest will be starting on Saturday, September 3rd. Next week’s column will have more details on this very popular contest where every crabber in the Lower Umpqua River has a chance to catch a tagged legal-sized male crab that may be worth $1,000.
Also running the entire Labor Day Weekend, will be the 15th annual Gardiner-Reedsport-Winchester Bay Step (GRWB) program’s Salmon Derby. More information will be forthcoming in next week’s column, but the tickets are cheap (only $10 per individual and $25 per boat) and the entrant catching the heaviest salmon is guaranteed $650 ($500 for the heaviest salmon + $150 for the day’s best salmon). Tickets are available from STEP members as well as Ace Hardware and Turman Tackle in Reedsport and the Stockade Market in Winchester Bay.