June 30 column

[Pete Heley]

Although a few fish were caught last week, fishing for spring chinook and shad is just about over - although some fish are still being caught in the Roseburg area and above. Chinook fishing near Winchester Bay has been relatively good for the commercial salmon anglers and rather slow for sport anglers. The best news is that anglers over the weekend caught lots of sizable coho salmon in the top half of the water column at depths of less than 300 feet. If these fish are still reachable by this coming weekend, fishing should be very, very good and with a good turnout, there should be some sizable chinooks taken as well.

Fishing for redtailed surfperch above Winchester Bay has gradually become tougher as the bite has been very early and it seems that the only decent catches last week were made at daybreak. At some point, the fish have to start biting better and that could be at any time. There are definitely enough perch upstream that fishing should be very good when they do start biting. Some anglers have caught perch on the other side of the river just upstream from Winchester Bay - proving that one does not have to fish near Marker 12 to find perch. Sand shrimp remains the most popular bait, although some anglers are using shrimp on one hook and a section of Berkley Gulp sandworms on the bottom hook.

The world record blue catfish of 130 pounds, caught on a chunk of carp meat in the Missouri River (in Missouri), did not last long. The jumbo cat, caught last July, was bested recently by a massive blue cat weighing 143 pounds and 13 ounces that was caught from John H. Kerr-Buggs Island Lake near Clarksville, Virginia less than two weeks ago. Very seldom is a world record fish bested by more than ten percent of its weight and the Virginia lunker makes one wonder what the maximum size of blue catfish actually is. Ironically, the new record blue cat was the same length (57-inches) and had a girth one and a half smaller than the 130 pounder’s 45-inch girth.

A new Rhode Island state record striped bass was taken by Peter Vican. The 77.4 pound lunker missed being a world record by less than 18 ounces and broke the former Rhode Island state record striped bass of 76 pounds 14 ounces which, at 54-inches in length, was two inches longer and was also caught by Peter Vican. Although there were claims of striped bass weighing as much as 125 pounds caught along the east coast several decades ago, the number of jumbo stripers weighing within a couple of pounds of each other might indicate that these recent records are approaching the potential maximum size limit for striped bass. The most likely reason that the very heaviest striped bass come from the East Coast is that the forage base for the larger fish seems to be more abundant and more fatty.

Bob Bauman, who owns Chinook Charters and formerly operated out of Winchester Bay, was part of a quite a fishing story last Saturday. Bob, who moved his charterboat to Charleston because he could not get out over the Umpqua River Bar on a consistent basis, still fishes the same spots when they are open. However, he was fishing at Charleston with clients and targeting rockfish with fairly light spinning tackle when one of the rods that was hooked up to a rockfish suddenly bent double and stayed that way. Bob began carefully pulling in the line and was surprised to see a “crocodile-sized lingcod” with the rockfish in its mouth. Bob reached over the side of the boat as far as he could and barely got the lingcod into the net when it took off and he started to get pulled over the side of the boat. His clients grabbed his ankles and legs and the lingcod got free of the net only to swim towards the boat (possibly to get a second chance at Bob). Bob dipped the net and, with the help of two of his customers, hauled in a 41 pound lingcod.

Hunters that appliced for fall controlled hunts should have already received their draw results via USPS postcard, but, if not, they can go online to visit the ODFW’s my hunter information page. To get their results, they will need to type in their ODFW hunter/angler ID number, last name, date of birth - and then click on My Hunter Information and Draw Results.

More than 40,000 rainbow trout had to be euthanized at a hatchery near Enterprise in northeast Oregon. According to the ODFW, the reason was that they had been exposed to IHNV (Infectious Hematopoietic Necrosis Virus.). In the near future, the ODFW plants to use an alternate water source and reduce the number of fish kept in the pens.

As late, and disappointing, as the warmwater fishing has been so far this year, the state’s trout fishing, especially in central and eastern Oregon, has more than made up for it. The cooler than normal water has kept the trout active and the high water levels bodes well for good fall fishing this year and improved trout fishing for the next several years, as well. At least on the coast, the late, or unsuccessful spawning of bass and panfish will result in very poor survival for fish hatched this year as it will be very difficult for the small fish to reach the required size for them to survive their first winter.

For those fishermen willing to travel, the nation’s best fishing for mackinaw, numberswise, is on central Washington’s Lake Chelan - where five char limits are the norm. The best place to get a ten pound rainbow trout is in Lake Rufus Woods in eastern Washington and those rainbows are planted triploid rainbows which are sterile and spend all their time eating and occasionally getting incredibly fat. The best northern pike fishing in the west, and possibly the nation, is in the Pend Oreille River in eastern Washington and the largest northern pike in America can be found in Coeur d’Alene Lake and the lakes near it - in the last two years, at least two pike weighing more than 40 pounds have been caught from this area.