August 8th column

[Pete Heley]

Well the ocean finclipped coho salmon season for the southern Oregon coast was officially over the evening of July 31st and as I write this column, the latest data I have available for the catch rates is through Sunday, July 29th. At that point, 2,478 finclipped cohos had been kept or 30.9 percent of the 8,000 fish quota. It is reasonable to believe that no major changes occurred over the last two days of the season. However, chinooks measuring at least 24-inches in length continue to be legal angling fare for ocean anglers through October 31st and chinooks, so far, have been a major portion of the ocean catch. Here is how the 11 ports in our zone have stacked up through July 29th - going from north to south.

Garibaldi had 3,170 angler trips with 320 kept cohos and 255 kept chinooks; Pacific City had 610 angler trips with 112 kept cohos and 58 kept chinooks; Depoe Bay had 1,125 angler trips with 260 kept cohos and 75 kept chinooks; Newport had 3,600 angler trips with 799 kept cohos and 377 kept chinooks; Florence had 207 angler trips with 23 kept cohos and seven kept chinooks; Winchester Bay had 4,736 angler trips with 683 kept cohos and 867 kept chinooks; Charleston with 2,017 angler trips with 77 kept cohos and 532 kept chinooks; Bandon had 238 angler trips with 43 kept cohos and 33 kept chinooks; Port Orford had eight angler trips with zero kept cohos and three kept chinooks; Gold Beach had 44 angler trips with five kept cohos and seven kept chinooks and Brookings with 7,095 angler trips with 156 kept cohos and 3,554 kept chinooks.

Large numbers of salmon, almost all chinooks, are holding off Brookings and the northern California coast. Many of those fish will undoubtedly ascend northern California streams, but the early reports on the salmon catch out of the streams on which fishing is allowed have been less than hoped for - and that may mean that good numbers of those chinooks may move northward - and easily justify continued salmon fishing efforts off the southern Oregon coast. Last weekend, the best salmon fishing in our area occurred in the ocean, Umpqua River Bar and the South Jetty. On Saturday and Sunday, the bar and South Jetty were closed to all reasonably-sized fishing craft and the salmon catch suffered. Anglers that did fish those areas later in the day did report fair salmon catches.

High inland temperatures should benefit the salmon angling on the lower Umpqua River. When the freshwater flows of the Umpqua heat up, salmon ascending the river often hold, sometimes for weeks, below Reedsport before continuing the upstream migration. The much cooler ocean water tends to cool the lower river enough for the salmon to stay there and avoid the much higher water temperatures farther upriver. Of course, this can be a rather “iffy” situation - millions of fish, especially in the midwest, have recently died due to a lethal combination of high temperatures and drought-caused low water conditions. There is a chance that something similar will happen later this summer in some eastern Oregon waters, but the northwest has pretty much escaped the drought that plagues most of our nationn.

An angler fishing off the jetty at Newport last week hooked and managed to land a 14 pound tuna. He was using a green label (medium) herring beneath a bobber, however cooler inshore waters has recently made tuna fishing somewhat more difficult. Up through the end of July, virtually every boat fishing for tuna found them in fair to good numbers.

At least one large redtailed surfperch was reported caught by an angler using sand shrimp near Half Moon Bay - a very rare catch for that area. Shelley Ledfors, of Coos Bay, while fishing with her husband John for salmon beneath the McCullough Bridge last Saturday hooked and landed a California halibut weighing about 15 pounds.

As genetic testing continues to develop, many possible record fish catches may be disqualified for lack of genetic purity. A recently caught possible state record spotted bass from North Carolina was found to lack such genetic purity. The fish, which would have easily bested the current state record of six pounds and five ounces was determined to be a hybrid with a largemouth bass mother and a spotted bass father. Since the maximum size of largemouth bass is about twice that of spotted bass, such hybrids, which may closely resemble spotted bass, are capable of reaching much larger sizes. Of course the state record application was rejected.

Although it happened several months ago, I simply have to report on the Arkansas angler who landed a 16 pound five ounce largemouth bass, which barely bested the nearly 40 year old state record largemouth of 16 pounds four ounces. However, his record was disqualified when authorities discovered that he purchased his fishing license shortly after catching the jumbo bass.