May 9th column

[Pete Heley]

Crabbing continues to be slow at Winchester Bay as the amount of freshwater coming down the Umpqua remains high. Some legal crabs are being caught, but even the best catches involve a lot of effort for the legal crabs taken.

The South Jetty continues to fish well and although the most common fish taken are almost always greenling and striped surfperch, a number of
lingcod, including some very large ones, were hooked over the weekend. Fair numbers of people fished the surf for pinkfins last week with almost as many fishing between the second and third parking lots south of Winchester Bay as fished the North Beach Area at the end of Sparrow Park Road. So far, there have been no reports of pinkfin catches above Winchester Bay, but the time for the beginning of that run should be very close. Of course, someone has to go and catch the first ones.

Although the Umpqua River Bar was unrestricted most of last weekend, there were very few anglers trying for chinook salmon in the ocean or lower river. There was some sporadic success for spring chinooks in the Scottsburg area and above and there was talk about a 47 pound fish being taken. There are shad in the river, but very few success stories when it comes to catching them, but that could change very quickly. I would like to point out that there still seem to be lots of anglers that assume the blinking yellow lights near the Coast Guard Station in Winchester Bay mean a bar closure, when all it really means is that there is some sort of restriction - often only affecting boats of 16 feet in length or shorter. Some charterboats fishing out of Charleston over the weekend reported very good salmon fishing.

Umpqua River sturgeon fishing remains very slow, but there continues to be some good catches of striped bass in the Smith River. Smallmouth bass fishing on the Umpqua can be productive, but few people are trying for them.

Largemouth bass fishing has perked up almost everywhere, but panfish success remains poor. Yellow perch and crappie can be taken in cool water, but most sunfish species do not bite well until the water gets into the mid to high 60’s. One can expect tough fishing on the sand dunes lakes west of the railroad tracks between Lakeside and North Bend as most of these lakes are shallow, but much higher than normal for this time of year. An additional two or three feet of depth can dramatically increase the amount of fish holding water - sometimes as much as five or more times as there would be at normal lake levels. Bass in the coastal lakes and ponds should be in the pre-spawn mode for at least the next couple of weeks.

Roseburg area lakes such as Cooper Creek and Ben Irving are still muddy, but Cooper Creek has produced some decent fish catches despite the muddiness. Almost every other place, including Plat I Reservoir, is clear enough to fish, but most of the coastal waters are still too cold for the best bass and panfishing.

Anglers that like to fish the pre-spawn and spawn for largemouth bass will usually find it easier to find shallow-water bass in round lakes rather than narrow lakes or lakes with many long arms. The reason for this is that there will be less shoreline per surface acre on the round lakes than the other lakes and assuming the bass populations are similar for their surface acreage, there will simply be less shoreline for those bass to move toward.

A couple of short articles in the April 21st issue of Science News were quite interesting. The article by Susan Millus dealt with the inability of some animals with specialized diets to detect sweets. The inability is due to a lack of a certain gene and affects mostly meat-eating predators although chickens seem to have the same inability to detect sweets. This inability is a rather minor one to carnivores, but it does take away one possible avenue towards dealing with the seals and sea lions in our area. It means that it will be virtually impossible to get them hooked on ice cream and chocolate to the point that they no longer consume our salmon, steelhead and sturgeon.

The article by Rebecca Cheung deals with crayfish and should be of interest to those who handle them as food or bait. It seems that quite often the larger claw of a crayfish is not the stronger one and even when a crayfish has two similar-sized claws, one is often much stronger than the other. So don’t assume, while handling crayfish, that avoiding the larger claw is always the most sensible thing to do. It seems that a major use of a large claw is intimidating other crayfish prior to actual combat.

Oregon is once again part of the nationwide “Wanna Go Fishing for Millions” contest sponsored by Cabelas, the Outdoor CHannel and a number of fish and wildlife agencies including the ODFW. The fishing period begins May 5th and runs through July 8th, but all catches must be logged by midnight Eastern Time on July 8th to be eligible. The three Oregon waters that will have fish tagged for this contest are: Crane Prairie Reservoir in central Oregon; Dexter Reservoir alongside Highway 58 east of Eugene and Blue River Reservoir near the community of Blue River north of the McKenzie River and Highway 126. Pre-registration is required and made be done by going online and visiting Cabela’s website. Besides the possibility of winning as much as two million dollars for catching a single fish, there are many other prizes including some valuable ones such as Ranger boats and brand name fishing tackle. Each selected water will have from eight to 15 fish tagged with a small spaghetti tag and should you catch one, you need to go online to Cabela’s website and enter the tag number and other required information.

The state of Washington is encouraging anglers to catch and keep northern pike in the Pend Oreille River in the eastern part of the state. While northern pike have been caught for several decades in Long Lake, Spokane area reservoir, on the Spokane River, they have remained a rare incidental catch - primarily because fluctuating water levels have greatly restricted spawning success. Such is not the case on the Pend Oreille River where spawning conditions in Box Canyon and Boundary reservoirs have resulted in an exploding pike population. Although pike to at least 30 pounds have been caught, the population is now dominated by young pike weighing less than five pounds and growth rates may slow to the point where the pike become stunted. Furthermore, while the pike have primarily dined on non-gamefish, as those populations dwindle, gamefish populations will become more heavily impacted. Despite having numerous small bones, pike are a coldwater gamefish with tasty flesh and, in Washington, there is no limit on size or numbers.