Oct 12th column

[Pete Heley]

By the time you read this, Tillamook, Nestucca and Yaquina bays and the Siuslaw River will have reached their unclipped coho salmon quotas and be closed to everything except chinook salmon and finclipped cohos.The Umpqua, which closed at the end of September, was found to have ended up 135 salmon short of their 1,300 wild salmon quota - or more than ten percent of the total unclipped coho quota. Before starting to complain about the ODFW being overly cautious, I would like to commend them for offering new fishing options regarding coastal salmon.

Rumor has it that according to one Douglas County establishment, some of their fishing customers reported that there were some tickets issued to people for not signing the years and months residing in Oregon portion of their fishing or hunting licenses. While I think the months blank is unnecessary - since any number between 0 and 11 put in there will mean that the blank is incorrect 11 out of the 12 months each year. However, the year blank is the main reason that people are now allowed to purchase licenses and tags as gifts for resident anglers or hunters not actually present at the business selling the licenses. It allows the state better legal recourse against someone getting a resident Oregon license under false information. It still amazes me how many outdoorsy people think they automatically qualify for a resident fishing or hunting license by purchasing property in Oregon, yet make no effort to obtain an Oregon drivers license or ID card. Almost every enforcement officer is going to match a hunting or fishing license or tag against a drivers license or ID card and they better match up residence-wise.

The Coos and Coquille nonselective coho seasons should continue for a while since they were both well under 30 percent fulfilled through Sunday, October 2nd. Although wild or unclipped coho are no longer an option on the Umpqua, fair numbers of coho and chinook salmon entered the river last week and lots of fish were caught. About half the fish landed were unkeepable wild cohos and sea lions and seals have been a major problem for anglers over the last few weeks.
Numberswise, the smallmout fishing on the Umpqua has slowed. But late afternoon fishing offers an angler a decent chance at fish topping 15-inches. It seems like the larger smallmouth bite better in cooler water temperatures, but the most likely explanationi is that the larger bass are more active at lower water temperatures than are the smaller fish. Yellow perch and crappie angling should be improved where they are available. Serious largemouth bass anglers able to effectively fish water more than ten feet deep are catching some of their largest bass of the year.

Anglers wanting to do a relatively effortless float trip for largemouth bass and rainbow and cutthroat trout should consider the Siltcoos River and Tenmile Creek. Tenmile Creek is much less weedy this year and the nearly five mile float from Tenmile Lake should take considerably less time. The usual procedure is to float down to the Old Highway 101 bridge and then walk the railroad tracks about a mile back to your vehicle. The Siltcoos River has about three miles of water between Siltcoos Lake and the dam and in the portion of the river between the lake and the Highway 101 bridge, it became legal to keep coho salmon (one adult and one jack per day) beginning October 1st. However, the salmon have yet to show up as this is being written, but the river also produces sizable rainbow trout, cutthroat trout and largemouth bass. The river is a popular and nationally known canoe trail, yet less than ten percent of those floating the river have their fishing rods with them.

If seems like Idaho is the place to go if one wants to catch a truly gigantic common carp. If one throws out the state of Mississippi, which somehow managed to produce a carp weighing more than 74 pounds, the two largest carp from this country that this angler has heard of both came from Idaho. There is a YouTube video of a carp from American Falls Reservoir, which is more famous for producing at least a dozen rainbow and rainbow-cutthroat hybrids over the last few years that weighed between 18 and 35 pounds. The extremely fat carp pulled from American Falls weighed 65 pounds and this summer, a bow angler shot and landed a giant carp weighing 67 pounds 10 ounces from C.J. Strike Reservoir. The one thing these reservoirs have in common, besides being in Idaho, is that they are both on the Snake River - if that means anything.

The same guy that recently caught the new California state record for inland chinook salmon, a fish weighing seven pounds 11 ounces, caught a new state record that topped eight pounds by two ounces and was caught less than 600 feet from where he caught his first record. I always though the record would come from Lake Almanor, which seems much richer than does Trinity Lake, but its Trinity that seems to be producing California’s only landlocked chinooks weighing more than six pounds.

[Mike Carey]

thanks Pete, great report. 65 pounds is a whole lot of carp!

[Pete Heley]

I would love to catch a carp even a third that heavy. All of my largest carp have come while flyfishing Blue Lake and I did get an eight pounder at the mouth of Evans Creek on the Rogue River near the town of Rogue River (also on a fly). One of these days, I would love to visit some eastern Oregon waters and try to top my 12# personal record.
Sincerely,
Pete

[natetreat]

Lake washington has some monsters in it up here. I got a 26 pounder out of it. Those are fun and weird looking fish!