November 2nd column

[Pete Heley]

Bass and panfish anglers should realize that this is their “last hurrah” this season. Weather and water temperatures will soon combine to greatly limit anglers’ success when targeting warmwater species. That said, it hasn’t happened yet. Some sizable yellow perch have come out of Tenmile Lakes the last few weeks with fish to 14-inches taken. Jeremy Fletcher, of Winchester Bay, can verifty this as he recently landed yellow perch to just under 12-inches to salvage a trip that proved disappointing for trout and bass. Last year, during the first week in November, Duane Day of Eugene’s Emerald Bass Club and his fishing partner landed numerous large bass out of Tahkenitch Lake. The heaviest five they landed weighed well over 30 pounds and one of Duane’s fish weighed more than nine pounds. They were fishing large creature-type baits rigged on leadhead jigs to fool the fish. Most of our local lakes that contain yellow perch usually offer good perch fishing until mid-November. Another opportunity is the late afternoon fishing for smallmouth bass on the Umpqua until it muddies up or the water temperatures drop several more degrees. This is one of the best times to catch the Umpqua’s larger smallmouths, but don’t count on consistant action.

While the only announced trout plants for Coos County on their trout stocking page for October were two plants for Bradley Lake (located just south of Bandon on the west side of Highway 101), the ODFW web site reported that recent plants were also made in Empire Lakes, Saunders Lake and Butterfield Lake.

The sensational bottomfishing out of Winchester Bay has been largely overlooked for the last ten days and bottomfish anglers fishing off the South Jetty have been noticeably absent.

Crabbing has been holding up very well and even seems to have show a slight improvement over the last week.

A few boat anglers have been trolling herring while targeting the last of the Umpqua River’s chinook salmon run. A few finclipped cohos are still entering the catch, but most of the fish taken by boat anglers are wild or unclipped cohos which have to be released. A few anglers are still flinging spinners from the bank at Half Moon Bay, Osprey Point, between the Gardiner boat ramp and the old IP Mill and near where Winchester Creek enters Winchester Bay’s East Boat Basin. Most of the anglers fishing near the mouth of Winchester Creek have been fishing sand shrimp. roe or both beneath bobbers and a surprising number of the salmon they are catching have been fairly bright. The increased number of chinook jack salmon taken this year bodes well for a good season next year for anglers targeting chinook salmon bound for Winchester Creek.

Other spots have been producing some good salmon fishing. One Reedsport angler has been fishing bait on the Coquille River above Bandon for some nice chinooks and the Boardwalk in Coos Bay has, until it recently slowed down, been producing good numbers of cohos and chinooks for both bait and spinner flingers. The Klamath River below Irongate Dam has been producing sensational numbers of fall chinook, but many of them are dark, but some anglers are hooking well over a dozen fish per day.

As for big salmon, a 63 pound chinook was pulled from the Sacramento River a couple of weeks ago and the Chetco has produced numerous 40 pound salmon in the last ten days with the two heaviest this writer has heard of weighing 47 and 50 pounds respectively. Fair numbers of chinooks have made into the lowermost section of the Elk River and with any rain, by the time you read this, those fish may be scattered throughout the lower several miles of the Elk River and the Sixes as well.

As for the coho seasons on Siltcoos, Tahkenitch and Tenmile lakes, anglers should forget about Tahkenitch and Tenmile for at least the next couple of weeks, but there are good numbers of salmon in Siltcoos. The outlet stream, Siltcoos River, is legal to fish for cohos between the lake and the Highway 101 Bridge which, because of the serpentine nature of the upper river means that there is close to a mile of legal salmon stream fishing available. As for Siltcoos Lake, anglers are fishing the lake just above the outlet stream and also Maple Creek and Fiddle Creek arms. Fiddle Creek has a reputation as producing the most salmon, while Maple Creek has a reputation as producing the larger cohos and still holds the state record for coho salmon with a fish taken years ago that weighed more than 25 pounds. However, a coho weighing more than 24 pounds was reported taken on Fiddle Creek Arm last year. One nice thing about Siltcoos Lake is that it harbors the largest rainbow and cutthroat trout on the Oregon coast and many salmon anglers are surprised to hook good-sized trout on their salmon gear. Rainbows weighing to at least eight pounds reside in the lake and cutthroats weighing six pounds four ounces and six pounds three ounces have been pulled from the lake with the larger of the two still being the Oregon state record for coastal cutthroat trout.

Anglers need to be aware that virtually all streams except for some that have steelhead runs closeed at the end of October. Many lakes statewide also closed to fishing at the end of October, but most of the western Oregon lakes remain open all year. This is the time of year anglers really need to check the Fishing regulations whenever they fish waters that they are unfamiliar with.

The Brookings Curry Coastal Pilot has one of Oregon’s best outdoor writers in Larry Ellis, but it was an article written for the Oct. 25th edition by staff writer Jef Hatch that garnered the most attention from Oregon’s fishermen. In the article, Hatch admitted not knowing a lot about fishing, but wondered why he could not keep fish up to his limit if they were snagged unintentionally. You really should read the article as it is available online. The article got an incredible amount of reaction on many websites such as Ifish.com.

Here is how I see it and I am ignoring a few states where snagging is legal to harvest excess stocked fish. If you are allowed to keep unintentionally snagged fish, it will be almost impossible to avoid making a very subtle conversion in the way you fish, the type of lures you fish with and how you fish them and even in the type of fishing spots you gradually switch over too. When these subtle changes are well underway, you will be fishing for all the wrong reasons. A major compenent of fishing, and even some hunting, is the actual fooling the fish or game. With that gone, there really is no valid reason to avoid getting your “meat” at the local supermarket where it will be much cheaper and in almost every case, much better prepared and more tasty. It seems quite obvious that Mr. Hatch, whenever he went fishing, did so for the wrong reasons - placing no value on the actual competition between angler and fish. I sincerely hope he takes up another hobby.