Elk, Sixes great for Chinook
With river levels on both the Elk and Sixes stabilizing this past week, Chinook fishing was excellent. Both bank and drift boat anglers reported catching many chrome bright fish, and last week a 13-year-old bank fisherman was able to land a 51-pound Chinook.
Successful steelhead fishing was reported on the South Fork Coquille River last week by a few local anglers. They caught three nice steelhead and the largest weighed around 14 pounds. I also had reports that winter steelhead were showing up in the Millicoma and South Coos rivers.
Anglers reported seeing more hatchery fish in this fishery than in previous years. We can only hope that this is an indicator of a strong steelhead run to follow.
Side drifting salmon roe on the Chetco River has produced some nice winter steelhead. Most effort has shifted to steelhead, and a couple anglers reported they had hooked a fall Chinook, which made for an interesting fight.
Wild coho fishing at Tenmile Lakes was picking up, with fish being caught in the arms of the lakes. There were a lot of coho seen moving through the system and jumping, but the bite was slow.
Empire Lakes’ water temperatures warmed up a bit, and so did the rainbow trout fishing. Many anglers reported good catches of trout using garlic flavored Power Bait fished just off the bottom.
The ocean calmed down last weekend and anglers out of Bandon were able to enjoy some great bottomfishing, and they also reported hooking lots of lingcod. On the way out, one group of anglers dropped five crab pots and, after soaking for about three hours, they were able to bring back 36 Dungeness crab to go along with their limits of bottomfish and lingcod. Crabbers also caught 14 nice Dungeness off of Weber’s Pier on Monday. This was somewhat of a surprise since we had anticipated that the high water would make for very slow crabbing. With more rain in the forecast, crabbing should slow down in the Bandon area.
Boaters in Coos Bay are still reporting excellent crabbing, and this fishery doesn’t seem to have been affected by the recent rains.
Marine reserves: The last public meeting regarding local marine reserves and marine protected areas will be at 6:30 p.m. Monday at the Reedsport Community Charter School, 2260 Longwood Drive. Descriptions of the four proposals will be discussed and explained to the public. This is the final meeting before proposals are presented to the Ocean Policy Advisory Committee. This is a very important issue to our coastal communities, and attendees will be allowed to submit oral and written comments.
“There is no reason to have a marine reserve unless you’re going to study it. … There is no money to study reserves now because of the huge shortfall facing the Oregon Legislature,” said State Representative Wayne Krieger at the Bandon meeting last week.
It is very important that as many of you as possible attend this meeting so your concerns can be placed on record.
EPA lawsuit: Recently, three environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency to force the agency to prevent lead poisoning of wildlife from spent ammunition and lost fishing tackle. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court after the EPA denied their petition to ban lead ammunition and tackle. The EPA said it doesn’t have legal authority to ban lead ammunition, and the groups did not demonstrate a ban on tackle was necessary to protect against unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.
Good luck fishing and hunting!
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