Oregon Fishing Report

Oregon Fishing Update

Although the Buoy 10 fishery is underway, action is not what one would expect for this time of year. We may still be surprised however as the tides are ripe for high success rates over the weekend. The Oregon and Washington sides are producing equally well- depending on what time of the tide anglers wish to target their salmon.

The tributary mouths like the Cowlitz and Kalama should begin to produce good results by the weekend. Wobblers rule this fishery and the edges of the shipping channel often produce as well as the mouths of these tributaries. The Troutdale fishery may also kick in but anglers will have to compete with gillnetters for a August 25th, 11 hour opener.

The Columbia River Gorge may be best left to the steelheaders. The larger B run steelhead should begin to show in greater numbers but avid anglers likely know that the bulk of the run has passed Bonneville Dam by now.

Sturgeon effort is non-existent in the estuary and the gorge. Crabbing in the estuary remains fair at best.

The North Oregon Coast is nearing the start of its fall Chinook run. The Nestucca and Nehalem estuaries typically start about this time. The weaker tide series may produce some results for dedicated anglers trolling herring near the mouths of these systems.
Crabbing is great in many Northern Oregon Coastal Estuaries like the Tillamook, Netarts and Nestucca.

The summer all-depth halibut season is open every Friday. Saturday and Sunday until the quota fills. Catches are great and some of the fish are quite large. A Salem man took one too large for the scale at South Beach which was estimated at 134 pounds. Offshore bottom fishing is excellent with regular, albeit reduced limits common.

Offshore salmon fishing out of Winchester Bay has been good whenever the wind permits.
Look for additional release on the Rogue River scheduled for September 1st to encourage Fall chinook upstream. The low waters have kept the fish kegged in the bay although the fish are mostly uncooperative with the numerous anglers trying for them.

Anglers launching out of Brookings, disappointed at the opening week, were rewarded with catches last weekend. Over 400 chinook were caught with some going 30 and 40 pounds.
The Clackamas and Sandy are low and slow. The lower Willamette is low and warm, and with sturgeon retention closed, offers little to anglers. North Santiam steelheaders may expect to find good water conditions and fish on the upper stretches.

Lake Billy Chinook is putting out scores of kokanee to trollers. Jigs are scoring kokes at Odell Lake.

Deschutes fly fishermen are finding decent action early and late in the day on caddis dries. Nymphing is only fair throughout the hot days.

Trout were stocked this week at Big Creek Reservoir numbers 1 and 2, Cleawox Lake, Estacada Lake, Faraday Lake, North Fork Reservoir, Small Fry Lake, Clear Lake, Badger Lake, Spring Creek, Fall River and Shevlin Pond.

Washington Fishing Report

Updated for for the week of August 19th – August 25th, 2005
Washington Fishing Update

North Puget Sound Starting Tuesday (Aug. 16), anglers fishing in ocean waters off Neah Bay will be allowed to keep up to two chinook salmon per day toward their two-salmon daily limit, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) announced.

South Sound/Olympic Peninsula Fishing in South Puget Sound area 11 & 13 is still a bit spotty but not too bad for those of you that target the tides and the mornings and evenings this past week. Some nice Kings have hit the docks from the Slag Pile, Dalco and the Clay Banks at Pt Defiance I saw a couple of fish in that 25 to 30 pound range.

Southwest Washington: Pro Guide Erik Brigham (360.513.2331) reported that the Lewis River has some summer steelhead available and the Cowlitz has been fishing well. Fish have slowed down because of the lower water so fish should be available for another four weeks or so. Drifting with eggs seems to be the best way to go.

Pro Guide Pete Grace (888.688.4386) reported that fish are being caught between 45-50 pounds around Buoy 10 but only five or so fish per thirty boats are being caught. On the mouth of the Lewis catches have been spotty. He has seen a few people stuck either at the dock or being towed in and wants to remind everyone to prepare yourselves.

Eastern Washington: Pro Guide Pat Long of Snake River Guide Service (1-509-751-0410) brings us this report: Bass fishing on the Snake is holding up well and even improving to some degree. We are seeing higher numbers of nice fish (3 to 4 lbs.) in the catch and the bite is holding up later into the day. I don't recall a year when the bass fishing has come on this strong as early as it is this year but if this is any indication we should see some fantastic fishing as we move into the early fall period.

Oregon Fishing Report

Updated for for the week of August 19th – August 25th, 2005
Oregon Fishing Update

Anglers that haven't made it down to Buoy 10 will be glad to hear that they haven't missed anything. This fishery is so due to explode however and that I may be fighting a double right now as you are reading this text! The weekend fishing should be the best we've seen so far. The week ahead will offer the best opportunity of the season for quality kings. That is, if the run hasn't been mis-predicted.

The ocean out of Astoria continues to frustrate anglers. Fin-clipped coho seem to be hard to find but should begin to show if they are going to. Chinook are beginning to make up a higher percentage of the catch but limits are not easy to come by. Most anglers are turning south to get their fish but Chinook should be coming from the North.

Summer steelheaders on the lower Columbia will have ideal tides over the weekend. The minus tide series should keep steelhead hugging the beaches where bank anglers fishing spin-n-glos could intercept good numbers of larger B run fish.

The estuary and the gorge consumptive sturgeon fishery is now closed. The water below the Wauna power lines won't re-open until the new year but above, it re-opens in October. Great catch and release options exist in both the estuary and gorge areas. Everyone is after salmon however.

The Deschutes River mouth remains sporadic however more fish seem to be passing into the pool and conditions should improve by the end of this month.

The Grande Rhonde is fishing well for trout and John Day River on the East side continues to kick out smallies with catfishing picking up.

The summer Chinook fishery in Nehalem Bay has been poor and likely won't pick up anytime soon. The big tide exchange over the weekend may bring on a bite in the upper reaches of the estuary but jaws trollers will find it difficult to fish effectively with herring.

Siletz anglers may see another flush of Fall chinook this weekend with the strong tidal exchange. Pressure is on in the Umpqua below the bridge but fishing is spotty. Rogue steelheaders are enjoying decent angling for half-pounders.

The second offshore salmon season opened Sunday, August 13th for a 29-day run through September 11th from South of Port Orford to Horse Mountain in California. Fishing has been slow.

The ODFW trout stocking remains in a mid-summer lull with only Carmen Reservoir planted in the Willamette Valley this week. In the Deschutes watershed, rainbows were stocked in Spring Creek and Devils Lake.

Washington Fishing Report

Washington Fishing Update

Come Aug. 1, salmon anglers can choose from a bevy of new fishing options, ranging from the popular Buoy 10 fishery at the mouth of the Columbia River to "Humpy Hollow" in northern Puget Sound.

Hundreds of boats are expected to converge in the lower Columbia on opening day of the Buoy 10 fishery, which runs upriver to the Rocky Point/Tongue Point line. Hundreds more are expected to ply the waters of marine areas 8-1 (Deception Pass/Skagit Bay), 8-2 (Saratoga Passage/Port Gardner - except Port Susan) and 9 (Admiralty Inlet), where anglers can keep two pink salmon in addition to the standard two-fish bag limit.

But a good case can also be made for the ongoing ocean salmon fishery, where catch rates are picking up and anglers can fish seven days a week starting July 29 in three out of four marine areas.

"The ocean fishery has definitely improved now that the warm water has moved farther offshore," said Doug Milward, ocean salmon manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). "In Ilwaco, anglers are now averaging nearly two fish per rod."
Because the number of anglers and the catch rates were lower than expected during the first few weeks of fishing, WDFW opened marine areas 1 (Ilwaco), 2 (Westport) and 3 (LaPush) to fishing seven days a week. In addition, anglers can include two - rather than one - chinook salmon in their two-fish daily bag limit. Fishing in Marine Area 4 (Neah Bay), where anglers have already caught nearly half of the area coho quota, will remain on a five-day, Tuesday-through-Saturday schedule.

In Eastern Washington, more than 200 boats a day have been congregating at the confluence of the Okanogan and Columbia rivers, where anglers have been reeling in chinook salmon ranging from 15 to 25 pounds. Approximately one out of three boats has been returning with fish.
Rich Pettit, a fish biologist working out of WDFW's Vancouver office, recommends a different option entirely.

"Sturgeon fishing is good in the lower Columbia River right now," said Pettit, noting that catch rates have been ranging from half a fish to three quarters of a fish from Ilwaco to Knappton.
Two options that won't be available this year are fishing for sockeye salmon in either Lake Washington or Lake Wenatchee. WDFW has ruled out sockeye fisheries on both lakes because fish returns have not met escapement needs.

Crabbing, meanwhile, remains open throughout Puget Sound. Three marine areas - 4 (Neah Bay), 5 (Sekiu) and 13 (south Puget Sound) - are open seven days per week. Eight areas are open for crabbing on a Wednesday-through-Saturday schedule, including Marine Area 6 (eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca), 7 (San Juan Islands, except the northern area around Point Roberts), 8-1 (Deception Pass to East Point), 8-2 (East Point to Possession Point), 9 (Admiralty Inlet) 10 (Seattle/Bremerton), 11 (Tacoma/Vashon) and 12 (Hood Canal).

Pro Guide Pat Long (509-751-0410) tells us that the Snake and Clearwater areas are holding about the same as the past couple of weeks - steelheading is slow on the Clearwater in both the C&R and the keep sections. Counts are improving slightly and show some promise for a better fishery soon.

Pro Guide Pete Grace (888.688.4386) has been fishing for sturgeon above Beacon Rock and doing well. Steelhead fishing on the Lewis is picking up and is OK at the mouth of the river. He's looking forward to Buoy 10!

Pro Guide Bob Barthlow (509.697.7125) just walked in the door from his final 7 days on the Cowlitz river for Summer steelhead.

He fished hard, side drifting and backtrolling from Blue Creek to Toledo and did very well, boating 51 Summer runs in 7 trips, hitting fish in almost every hole. He seemed to have the luck as most boats around us were not having much action.

Oregon Fishing Report

Oregon Fishing Update

It seems incongruous to speak of catching Fall chinook in the first week of August, but one of the joys of living in the Pacific Northwest is that we can choose to fish for summer steelhead along with any of three different salmon runs.

The Buoy 10 fishery opened August 1st without much action for early hopefuls. The Columbia is open for chinook, steelhead and jacks as well. Due to some confusion regarding the regulations, here is the word from the ODFW regarding the stretch from Tongue Point to Bonneville:
"This section of the Columbia River is open seven days per week ... The fall salmon season [opened] Monday, Aug. 1, 2005 with a daily limit of two adult salmon or adipose fin-clipped steelhead in combination, plus five jack salmon. No more than one chinook may be retained and all coho must be adipose fin-clipped."

Sturgeon fishing is spotty in the estuary but keepers are readily available to those applying the right tactics. Retention is closed in the gorge.

Steelheading is sporadic on the lower Deschutes. The river is now open to chinook fishing. Plug pullers are working the mouth as Dam counts increase. Fly fishing is good upriver.

North coastal streams are low and clear. A few steelhead are available to stealthy anglers. The Umpqua remains productive for smallmouth and the steelhead fishing is improving. The Rogue River is closed to chinook fishing above Gold Ray Dam. Bay fish is very slow. Steelheading is fair to good on the upper river.

The lower Willamette and Clackamas Rivers have little to offer anglers currently. Early birds have a chance at a summer run on the Sandy. The North Santiam is a good bet for steelhead.
Odell has been kicking out limits of kokanee 12 to 14 inches in length. Trolling is most effective
The ODFW planted trout this week at Breitenbush River, Clear Lake, North Fork Santiam River and Trail Bridge Reservoir. Trout stocking will resume in the Northwest (coastal) Zone in the third week of August.