Feb. 8th column

[Pete Heley]

Stable weather conditions have allowed somewhat better results for our area’s outdoor enthusiasts. Crabbing at Winchester Bay has rebouned somewhat, although both boat and dock crabbers are having to earn the crabs they keep. The Umpqua has cleared up and dropped and if this trend continues, there should be further improvement in crabbing results. Charleston offers more consistent winter crabbing since the Coos Bay estuary, at more than 13,000 acres, is the largest estuary located entirely in Oregon - and is therefore more dominated by ocean conditions than are more riverine estuaries such as on the Umpqua, Coquille and Siuslaw rivers. If the Umpqua River continues to drop, the difference in winter crabbing success will narrow.

During the extremely muddy period on the Umpqua, anglers fishing the Triangle and South Jetty for bottomfish did best inside the Triangle or in the ocean off the south side of the Triangle. However, the Umpqua has cleared up enough for fishing the river channel adjacent to the South Jetty to improve. If muddy water continues to be a problem, try fishing near high tide when the water should become more clear due to incoming ocean water. Some anglers still do not realize that cabezon are illegal to keep, for all anglers, through March.

Steelhead fishing on the Umpqua has been very good recently, and last week, a number of finclipped steelhead were caught - a most unusual occurence on the Umpqua. Other river such as the Siuslaw, Coos and Coquille are now fishing well and some of the southcoast streams as the Elk and Sixes are on the verge of being too clear for the best steelhead fishing.

The stable weather has also caused some of Oregon’s more serious bass anglers to start thinking about resuming their bass fishing. We have had some fairly warm winter afternoons recently, but cold mornings have limited how much effect they have on water temperatures. Slightly warmer temperatues and consistent weather should have our area’s bass anglers catching some of their largest largemouths of the year - of course almost all the fishing pressure will be directed towards Tenmile Lakes.

Anglers wanting to get an early start on their smallmouth bass fishing should look for backwaters or bank indentions that have their upper ends facing upstream and if they are not receiving water at their upper ends, they will tend to be slightly warmer on sunny days and the temperature differential between these backwaters and the river can be quite pronounced - especially during a sunny afternoon when the water is somewhat muddy. Backwaters that run downstream usually receive at least some water continually from the river and because the river water is colder, these backwaters are usually cooler than backwaters that run upstream.

Although we no longer have any major crappie fisheries in our area, yellow perch are relatively common in most area lakes and for the next several weeks they will be at their heftiest as they approach the late March through early April spawning period. As the spawn approaches, the perch tend to become more aggressive and bite more consistently.

Until water temperatures increase, anglers fishing the Florence area lakes for recently stocked ranbow trout will do best by stillfishing baits on or near the bottom. That doesn’t mean that fly anglers and lure flingers won’t catch fish - they will just have to work harder for them. The trout stocking schedules are finally posted on the ODFW website for the Umpqua and South Coast areas. The south coast will begin receiving trout plants at the end of this month and at least some south coast waters will be planted every week. Loon Lake will be stocked in early March, while Lake Marie will is slated to receive its first trout plant in late March.

As I thought more deeply about the numerous complaints about outright lies and misleading fishing information on one of the online fishing sites, I came to a surprising conclusion. The conclusion I reached is that it is virtually impossible to stop such behavior and the best way to deal with it is to know, quite well, the people that you are sharing fishing information with. For instance, there is a reason that almost all anglers do not carry an accurate scale or even a good measuring device with them. If they do, they are bound by the findings of their measurement devices and therefore subject to the humbling truth about the weight and length of their catches. The great majority of the people that eschew such devices, do so with the intent of exaggerating the size of their catch. If you pay close attention, you can make a fairly accurate determination of just how much each person you talk fishing with exaggerates their fish. Once you know that, you can “resize” your catches to match up with their fish so that you both are talking on the same level. Don’t be ashamed when you start doing this - you actually have a moral obligation to size the fish you catch so that you are conveying your fish catches in a way that fits in with their fish catches. Sometimes, the anglers you converse with do simple things to the size of their fish. While I was growing up in Lakeside, one kid always added ten-inches to each fish he spoke about. The exaggeration was a lot more noticeable when it came to small fish than big fish, but it was always the same ten-inches and it was rather easy to “reconvert” the size of my fish so that I could speak “fishing” with him on equal terms. I thought that I would never again encounter this type of fishing exaggeration, but I encountered a young man working at a service station in the town of Sprague River that did exactly the same thing.

I am so aware of the tendency towards exaggeration of most anglers, that whenever I release a nice-sized fish with witnesses present, I hope that the witnesses are “serious exaggerators”. A good example of the benefit provided by such witnesses was when I caught my largest Oregon largemouth bass of nine and a half pounds at Loon Lake. I released the fish after weighing it despite a couple pleading with me to give it to them. Despite my lack of cooperation, they managed to convince everybody in the immediate area that my released lunker weighed all of 12 pounds - and they managed to do it in less than two weeks.

There is no way to make all fishermen tell the truth and I am not sure we should really want to. However, there is nothing wrong with training oneself to effectively deal with it.

[Mike Carey]

Some fishermen are natural born liars! Thanks for the observations.