November 9th column

[Pete Heley]

Crabbing continues to by very, very good for those using boats at Winchester Bay. The dock crabbers are also making some nice catches, but the best catches have come in the hours before daylight or after dusk. Offshore bottomfish seems to be almost comopletely ignored, but the few who have ventured out have almost always caught limits of ling cod and near limits of incidentally taken rockfish. Also very much ignored is the bottomfishing off the South Jetty.

Trolling the lower Umpqua for salmon has almost completely died off, but there are still a few die-hard spinner flingers fishing at Gardiner, Half Moon Bay and behind the RV park off Osprey Point. Bobber anglers are still fishing near the mouth of Winchester Creek, but fishing pressure has dropped off with the cold mornings. Salmon, including some bright ones, are still being caught.

Anglers fishing with sand shrimp or roe on the Smith River are still catching chinook salmon although the fishing is somewhat inconsistant and Shane Whitley of Sawyers Rapids reported that the chinook fishing has died down, but that coho fishing has picked up in a major way, but the numbers of keepable finclipped salmon has disappointed some anglers. Shane thinks the next major rain will bring in good numbers of winter steelhead.

While Siltcoos Lake and the portion of the Siltcoos River outlet above Highway 101 are still offering at least fair coho salmon fishing and the first cohos have been caught out of Tahkenitch Lake. However, until we get some major rainfall, Tahkenitch and Tenmile won’t be producing many salmon. That same rainfall will bring loads of chinook into the smaller rivers on the southern Oregon Coast. The Elk River had some fish in the first pool above the ocean, but fishing success has dwindled and some major rainfall would definitely get lots of salmon into the Elk and Sixes rivers as well as some of the other smaller streams such as Floras and Hunter creeks and the Pistol and Winchuck rivers. One thing to keep in mind when fishing the Pistol River or Hunter Creek is that jack chinook salmon must be recorded on an angler’s harvest card.

When perusing online fishing sites, I always stop and carefully read anything written by Roger Luce, who goes by the monicker “Roger the ex-bass guide”. One reason I try to read everything he posts is that I find it interesting and very informative and I usually actually learn something from his posts. He recently posted some bobber fishing techniques relating to his crappie fishing that I found insightful. When Roger is using a bobber for crappie and panfish, he opts for small styrofoam bobbers. He wants the fish when it grabs the bait or lure, usually a very small crappie jig, to be able to pull the bobber under with only a small amount of resistance. Larger bobbers cause the fish to let go more quickly and cause many more missed strikes. However, one of the biggest advantages of using styrofoam bobbers is that they are very light and their wind resistance keeps them from twirling around the bait during the cast greatly reducing the chance of tackle snarls.

Roger also had a recent post on Ifish.net asking people to respond with their “go-to” baits and lures. While I found this subject matter interesting, it most likely was not for the same reason that most people would. While I might imitate some popular lures for anadromous fish, I tend to go in a completely different direction when after smallmouth and especially largemouth bass. There are certain lures I have a lot of confidence in when I am bassfishing and when fishing a lake for the first time, I try to use a lure that fits the situation well, but is little used on that lake. Let me give you an example of the first time I fished Lake Selmac in southern Oregn. I stopped by the lake on April 1st several years ago, and noticed an angler near where I parked landing a fish. I walked down to see what he caught and he was holding an extremely fat female largemouth that measured 23-inches in length and had to weigh nine pounds. He caught the bass on a four-inch plastic worm very close to Selmac Lake Resort, which had not yet opened for the season. I knew I would be back and three weeks later, I showed back up completely unsure of what to use. I love fishing plastic worms, but I had found out that such lures were extremely popular on the lake and almost every bank angler used them exclusively. I also found, after checking several tackleshops in the area, that Zoom’s bruch hogs were heavily stocked in every location I checked, yet not one store carried Zoom flukes in the four-inch size which I love to fish with. So in three hours that evening and another three hours the next morning, I landed 34 largemouths with about half of them weighing between two and a half and five pounds. As I fished the lake several more times, my success gradually diminished to the point where I was looking for different lure options.

In heavily fished waters, where I feel “forced” to use a popular lure for that water, I try to fish it differently that most anglers do - usually this involves the retrieve.

There seems to be a lot of interest in some proposed changes regarding Oregon’s more than 1,000 fishing, hunting and adventure guides and while increased profiency or experience requirements are almost always a good thing, it should be a source of concern if most of the policing of the guide’s ranks is done by other guides. It should always be a source of concern when a group of people are “controlled” by the very people they are competing against. Although some states have no or minimal requirements for becoming a guide, Oregon’s profiency and insurance requirements pretty much force guides to do so full-time. While this is a good thing, especially where anadromous fish are targeted, the requirements keep some capable people from guiding part time for such species as trout, catfish, bass and panfish.

Sometimes a study yields results that indicate that more studies are needed. An article in Science News earlier this year quoted research that covered a ten year period where penguins that were banded with thin metal strips on their shoulders were found to have 41 percent fewer chicks and to spend an average of 12.7 days at sea seeking forage as compared to 11.6 days for unbanded penguins. This is a crucial difference as the penguin chicks only feed when their parents return after a foraging trip. Additionally, the banded penguins were found to a 44 percent lower survival rate over the ten years of research. Obviously, the bands affected the penguins foraging success and lowered the value of other findings by researchers. The results of this research may carryover, most likely to a lesser extent, to the effects of other birds and animals being similarly banded. Perhaps the metal tagging program would have been unnecessary if the penguins were not so similar in appearance and very difficult to identify.

Arizona wildlife personnel met recently with residents of Lake Havasu City after they complained about the loss of many of their pets and told the residents to stop feeding the area’s coyotes and their problem would pretty much go away.

[Mike Carey]

thanks Pete, I enjoy reading about what's going on down in Oregon and I'm sure others do as well.

[Pete Heley]

Thanks Mike, it's always nice to be appreciated.
Sincerely,
Pete Heley