Oct. 5th column

[Pete Heley]

The best news this week is that Oregon’s offshore bottomfishing season opens October 1st, quelling fears that it would, once again, be delayed. This year, bottomfish anglers are also able to have both bottomfish and halibut on board at the same time. The only halibut season currently open is the inshore fishery (in waters less than 240 feet deep). Since bottomfish anglers, after October 1st, can fish in waters deeper than 240 feet, I can see some possible problems coming up. But if an angler targets the bottomfish in deep water first and then moves inside 40 fathoms to finish up their bottomfish and hopefully catch a halibut, as well, there should be no problems. I would think that if you are fishing in water deeper than 40 fathoms for bottomfish, with halibut already on board, you may have a tough time convincing whoever is checking you that you caught your halibut farther inshore - but that is a moot point since the inshore halibut becomes illegal as soon as you hit water deeper than 240 feet. However, I see a problem arising when anglers are fishing for bottomfish in waters deeper than 240 feet and then happen to catch a halibut after they have moved into water less than 40 fathoms deep. The legally caught bottomfish and inshore halibut are now legal to be on the same boat at the same time, but the anglers may have a difficult time convincing the person checking them at the boat ramp - especially if they were observed fishing in water more than 240 feet deep. Let’s hope this potential problem does not become an actual one.

Cabezon continue to be illegal to keep when taken by boat anglers.

It is easy to complain, or second guess, the decisions made by the ODFW, but it is only fair to give them credit when they do things right. They made that short ocean coho season more fair to anglers who must work full-time and this is the first time in recent memory that bottomfish may be legally kept on a boat with a halibut aboard. According to one ODFW employee, this relaxation of a once strict rule was made possible by temporarily reducing the 40 fathom bottomfish restriction to waters more shallow than 20 fathoms or 120 feet. The incidentally caught yelloweye and canary rockfish that are illegal to keep were found to have a much better survival rate when hooked and released in water less than 120 feet deep. That finding helped make possible the reopening of the bottomfish fishery in waters deeper than 240 feet.

Bad weather and rough bar and ocean conditions have limited salmon fishing pressure at Winchester Bay, but not nearly as much as the combination of the closure of the Umpqua River to unclipped coho salmon retention and the beginning of deer season. The ocean, as of October 1st, is now closed to the taking of chinook, as well as coho salmon.

As for the nonselective coho fisheries on many of Oregon’s coastal rivers, the data for the first four days of fishing (September 15-18) proved very interesting. A total of 930 unclipped cohos were caught in our zone which consists of the following rivers and bays: Nehalem, River, Tillamook Bay, Nestucca River, Siletz River, Yaquinna Bay (Newport), Alsea River, Siuslaw River, Umpqua River, Coos Bay and river and the Coquille River. Despite the fact that the Umpqua only has a seasonal limit of two unclipped cohos and many anglers, including some shorebound spinner flingers had to quit retaining unclipped cohos because they finished up their seasonal limit on September 16th, the Umpqua accounted for 586 of those first 930 fish or more than 63 percent. Things evened out somewhat during the week of September 19th through September 25 as the Umpqua River only accounted for about 31 percent of the 803 unclipped cohos taken from the ten rivers and bays in our zone that allow the retention of unclipped cohos. Through September 25th, Winchester Bay had accounted for more than 48 percent of the unclipped cohos caught and kept. With 64 percent of it’s quota met, the Umpqua was the only fishery in our zone with as much as 23 percent of the quota met. Factoring in the fact that most of the anglers fishing the Umpqua River for salmon have already achieved their individual season quota of two Umpqua River unclipped cohos and can no longer retain such fish and add to the number of unclipped cohos caught and kept, the disparity in catch totals is amazing.

The three lakes that have nonselective coho seasons opened to fishing October 1st with a daily limit of one adult and one jack coho per day. The seasonal limit for the adult coho in these lakes is five fish - the same as it is for unclipped cohos per individual angler. It is going to take a considerable amont of rain to bring cohos into Tahkenitch and Tenmile lakes, but since the dam on the Siltcoos River is at tidewater, salmon are a distinct possibility in Siltcoos Lake in which coho angling is allowed down the outlet to the Highway 101 bridge.
During the salmon seasons on these three coastal lakes, fishing is only allowed with one rod per person - even if an angler has already purchased a two rod license - and is angling for fish species other than salmon. This seems to be a very easy way for a non-salmon angler to get into trouble since an angler may have no interest in salmon fishing, but not realize that the right to fish with two rods for yellow perch, or trout has been taken away with the onset of salmon seasons on these lakes.

The Crab Bounty Contest is now officially over and nobody won the grand prize of $1,000. As usual, three cash prizes totaling $1,000 were awarded at 3 pm on October 1st. Craig Bloom of Bellvue, Idaho won $500, Jim Neihues of Loveland, Colorado won $300 and Gary Sanders of Souis City, South Dakota won $200. Of the 100 tagged crabs released into Winchester Bay’s East and West boat basins and 22 were caught and turned into the Sportsman Cannery. Bloom’s winning crab was caught from Dock 9 and Niehues was crabbing off the Old Coast Guard Dock when he caught his cash-winning crab.

It seems that the new California state record inland chinook salmon taken recently from Trinity Lake is a big thing. At 26-inches in length and weighing seven pounds ten ounces, it was undoubtedly a very nice fish. However, it pales when compared with the landlocked chinook state records of California’s neighboring states. Idaho’s record for landlocked chinooks is 42 pounds and was taken from Couer d’Alene Lake. Washington’s record came from Lake Chelan and weighed more than 30 pounds. Many of Chelan’s chinooks are triploids and they tend to feed very deep and not so much on smaller fish, but on shrimp. As for Oregon, the state does not keep records on landlocked chinooks, but they exist in several lakes such as Detroit Lake and Lake Billy Chinook. Years ago, I occasionally hooked chinooks below Steelhead Falls on the Deschutes River (adjacent to Crooked River Ranch) and the largest of these fish weighed at least 15 pounds. While the states bordering the Great Lakes have produced chinooks weighing from 35 to 47 pounds, one of the more impressive state records for landlocked chinooks is the 31 pound two ounce fish taken from the Missouri River below Garrison Dam in North Dakota. However, that fish most likely grew up in Lake Oahe in South Dakota whose state record landlocked chinook is only 23 pounds 14 ounces. So while the new California state record is a very nice fish, any bragging needs to be confined to California as it compares poorly with the records from other states.

In a very interesting article in Northern California’s Fish Sniffer, Dan Bachner, in his Spotlight on Conversation column reported that more than 11 million fish were killed because of the pumps in the Delta. The agencies involved in the project use the term “salvaged” when referring to these fish kills, but the word doesn’t seem to quite fit. Nearly nine million of the fish were Sacramento splittails, a minnow and seemingly not important, except that it is only native to the Sacramento River system. The nearly nine million Sacramento splittails that died due to the pumps in 2011 were nearly double the previous record set in 2006. While nearly 90 percent of the “salvaged” fish were baitfish species, more than a half-million American shad, nearly a half-million striped bass and more than 100,000 white catfish were also “salvaged”.

These huge pumps are designed to divert millions of gallons of water to Southern California and a number of years ago, I read where they were capable, at certain river flows, of virtually reversing the water flow in the Sacramento River system. While I haven’t heard anything about this recently, one can easily imagine how confused downriver migrating young salmon, steelhead and shad might become and remain in the river system until somthing either eats them, or they also become “salvaged”