Salmon fishing at Winchester Bay was much improved this last week. For the last few months, the catch has been comprised almost entirely of Chinook salmon, but last week coho salmon began entering the lower river and definitely improved the overall fishing. Unfortunately, about eighty percent of the coho salmon being landed in the lower river are unclipped and not legal to keep. The ocean coho season is still in effect and a few anglers have been casting spinners into the ocean off the south side of “The Triangle”, since both wild and clipped cohos at least 16-inches long are legal to keep in the ocean. But anglers doing so must adhere to ocean regulations – which means single barbless hooks only – and they should avoid fishing the lower river after keeping an unclipped coho from the ocean if they don’t enjoy having to do a considerable amount of explaining.
After catching nearly 13 percent of the ocean coho quota in the first few days, the ocean coho catch slowed with about 17 percent of the quota landed during the next seven days. Through Sunday (Sept. 11th), 29.4 percent of the quota had been caught and kept. By the time you read this, it’s almost a certainty that more than half the ocean coho quota will have been caught and kept, but there is also a chance that the the season will run through September and not close early.
Most of the spinner sales are still green or chartreuse, but as more coho salmon enter the Umpqua River, the sales of pink spinners will increase.
With the improvement in the salmon fishing and the continued good crabbing, South Jetty bottomfishing has been very much overlooked, but still productive for greenling and striped surfperch. A few anglers have taken advantage of the much improved Sparrow Park Road to fish the beach for redtailed surfperch and some good catches of nice-sized “pinkfins” were made last week.
A New Zealand brown trout was recently certified by the IGFA as a new world record. The 42 pound one ounce fish was caught by 71 year old angler Otwin Kandolf while fishing the Ohau B hydro canal on New Zealand’s South Island. The lunker was caught below a commercial salmon farm and there is some speculation that it owed its incredibly fat physique to feeding on food pellets that drifted downstream from the salmon farm. The record brown only measured 36.6-inches in length.
By comparison, the last two world record brown trout, a 41 pound eight ounce fish from the Wisconsin portion of Lake Michigan and a 41 pound seven ounce fish from the Big Manistee River, a tributary to the Michigan portion of Lake Michigan, measured 40.6-inches and 43.75-inches respectively. If the record brown from Michigan had the same body shape as the New Zealand lunker, it would have weighed more than 70 pounds.
An Oregon bow hunter was arrested in Deschutes County last week for fatally shooting his hunting companion in the stomach. Where things went wrong was when Michael Shawn Pekarek, after going to full draw, but not getting a shot at a deer he spotted, turned around while still at full draw and “accidentally” released the arrow which struck his hunting partner. The case is still under investigation.
A fishing trip to Woahink Lake last week ended up with a surprising variety of fish species landed.
I was fishing with Reedsport resident Dwayne Schwartz in his bass boat and we quickly landed several smallmouth bass and a few largemouths and when Dwayne landed a foot long pike minnow, we decided to see how many fish species we could catch. The first weed bed we spent any time on resulted in a couple of dozen yellow perch hookups and about a half-dozen bluegills and when Dwayne caught our first rainbow trout, we were up to a six fish species.
Try as we might, we couldn’t add any additional fish species, but then the cutthroat trout, black crappies and brown bullheads in the lake are rather rare.
We didn’t land any lunkers. Our biggest yellow perch was about eight inches long and the biggest bluegill between six and seven inches, the rainbows topped out about 12-13-inches as did the two pikeminnows. None of our smallmouth bass weighed more than a pound and the heaviest largemouth weighed about two pounds. But it was a fun half-day of easy light tackle fishing.
Bill Taylor dropped off some additional info concerning the Labor Day STEP Salmon Derby. 135 salmon were caught and turned in by 400 anglers (some of which fished two and a half days.). 83 salmon were weighed in at the Reedsport Boat Ramp and 52 were weighed at the East Basin Boat Ramp in Winchester Bay. Two of the salmon weighed in were finclipped Chinooks from our local STEP Chapter. The heaviest salmon turned in on Saturday weighed 27.9 pounds and was caught by Marcus Thedford of Sutherlin. The heaviest salmon turned in on Monday weighed 28.1 pounds abd was caught by Kaitlynn Baines of Albany.
As reported last week, the overall Derby winner was a 33.7 pound Chinook caught on Sunday by Dana Castle right in front of the Reedsport Boat Ramp and viewed by numerous witnesses. It was Dana’s only bite during the entire tournament.
from Pete’s Blog – PeteHeley.Com
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