December 5th column

[Pete Heley]

Torrential rains over the last week have really dampened fishing and crabbing pressure at Winchester Bay. When the Umpqua River clears up somewhat, there will be some crabs in the Half Moon Bay area, but high river flows will most likely ensure that the best results will be during the period near high slack tide when the ocean water will make the lowermost river somewhat more clear and definitely more salty. In the meantime, crabbing at Charleston holds up well during the winter months due to the size of Coos Bay and the limited amount of freshwater entering it -ensuring winter salinity levels unmatched by any coastal river system.

As for the three lakes featuring coho salmon fisheries, it seems that Siltcoos has fallen off greatly - most likely due to the coho run entering the lake much earlier than in the other two lakes. A few fish are still being caught, but the coho fishing is not nearly as good as it was a month ago. Tahkenitch Lake has also dropped off, but not to the extent that Siltcoos has. Tenmile is probably offering the best coho fishing, but fair numbers of the fish are dark. Many of Tenmile’s cohos are caught by bass anglers using spinnerbaits or crankbaits, but this may change if Tenmile receives early fall rains over the next few years. In past years, the coho could not get into Tenmile Lakes until they were very dark and of little interest to anglers.

Some anglers have been either stillfishing or trolling in Tenmile’s deeper water, that more than 15 feet deep, and catching some nice rainbow trout. A few of these trout have tags and if an angler catches one, they should call contact Ringo’s Lakeside Marina at 541-759-3312 for a prize. By the time you read this, a few winter steelhead should be available to be caught in Tenmile Creek below Spin Reel Park. On hatchery steelies are legal to keep, but Tenmile usually has fair numbers of clipped steelhead. Anglers should remember that almost every finclipped steelhead goes up Eel Creek, so the steelhead caught above where Eel Creek enters Tenmile Creek (near the Old Highway 101 Bridge) are almost always unclipped native steelhead. It would also be wise to remember that the coho salmon present in Tenmile Creek are not legal to keep until they get above the Hilltop Drive Bridge in Lakeside. Eel Creek does not open up for steelhead fishing until January 1st.

For those of you planning on traveling over the holidays, a northern pike weighing 32 pounds was recently taken in Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Lake, while in the last week, eastern Washington’s Eloika Lake has been giving up some very good catche of largemouth bass and Spokane’s Long Lake, while not giving up great numbers of bass, has been giving up some jumbo largemouths and smallmouths with an occasional northern pike. There have been very little reports out of eastern Oregon, but the John Day River has been very good for steelhead, the Klamath River below Keno Dam has been fishing well for large rainbow trout, Crescent Lake has been fishing well for mackinaw and the Crooked River below Bowman Dam and Prineville Reservoir has been furnishing good flyfishing for reband trout and whitefish. The Deschutes River downstream of Benham Falls to Lake Billy Chinook has been providing fair fishing for brown trout with some rainbows and whitefish also entering the catch and some of the browns can weigh all of ten pounds. One has to realize that resorts and many seasonal stores may be closed during the off season and plan accordingly.

Also of interest to serious trout anglers is the fact that there are usually some browns in the three to six pound class that hang out just below the footbridge over Link Creek at the upper end of Suttle Lake and don’t ascent the stream to actually spawn until around Christmas.

For those trout anglers that have been patiently waiting for brown trout in the Owyhee River to be legal to keep - don’t count on it happening anytime soon. Recent sampling efforts have revealed that while the river below Owyhee Reservoir has good numbers of brown trout measuring 16-inches or more, there are few browns measuring a foot or less. This means that brown trout spawning success in the stream has led to little recruitment of young fish into the brown trout population and that catch and release will remain in effect for the the near future.

Scheduled trout plants for our area are over for the year and should resume at a relatively light level in February. The waters that reveived the heaviest trout stockings along the Oregon coast were: Empire Lakes (50 acres, 43,800 trout); Cleawox Lake (82 acres, 18,850 trout) and Olalla Creek Reservoir (113 acres, 17,000 trout). One needs to rememeber that each of these lakes received some unannounced plants of larger trout over the year that are not included in these totals.

Oregon’s hunters and anglers should be aware that as of December 1st, they can purchase their hunting, fishing and shellfish licenses for 2013. Better yet, these licenses can be purchased as a gift with the recipient not being present. If the “gift” purchasor does not have a copy of an old license to scan, they need to know the name the intended recipient is in the system under and their correct birthdate. Both the Big Game and Angling regulations booklets are now available and hunters and anglers should take a quick look at the highlighted areas that indicate new regulations in effect for 2013.