Sept. 28th column

[Pete Heley]

Entering last weekend, the 1300 fish quota for Umpqua River unclipped cohos was more half over. Anglers need to remember that the section of the Umpqua River in which wild or unclipped cohos may be kept runs from, but not including the ocean upriver to the Scottsburg Bridge. Only chinooks and finclipped cohos may be kept when fishing above the Scottsburg Bridge. By the time you read this, the quota may have been met and the season closed forcing anglers to retain only chinooks or finclipped cohos. Once the wild or unclipped coho season closes, anglers may no longer keep any unclipped jack cohos. One interesting way to look at the unclipped or wild coho quotas on various coastal streams is to divide individual quotas into seasonal quotas. For instance, the 1,200 unclipped coho quota on the Coos River equates to 240 individual season limits (5 fish) of unclipped cohos, while the Umpqua’s seasonal quota for those fish is 1,300, or 650 individual season limits of 2 unclipped cohos. I find this very impressive that the Umpqua’s seasonal quota is rapidly approaching fulfillment since it takes so many different anglers to reach it.

While salmon fishing success has been spotty, there are still good catches being made every day. The guides still fishing the Umpqua River have not yet felt the need to stop targeting chinooks and an increasing number of cohos are entering the river. A few good salmon catches are still being made below Reedsport, but the fish are not holding there as long as they were previously. Cooler river temperatures have meant that many of the salmon are moving upstream - still giving anglers a chance to catch them, but not multiple chances. Sunday’s early morning rain seemed to spark a strong bite for shore anglers fishing Osprey Point, Half Moon Bay, the mouth of Winchester Creek and the area between the Gardiner Boat Ramp and the old IP mill. The rain also seemed to spark fishing success at Sawyers Rapids. When I talked to Shane Whitely more than a week ago, the salmon bite was limited to the first hour of daylight because of warm water temperatures and the fish taken were comprised of average-sized chinooks and jack salmon. But when I talked to him at 10 am last Sunday, he had already seen five chinooks brought up that morning weighing from 20 pounds to nearly 35 pounds.

Bankbound spinner flingers at Winchester Bay are still catching salmon, usually near high tide and several salmon have been caught below the bridge over Winchester Creek. Stan Crosby caught a nice finclipped coho there last Friday. He was fishing sand shrimp and salmon roe two and a half feet beneath a bobber and could actually watch the salmon grab his bait. He missed his first five takes before hooking his fish. One or two seals or sea lions can foul this fishery up in a hurry - either running the salmon back out into the main river, or even worse for anglers, driving them upstream into closed fishing water.

The Crab Bounty Contest at Winchester Bay is still going strong and will last through the end of the month. As of Sunday afternoon, 17 tagged crabs had been turned into the Sportsmans Cannery - each with a chance to be worth $1,000. This is a pretty nifty contest for the following reasons: (1) no pre-registration is required; (2) each tagged crab taken means a guaranteed hat or T-shirt; (3) After the tag number is properly recorded, you get to keep your crab and (4) Even if no one wins the grand prize of $1,000, the money will still be given out in three cash increments of $500, $300 and $200 dollars.

There has been numerous cases of people discovering that their crab catching devices have been checked and their crabs taken. Even worse is the infequent cases of crabbing gear actually being stolen. Crabbers have to be extra cautious when attempting to fish while crabbing.

Crabbing success seemed to slow somewhat last week, but many boat crabbers still did very well. One group from Union, Oregon, of all places, just missed catching a boat limit last Saturday afternoon amidst rather heavy winds. They found that when they moved to water several feet more shallow than they water they were catching female crabs in, they caught almost all male crabs. They said the pattern was very consistent and most of their male crabs were caught in water from 14 to 20 feet deep. With deer hunting season opening this coming weekend, there should be less crabbing pressure and if overall crabbing success does not immediately improve, the decreased pressure should allow it to do so in short order. Since the best crabbing is still in the ocean in water less than 35 feet deep, crabs should continue to move into the lower Umpqua River in good numbers - at least until the river raises several feet and that may not happen until after Thanksgiving.

Although the Lake Marie trout plant at the end of August is still not listed on the ODFW website as having occurred - there has been a number of good trout catches recently with the average fish weighing at least a pound. Obviously a trout plant was made, not announced, and largely ignored until recent weeks.

Afternoon smallmouth bass fishing in the Umpqu River should be very good and largemouth bass fishing in our local waters should be at least fair, but the most consistent warmwater fishing in our area should be for yellow perch in virtually every local water that has perch populations.

A less costly estimate for the removal of four Klamath River dams has been well covered in Oregon and northern California newspapers. The latest cost estimate trimmed 160 million dollars, or nearly 36 percent, from the initial estimate of 450 million dollars. While I did not get to see the Upper Klamath Basin prior to the dams, a friend of mine, Chris Engel, spoke at length with a Sprague River property owner while seeking permission to take out at the Sycan River at the end of a Sprague River float trip. While this conversatioin happened about 30 years ago, Chris repeated to me what the property owner, I believe his name was Harry Obenchain, said to him. The part of the conversation that really stood out was when Harry talked about the chinooks running well up into the North Fork Sprague River and the size of the brown trout back then when they were able to add salmon smolts to their diet. Since the current barrier to upstream salmon migration on the Klamath system is now the dam forming Irongate Reservoir which lies a few miles south of the Oregon border, the prospect of adding at least 100 miles of salmon spawning potential to the Klamath River system is quite exciting.

On the other side of the equation, some warmwater fisheries will take a hit - not so much on the portion of the Sprague River that is at least five miles upriver from Chiloquin but those populations behind Keno, John Boyle, Copco and Irongate reservoirs. Of greater concern might be the seaward migration of the rainbows in Upper Klamath and Agency lakes, many of which have a steelhead ancestry. They tend to stay near springs in the upper half of the lake, but do rove quite a bit in the colder winter months. If many of them leave the lake rather than migrate to the spring areas when the water gets warm, it could affect a very popular trout fishery. From this writer’s perspective, the potential for improvement seems to outweigh the many, as yet, unanswered questions regarding the effects of the dams removal.

Of increasing concern is the number of Oregon waters suffering from blue-green algae advisories. Part of this increase is no doubt due to better monitoring practices via the Harmful Algae Bloom Surveillance (HABS) program. In Oregon, the advisories seem to be caused by four different algaes. They are: Anabaena, Aphanizomenon, Gloeotrichia and Microcystis. The current advisories are at the South Umpqua River near Myrtle Creek (Microcystis); Dexter Reservoir, North Fork Reservoir, Sru Lake (Coos County) and Timothy Lake (Anabaena); Gerber Reservoir, South Tenmile Lake and Willow Creek Reservoir (Aphanizomenon) and Dorena and Fall Creek reservoirs (Gloeotrichia). Other Oregon waters that suffered toxic algae advisories earlier this year include: Cougar Reservoir, Cullaby Lake, Diamond Lake, Fish Lake (Jackson County), Lemolo Reservoir and Lost Creek Reservoir. Willow Creek Reservoir, which currently is under an Aphanizomenon advisory is especially “blessed” since it suffered a four week long Anabaena advisory earlier this summer.