August 17th column

[Pete Heley]

While salmon fishing near the Umpqua River Bar and below Reedsport remains inconsistent, the periods of good fishing are becoming much better and more frequent. It seems like a very good percentage of the chinooks taken are weighing more than 20 pounds with a number of 40 pound salmon already landed. Fishing the ocean remains mostly disappointing, but some catches have been made there, as well, although most of the cohos taken are unclipped, not legal to keep, fish.

Amidst some confusion, the ocean finclipped coho salmon season closed one hour after sundown last Saturday, August 13th. Right up to the end, the coho remained elusive and tough to find, but at least the ocean conditions allowed some anglers to do some serious exploring and a few good catches were made. Unfortunately, there were some tickets issued, beginning on Sunday, August 14th, to anglers who retained finclipped cohos in the ocean.

Crabbing continues at a much-improved pace. While ocean crabbing remains the most productive, boat crabbers in the river all the way to slightly above Winchester Bay are also doing well. Some of the harder-working dock crabbers have managed to catch legal limits over the last few weeks and while many of the crabs are not completely full, they are getting there. As the river continues to drop and get saltier, the only thing that is likely to slow crabbing success for any length of time would be intense crabbing pressure that harvests the crabs faster than they can enter the river. If that occurs, the ocean crabbing will become much better than river crabbing since the larger crab population in the ocean will be much harder to severely impact than the crab population in the lower river.

Approximately 30,000 pounds of the 41,763 pound quota was caught during the initial two day summer halibut opener. The ODFW announced that since only approximately 11,000 pounds remained, there would be no more all-depth days for the summer season. Instead, the uncaught summer season halibut quota will be added to the quota for the nearshore halibut fishery which means in waters less than 240 feet deep. The nearshore halibut quota, which was met earlier this year, reopened August 13th.

While sturgeon fishing remains slow, there has been some decent catches with most of the fish being to big to keep. A party fishing below the Scottsburg Bridge last weekend reported several hookups on sturgeon. Most of the sturgeon fishing pressure is still in the two miles of river below Reedsport and earlier this summer there was some oversized sturgeon caught several miles above tidewater and a few miles above Wells Creek.

The mainstem Umpqua from about eight miles above Reedsport all the way up to Roseburg and up the South Umpqua to about Canyonville is producing good smallmouth bass fishing, but the South Umpqua always closes to all fishing starting September 16th.

Nighttime striped bass anglers are still accounting for some fish, but there has been no recent reports of outsize fish being caught.

It seems that our immediate area is not the only place that has enjoyed much improved striped bass fishing this year. California has also enjoyed very good fishing and striper populations have even re-established themselves into some northern California rivers where they used to be - most notably the lower Russian River. With the mid-Atlantic Coast, it is the number of jumbo striped bass taken this season more than the numbers. A number of stripers weighing more than 70 pounds have been taken and less than two weeks ago, Greg Myerson landed a mammoth striper while fishing Long Island Sound with a live eel that measured 54-inches in length and weighed 81 pounds 14 ounces on a certified scale - easily besting the current world record of 78 pounds taken near Atlantic City. Unfortunately, the closest thing Oregon has to live eels is the lamprey which is illegal to use for bait. Proof that the world’s heaviest striped bass inhabit our country’s central Atlantic Coast is the fact that Myerson has also landed a 71 pound striper as well as a number of jumbo stripers weighing more than 60 pounds. Since striped bass can live more than 20 years in salt or brackish water, the only reasonable explanation for this year’s improvement in striped bass fishing seems to be that they are simply biting better than they did in past years.