October 3rd column

[Pete Heley]

Crabbing at Winchester Bay continues to be very good for boat anglers and fair to good for dockbound crabbers. There appears to be some confusion as to when the ocean closes to sport crabbing and the correct answer is that it closes on October 15th and will reopen on December 1st. Crabbing in our coastal river systems is open all year.

As you are reading this, the Crab Bounty Contest is officially over. It ended at 2:00 pm last Monday (October 1st). Since the contest ending came after the deadline for this article, I’ll report the winners in next week’s column. As I am writing this, 19 tagged crabs have been turned in to the Sportsman Cannery for their free hats and a chance at the $1,000 Grand Prize. One crabber from Florence went crabbing with some friends from McMinnville and when his friends returned to McMinnville, they discovered that one of their crabs had a tag (actually a numbered spinner blade) on it. Their revised game plan was to get the tag back to Florence and then to the Sportsman Cannery early monday morning on the last half-day of the contest. I hope they made it.

Some quick stats on the tagged crab caught through last Saturday. Of the 19 tagged crabs caught, only one was caught by an Oregon nonresident. Three were caught by people from Reedsport and only two were caught by boat crabbers. Dock 9 produced five tagged crabs while the Coast Guard Pier produced four and Dock A produced three.

Crabbing continues to be very good for boat crabbers, although it seems that a large number of them are unaware that the ocean is still legal for sport crabbing and will remain so through October 15th. Of course, the river is open to crabbing year-round, but crabbing success has fallen off somewhat above the entrance to Winchester Bay’s East Boat Basin due to some commercial crabbing.

The most recent salmon-fishing news is all about the Siuslaw River where they managed to catch more than 27 percent of their wild coho quota in the first nine days of the season. As a comparison, the Umpqua River has been the second most productive wild coho producer and through Sunday, September 23rd, and they had caught less than four percent of their wild coho quota. The wild coho quotas for the Siuslaw and Umpqua rivers were 1,700 and 3,000 fish respectively and each river has an individual season wild coho limit of two.

For those wanting to look up these statistics online, they come out on Tuesday and cover catch rates up through the preceding Sunday. The web address is: http://www.dfw.state.or.us/resources/fi ... easons.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

Cool ocean water is still hampering the ocean and lowermost rivers salmon fishing success although there appears to be large numbers of salmon present in all of the larger streams in our area. While the bar areas on our local rivers will have somewhat warmer water near low tide when the warmer upriver water is mixed with the cold ocean water, it often is too rough to comfortably fish during that time and the salmon tend to enter even the largest rivers during periods of high tides.

Sturgeon and striped bass angling remains slow with little fishing pressure. A few quiet-mouthed anglers have been catching some chinook salmon from the Smith River, which does not allow the taking of any coho salmon. Surfperch anglers have been having some success at the end of Sparrow Park Road, but the fishing has been inconsistent and subject to decent surf conditions. Jetty anglers have been very few and far between with many having switched to salmon angling and the others avoiding the jetty until the recent heavy wave action subsides. Although there has not been much salmon fishing activity near the mouth of Winchester Creek located in Winchester Bay’s East Boat Basin, more than 100 salmon have entered the STEP trap located in the closed section of Winchester Creek.

I suppose it should have been expected, but inshore halibut seem to have nearly disappeared now that they are legal to keep, when only a few weeks ago, at least five good-sized ones were caught incidentally when the season was closed.

Cool mornings have slowed recent bass and panfish activity, but the warm afternoons should allow for better afternoon and evening fishing. Recent temperatures have exceeded 75 degrees along the coast and 90 degrees near Medford which should allow for worthwhile bass fishing.

A couple of new additions to the ODFW website that should be of interest to area anglers are the new Google map showing the places that receive trout plants in the Southwest region and “50 places to go fishing within 60 minutes of Medford”.
perch anglers

According to a recent ODFW bulletin, sockeye salmon are now ascending the Deschutes River above Billy Chinook Dam for the first time in more than 45 years. The fish are the result of kokanee (the landlocked version of sockeye salmon) taken from Lake Billy Chinook and released into the Deschutes River below Pelton Dam where they could migrate down the Deschutes, into the Columbia, and then into the ocean. The first of these returning sockeyes are now in the Deschutes above Lake Billy Chinook where it is hoped that they will re-establish the sockeye runs present in the Deschutes before the construction of Round Butte and Pelton dams. It is quite interesting that specimens from a kokanee population landlocked for several decades could immediately become sockeye salmon as soon as their path to the ocean becomes possible.