Northwest Fishing Reports

Trout plants have finally started for the northern Oregon Coast. For our area, this means that virtually all of the lakes and ponds between Elbow Lake and Alder, Buck and Dune lakes (seven miles north of Florence) will all be stocked this week. Here are the fish numbers scheduled to be dumped into e...

Thanks to the South Umpqua River, the entire mainstem Umpqua was much more turbid than it has been and crabbing suffered. At some point, the water should clear and crabbing should show some improvement. Now that a number of spring chinook have been caught in the lower Columbia and Willamette rivers,...

While the best crabbing in our area is still at Charleston, the boat crabbers trying the Half Moon Bay area on the Umpqua River near Winchester Bay all seem to be catching at least a few crabs and some are doing better than that.While venturing out into the ocean, when possible, would almost certain...

The “Best of the Creek” steelhead contest was held this last weekend on Tenmile and Eel creeks, Information on the contest, obtained via Gould Buford, had Noah Myfiewiez winning the two day contest with four steelhead weighing a total of 34.10 pounds. Noah also had the second largest steelhead weigh...

This weekend (January 19th and 20th) marks the seventh annual “Best of the Creek” Steelhead contest for Eel and Tenmile creeks. The contest hours are: Check in or registstration runs from 6 am till noon on both on both Saturday and Sunday. The weigh-in is at the boat ramp in Spin Reel Park (USFS Par...

Probably the biggest news regarding local (and semi-local) steelhead angling is that as of the first of the year, according to the ODFW website, anglers fishing for steelhead in the Coos, Coquille and Tenmile basins are now allowed to keep an additional finclipped steelhead – making the daily limit ...

Two Douglas County fisheries opened up on January 1st. Eel Creek, the major tributary of Tenmile Creek opened up for steelhead angling on the 1st and there should be fair numbers of steelhead in the creek. However, most of them will be holding in very snaggy areas and will be difficult to land on ev...

LAST MINUTE OR BELATED OUTDOORSY XMAS GIFTS FISHING, HUNTING or SHELLFISH LICENSES - These are great gifts and if they are bought prior to January 1st, they are at their most valuable since they will cover all of 2012. The prices are the same as last year and they can be purchased without the the in...

Tony Corbett traveled to Winchester Bay from Canby to visit family and spent three wet hours on Saturday at Half Moon Bay trying for crabs. He ended up with 7 legal dungeness crabs. He managed to get 12 more on Sunday including some big ones measuring at least seven inches, but for most everyone els...

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 hi...

High muddy water slowed crabbing at Winchester Bay last weekend and the few crabbers still trying worked hard for their catch. The key was to crab as far downriver as possible which was Half Moon Bay for boat crabbers and either the Coast Guard Pier or Dock 9 for dockbound crabbers. Crabbing is hold...

Crabbing is holding up quite well at Winchester Bay and it looks like even if we have considerable rainfall over the next couple of weeks it will only move the crabs closer to the ocean and not run them out of the river. Last week, some crabs were taken more than a mile upriver from the entrance to ...

Crabbing at Winchester Bay remains good. It seems that female and undersized crabs are becoming an ever-bigger nuisance, but crabbers willing to put in their time are getting limits of legal crabs. Of course, boat crabbers have it easier than the dockbound crabbers and last week, it seems that the c...

Salmon fishing pressure at Winchester Bay underwent a major dropoff. A few bank anglers are targeting the East Boat Basin for hatchery chinooks and a few spinner flingers are hitting Half Moon Bay and Osprey Point, but catches have been few. Siltcoos Lake and the upper two miles of Siltcoos River (b...

Poor weather has greatly reduced fishing pressure on salmon. The Alsea closed to the taking of wild coho last week and by the time you read this, the Siuslaw River will most likely be closed as well. Tough ocean and bar conditions have limited fishing success for anglers wanting to fish the bar area...

I used to think that the ODFW was wrong in selling two rod licenses to anglers fishing in Siltcoos, Tahkenitch and Tenmile lakes and then not letting them use them during the coho salmon seasons on this lake, but one of the more helpful biologists at the Charleston regional ODFW office pointed out t...

The hottest thing going in the last couple of weeks has been the fishing for jumbo lingcod. By jumbo, this writer means fish weighing an honest 20 or more pounds. It seems that in the first couple of weeks of the deepwater (30 fathoms or more) opener for bottomfish, there has been more lingcod weigh...

Winchester Bay crabbing continues to be the hottest thing going in our area. Virtually all the boat crabbers that are putting in a reasonable amount of time are getting all the crabs they want. Even the dock crabbers are making good catches, but there have been some two or three hour stretches where...

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 co...

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 co...