8 August 2011

[Pete Heley]

Winchester Bay was a circus over Labor Day Weekend and the crabbing and fishing held up surprisingly well. While the river below Reedsport continues to give up some outsized chinooks, the ocean was surprisingly generous to some of the salmon anglers that tried to take advantage of the late ocean coho fishery. Those willing to put up with fairly rough ocean conditions caught good numbers of cohos to at least 14 pounds. The most successful coho anglers were fishing in about 300 feet of water and around 100 feet below the surface.
Most of the guides fishing the Umpqua River are catching chinooks to at least 25 pounds on virtually every trip and they most likely will not start targeting the cohos until the chinooks start dissing them. If the Umpqua River above Reedsport cools down a few degrees, the salmon will likely stop stacking up below Reedsport and continue swimming upriver. Shorebound spinner flingers caught numerous salmon on last Friday and Saturday and some of them were hogs. Coho salmon entering the Umpqua should more than counterbalance the slightly decreasing number of chinooks doing so.
A lady was surprised to find that someone had purchased a fishing license and combined angling tag under her name and birth date. While there is a very good chance that someone bought her a license as a gift and she did not remember receiving it, I can foresee an increasing number of people actually trying to assume another angler’s identity in the near future. The reason is that outdoor recreationists are losing their right to purchase hunting and fishing licenses and tages when the Department of Justicw puts a hold on someone due to unpaid child support. More than a decade ago, Idaho started doing this and they collected monies beyond their wildest dreams. People were ponying up money that they wouldn’t part with to save their drivers licenses or stay out of jail to be able to continue to fish and hunt. The fact that many of these people would do anything possible to be able to continue to hunt and fish, except perhaps pay their back child support, means anglers and hunters need to be more careful when it comes to protecting their vital information. This writer is convinced that some identity thefts in the near future will be solely to fraudulently obtain hunting or fishing privileges.
It is amazing how many people think they automatically become an Oregon resident simply through the purchase of real property in Oregon. The fact is, that enforcement people are going to ask for valid ID that matches the fishing or hunting license purchased and a mismatch will most likely result in more than mere inconvenience.
For the last month, crabbing has been sensational in Winchester Bay. In fact, a disappointing number of crabbers are catching mutliple limits of crabs per day, or buying shellfish licenses for friends or family members to be able to legally keep more crabs. But it’s hard to have much sympathy for the crabs after several months of being extremely difficult to catch. As usual, especially for the dockbound crabbers, success was much, much better entering the Labor Day Weekend than it was coming out of it. As things tame down, one can reasonably expect crabbing to rebound quickly from the Labor Day onslaught. The yearly Crab Bounty Contest is now underway and is one should catch a legal-sized male crab with a numbered spinner blade tied to one of its rear legs, it needs to be presented, with the tag intact, to the Sportsman Cannery in Winchester Bay. Each tagged crab turned in will get a prize, usually a hat or T-shirt and still have a chance to win the $1,000 grand prize at the end of the contest on October 1st. This is also the time of year when crabbers should start paying close attention to their crab gear as the incidents of crabbing-associated misbehavior rises dramatically.
Some anglers claim that there was a trout plant at Lake Marie. The ODFW website doesn’t list such a trout plant, but there were some good-sized trout taken from Lake Marie over the last week. Recently, the best trout fishing in the area has been taking place at Tenmile Lakes.
According to the ODFW website, evening jigging and trolling for kokanee on Wickiup Reservoir has been very productive and a number of kokanee weighing more than three pounds with the largest pushing four pounds have been taken recently. Paulina Lake, the last spot to hold an Oregon state record for kokanee before Wallowa Lake went crazy, has been fishing extremely well for kokanee over the last few weeks. Although some very large rainbows have been taken recently from Crane Prairie Reservoir, the trout have not yet moved into the inlet and channel areas to the degree they normally do at this time of year. Continued warm weather will most likely force them to seek cooler water in the near future. Most eastern Oregon trout spots should be fishing well due to increased water levels, but should offer even more interesting fishing over the next three or four years as the trout spawned or planted this year reach lunker proportions.