Sept. 15th Column
Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2011 1:49 pm
It seems that the Umpqua River salmon fishing is no secret, even to anglers living several hundred miles away. In the September 2nd issue of The Fish Sniffer, a northern California fishing newspaper based in Elk Grove, California, it was stated that the Umpqua River had the Oregon coast’s best salmon fishing. Fishing should get even better as an influx of cohos should more than offset the winding down of the fall chinook salmon run.
The somewhat smaller rivers in our area should be peaking over the next several weeks and the only thing holding off excellent salmon fishing on the Rogue is cool water temperatures.
Once again, a huge salmon was caught by an angler that refused to purchase a ticket in the annual salmon derby sponsored by our local STEP chapter. Lot’s of salmon, more than 300 in fact, were caught and turned in to be weighed, but the heaviest salmon weighed in by a derby entrant weighed 34 pounds and was caught by Lemuel Babb of Medford. However, for the second year in a row, a giant salmon was caught by a non-participant in the derby. Last year’s salmon weighed 46 pounds and this year’s giant was estimated to weigh more than 50 pounds. Babb’s 34 pound salmon won him $650 dollars and an individual derby ticket only costs ten dollars.
The ocean coho salmon season, scheduled to run from September 1st through September 10th, or until the 5,900 coho quota was caught, closed after Wednesday, September 7th when the quota was deemed to have been caught and retained. So ocean fishing is now restricted to chinook salmon only through the end of September. River anglers can still keep finclipped cohos, but starting this Thursday, they may also keep one unclipped or wild coho per day with a two wild coho season limit for the Umpqua River. At the end of last weekend, unclipped and unkeepable cohos were dominating the catch of bankbound spinner flingers. One such angler stated that he was ready to quit fishing since all six fish he caught Sunday were native cohos. Some of these cohos have been very big. Around the first of the month, Bill Gates, our local fish checker, weighed a finclipped coho in at 20 pounds.
A number of years ago, when I operated what is now Roger’s Zoo (a tavern in North Bend), I had two different avid anglers relate to me how they had located truly lunker-sized fish, one a brown trout of about ten pounds in the North Umpqua River a couple of miles below Lemolo Reservoir and the other a smallmouth bass of about six pounds on a section of the Crooked River flowing through private property several miles above Prineville Reservoir. Both of these gentlemen were of retirement age and both seemed perfectly comfortable taking their time to fool these trophy-sized fish.
If I had known then, what I know now, I would have told them to lose the leisurely, unhurried attitude and start fishing hard and often for those fish. A recent article in Science News dealt with the fact that humans are the only known species to suffer shrinkage in brain size in their later years. No other animal, even chimpanzees which share more than 98 percent of our DNA, suffer any shrinkage in brain size at advanced ages for their species.
So by taking their sweet time pursuing these lunkers, both gentlemen, it would seem, are stacking the deck in their quarries’ favor. Think about it. A ten pound brown trout in the relatively unfertile upper North Fork of the Umpqua River and a six pound smallmouth in the upper Crooked River are both giants of their species, each around ten years old, and each has undoubtedly ignored many an angler’s bait or lure. The best way to fool such fish is to have all of one’s wits and to use them.
That said, experience and judgement often more than compensate for the effects of a slightly shrinking brain - except for those darn memory lapses. My personal strategy upon catching big fish I have located is to do so as quickly as possible - even when the fish are nonmigratory or resident fish species. One thing those two anglers did do right was to not tell me the specific locations of their big fish. However, both promised to let me know when they fooled their “Moby Dick” and I never heard back from either of them.
Anglers that visit Ifish.net on the internet might be interested in a photo of an unusual double hookup involving what appears to be a three pound smallmouth bass and about a six pound steelhead that both took a liking to a diving crankbait. Some of these fishing websites are quite interesting and my three favorites are: washingtonlakes.com, oregon fishing forum and Ifish.net.
The somewhat smaller rivers in our area should be peaking over the next several weeks and the only thing holding off excellent salmon fishing on the Rogue is cool water temperatures.
Once again, a huge salmon was caught by an angler that refused to purchase a ticket in the annual salmon derby sponsored by our local STEP chapter. Lot’s of salmon, more than 300 in fact, were caught and turned in to be weighed, but the heaviest salmon weighed in by a derby entrant weighed 34 pounds and was caught by Lemuel Babb of Medford. However, for the second year in a row, a giant salmon was caught by a non-participant in the derby. Last year’s salmon weighed 46 pounds and this year’s giant was estimated to weigh more than 50 pounds. Babb’s 34 pound salmon won him $650 dollars and an individual derby ticket only costs ten dollars.
The ocean coho salmon season, scheduled to run from September 1st through September 10th, or until the 5,900 coho quota was caught, closed after Wednesday, September 7th when the quota was deemed to have been caught and retained. So ocean fishing is now restricted to chinook salmon only through the end of September. River anglers can still keep finclipped cohos, but starting this Thursday, they may also keep one unclipped or wild coho per day with a two wild coho season limit for the Umpqua River. At the end of last weekend, unclipped and unkeepable cohos were dominating the catch of bankbound spinner flingers. One such angler stated that he was ready to quit fishing since all six fish he caught Sunday were native cohos. Some of these cohos have been very big. Around the first of the month, Bill Gates, our local fish checker, weighed a finclipped coho in at 20 pounds.
A number of years ago, when I operated what is now Roger’s Zoo (a tavern in North Bend), I had two different avid anglers relate to me how they had located truly lunker-sized fish, one a brown trout of about ten pounds in the North Umpqua River a couple of miles below Lemolo Reservoir and the other a smallmouth bass of about six pounds on a section of the Crooked River flowing through private property several miles above Prineville Reservoir. Both of these gentlemen were of retirement age and both seemed perfectly comfortable taking their time to fool these trophy-sized fish.
If I had known then, what I know now, I would have told them to lose the leisurely, unhurried attitude and start fishing hard and often for those fish. A recent article in Science News dealt with the fact that humans are the only known species to suffer shrinkage in brain size in their later years. No other animal, even chimpanzees which share more than 98 percent of our DNA, suffer any shrinkage in brain size at advanced ages for their species.
So by taking their sweet time pursuing these lunkers, both gentlemen, it would seem, are stacking the deck in their quarries’ favor. Think about it. A ten pound brown trout in the relatively unfertile upper North Fork of the Umpqua River and a six pound smallmouth in the upper Crooked River are both giants of their species, each around ten years old, and each has undoubtedly ignored many an angler’s bait or lure. The best way to fool such fish is to have all of one’s wits and to use them.
That said, experience and judgement often more than compensate for the effects of a slightly shrinking brain - except for those darn memory lapses. My personal strategy upon catching big fish I have located is to do so as quickly as possible - even when the fish are nonmigratory or resident fish species. One thing those two anglers did do right was to not tell me the specific locations of their big fish. However, both promised to let me know when they fooled their “Moby Dick” and I never heard back from either of them.
Anglers that visit Ifish.net on the internet might be interested in a photo of an unusual double hookup involving what appears to be a three pound smallmouth bass and about a six pound steelhead that both took a liking to a diving crankbait. Some of these fishing websites are quite interesting and my three favorites are: washingtonlakes.com, oregon fishing forum and Ifish.net.