October 19th column

[Pete Heley]

Boat crabbing continues to be excellent at Winchester Bay. Last weekend, the best success was in the half-mile stretch of the Umpqua River upstream of the entrance to the East Boat Basin. The boats willing to keep moving until they find legal crabs seem to enjoy the best success. Dock crabbers are having to work harder for their crabs, but many are still making nice catches. Crabbing should continue to be very good for the next several weeks barring heavy rainfall. Although there has been very little crabbing in the ocean recently, that option ended for sport crabbers at midnight last Saturday (October 15th).

The few people fishing off the South Jetty for bottomfish are catching fish, but most area anglers are still pursuing salmon. A few anglers have hooked salmon off the jetty running along the south side of the Umpqua on heavy metal jigs. Spinner flingers are still catching some salmon, but many of the bank anglers have switched over to bobbers and either salmon roe, sand shrimp or both. Salmon anglers fishing out of boats are mostly trolling herring, but some have started casting or trolling spinners. Salmon fishing has picked up on the Smith River, but only chinooks are legal to keep. There has been almost no fishing pressure directed at the sturgeon in the lower Umpqua or striped bass in Smith River.

Some of the property owners on the Smith River, with docks, have complained recently about damage to their docks from speeding boats - including some guide boats.

By the time you read this, virtually all of the unclipped coho river fisheries will have met or exceeded their quotas and the Umpqua River which was closed with less than 90 percent of their quota caught is turning out to be an abberation. Surprisingly, through Sunday, October 9th, the Coos River had given up less than 38 percent of their quota.

Siltcos Lake started giving up some nice cohos within a week of their October 1st salmon opener and some of those salmon anglers are catching some dandy rainbow and cutthroat trout on their salmon lures. It’s going to take some serious rain to get Tahkenitch and Tenmile lakes producing salmon.

An article by Robert Montgomery in the October issue of Bass Times details how some states, over the last few years, have made efforts to reestablish populations of alligator gar in an attemp to slow down the rapid expanse of asian carp. The carp, which are filter-feeders have few natural enemies and when populations are high there is little to eat at the bottom end of the food chain for recently hatched gamefish. Without adequate recruitment, the disparity between gamefish and trash fish populations becomes even more one-sided. However, alligator gars are known to feed primarily on trash or rough fish populations and carp are one of their favorite foods. Some of the alligator gars released recently by states such as Kentucky have managed to reach lengths of 40-inches in barely two years in hatchery conditions with unlimited forage. It will be well into the future before the effect of the program can be accurately evaluated since female alligator gar don’t spawn until they are more than ten years old. If they can figure out a way to increase the gar’s relatively slow metabolic rate, it would certainly help since the alligator gar is capable of reaching weights of at least 300 pounds and a predator that size with a high metabolic rate would certainly consume more than a few carp and other rough fish.

Lake Erie, the shallowest of the Great Lakes, is currently experiencing a massive infestation of green algae and part of the problem is blamed on such invasive mollusks as the quagga and zebra mussels. The algae, which was recently found to be Cyanobacteria, a toxic blue -green algae benefits from the tiny mollusks that remove tiny creatures such as zooplankton that feed on the algae and also return phosphates to the lake. A recent survey showed that freshwater shrimp were at six percent of normal levels and this algae infestation is believed to be the worst in several decades. As for Oregon, after 57 days, Dexter Reservoir’s algae alert stopped last Friday and there are now only eight current algae alerts in the state (Dorena Lake, Fall Creek Lake, Gerber Reservoir, Lost Creek Lake, South Tenmile Lake, Sru Lake, Willow Creek Reservoir and the South Umpqua River near Myrtle Creek).