Oregon South Coast Fishermen.

Well. Are we going to be busy this month.. Two seperate Reel Fish Days.. The first with the Brooking's schools 3 rd graders will be on April 16th & 17th at Arizona State beach Park. 60, 3rd graders a day will be shown the basics of knot tying & casting, then they will have time to put their new skills to the test by attempting to catch one of the many trout in the pond at Arizona state park. On April 22nd it will be the turn of the Riley Creek school 3rd graders from Gold Beach to learn, hopefully enough to get them interested in wanting to take up fishing...

 

On April 21st, The Jack Creek adoption project by Azalea School 6th graders will be the final day this season for the kid's to remove the invasive blackberry bushes & dig out the crowns. This time Statia from the watershed Educational dept wants to have one full day with the kid's instead of 2- ½day's. All volunteers who have participated before & any who want to help out for the first time, meet at Jack Creek, opposite Freeman Rock entrance, South bank rd by 8.45 am. If you can only spare sometime in the afternoon, the second group should be arriving at 12.15pm.

The Steelhead are back, the rivers are up & the weather is back to how it should be, RAINING!............

 

The SPRINGERS are in. The Rogue is producing early fish. Even yours truly managed to find one (with John Webers help).

Now that the Hatchery springers are returning in numbers, expect excellant sport from all the normal spots on the river & the bank fishing is also excellant for springers. Almost every bar from Clay Banks on up will produce from the bank. Do your homework & even if you do not have access to a Rogue 'Sled', you can still find yourself a lovely fat, greasy little 'football' of a classic springer.

(I will put pictures of springers caught in Aprils new's as computer is unwell)

February News.

Junior Member, Joey LeFebvre got a lovely 17lb+ Hatchery buck Sunday 8th Feb at North Fork.

Click pic for full size picture.   Here is proud Grandad Paul LeFebvre tale of Joey's Fish.  

My daughter Tera left for home at about 3:30 yesterday after a nice weekend visit.

 Joey and I then decided to visit the Chetco for a couple of hours before dark. We were chomping at the bit to see if the recent rain had moved any fish even through the river did not come up much. We quickly checked with our main man Hawgmaster and he could not make it on short notice… so we went on to fish one of his favorite spots that he had caught big fish earlier this year. J

 First we stopped at lower social security bar and found “plunkers in the lane”, then we retreated to the upper side of SSB… too exposed in the low clear scenario. Then on to the hi-way hole…damn… three guys already in that one. It is getting dark and we haven’t even wetted a line yet. Somewhat discouraged we made our way to the North Fork. The gin clear water lessened our chances at the mouth of the North Fork although there was a “window” of deep water at the confluence. I stopped here and made a few cast with bait as Joey walked on by. “Where are you headed Joey, this doesn’t look too bad?”…“I am headed up to the top Pops, in that fast slot up there.”

 Next comes the yell of “FISH ON” , I waded across the North Fork to see what was going on as the big buck exploded on the surface of the water. “Man you got him dude, what did you get him on?” As Joey worked down with his fish, he excitedly told me he had hooked the big buck right behind the big tree that was submerged in the riffle. “First Cast Papa…I stayed upstream on the log and angled down to the downstream side.”

 I went upstream to make a few casts and see if there was another fish behind that log. After one or two casts it was clear Joey’s fish was not ordinary buck. As the fish thrashed on the surface I knew it could be a trophy. I stopped what I was doing to help Joey and soon the buck gave way and we slipped him onto the beach. Yahoo it is a hatchery buck we can keep. (We don’t keep wild fish in the Chetco)

 We did not have our camera, or a scale, and being very excited about the possibility of the fish being 20# we left the scene for the Chetco Outdoor store to weigh the fish and possibly call Paul DeAngelo to mount the big buck. No luck on the trophy the fish weighed 17.25# and was 37” in length…he will make excellent table fare for us over the next few days.

 Joey caught this fish using a 5/8 oz silver/trout “Little Cleo” with no weight. He remembered this because it is a deadly technique on California’s Russian River in the early season. Often the fish would hold up in the gin clear water in late November after Thanksgiving. We would position the drift boat high in the hole on the opposite side of the river and fire the cleos way downstream on the opposite bank retrieving them very slowly away from the bank.  You had one or two casts before spooking the fish, but look out because that was all you needed sometimes. The key was to get the Cleo to wobble, or pulse, using a very slow retrieve.

 Why the heck didn’t I think of that? J Sometimes we get a bit myopic in the sense that we focus on a single technique that over time works well. (E.g. small roe baits in gin clear water) One of the beauties of youth is that enthusiasm drives clever and often a wide variety of approaches to fishing techniques in single session. Young folks have excellent memories too.

Other Chetco news.

We are still collecting wild Steelhead. This week (feb 9th) Mon-thurs Next week (Feb15th) Weds-Sat

Also Fri-Sat Feb 20th-21st is the first Cal-Ore derby of the year. Volunteers for the annual Shuttle of the guides trucks & trailers would be greatly appreciated. Also, all those who want to participate in the Angler Education class at Arizona State Beach Park, please note the date for this class is Sat Feb 28th.

Steelhead Angler brood stock collection.

 

Although the fishing slowed down on the Chetco due to low water, no rain and slow flow. It was still possible to find the odd fish or two. Here is Rich Heap with a Steelhead that Ray Brouette managed to put him on. Also in the picture is Ryan Battleson of ODFW.

All interested members meet at Social Security Bar at 10.00 Am Monday Jan 12th. Garry Bell & John Weber of ODFW will explain & get everyone who is interested documented for security & safety.

Basically this will be a 3 week program of collecting & holding wild steelhead at various bars for collection by ODFW tanker for brood stock. Full program to be explained on monday.

Update on Steelhead broodstock collecting. Members have been positioned at SS bar, Northfork, Loeb, Icebox & either Miller or Nook bars. Harvey Young & Hal Borg are trying out live well tanks in their drift boats & had success on Weds. So far we tried Mon through Weds 12-15th. next week we will be on the bars Tues through Thurs. 20th-22nd,

Meet at Social Security at 9.00am next Tuesday all who want to help. Don't forget to bring your fishing gear.

 

Steelhead fishing slowing down for boat & bank anglers. The Chetco has dropped, the color is still good, but very clear in various places throughout the river.

 

Well, December started with a few members collecting salmon carcasses on the Chetco to take scale samples, measurments & other data. The month started with hardly any water & finished with near record flows.

However, scale samples from well over 120 salmon were taken as of mid december. More details to follow.

Steelhead fishing is starting to get into gear & some nice fish have been landed by members, I know of fish caught by Cliff, Ray & myself. If you want pictures of your catch to be displayed on here, send them to Tony via email.

Our annual Xmas Dinner was at Good Food by Julie once again this year on Dec 17th.

Once again we had a Free door prize raffle. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Andy Martin & Val Early for the marvellous prizes they both donated towards to the raffle. Our members enjoyed a festive evening & again the food was excellant. Also, the weather held & did not start raining until everyone had left the venue. The one decent evening in the last three weeks....

All members who were interested in taking part in the scale sampling survey have now been trained, thanks to John Weber & our friends at CAF at Indian Creek Hatchery. Sampling to start taking place as from this week. (Dec 1st)

 

Due to the fact that the rain has not stopped hardly since the ODFW closure of the Chetco past the 3 mile mark for Chinook & the Winchuck for Chinook because of low water. They are now both open as from today (Nov 5th) for Chinook fishing.

Diamond Lake Fishing Trip.

Rich Heap & his friend Dave Rice spent a few day's at Diamond Lake. Here is Rich's Report of the trip.

Click picture to enlarge.

Fishing on the Smith River.

Dave Castellanos & George Morrison spent on day on the Smith, Saturday 20th Sept and found these two beauties.

The Chinook Dave is holding hit the scales at 49lbs, The Chinook George is holding weighed in at 22lbs. Dave is a first class guide & I for one know how he perseveres until he finds the fish for his customers & friends.

Click pictures to enlarge.

Dave & Irene Brooks have been out on the Rogue again finding nice Chinook. Below is two pictures of a lovely 34lb 'King' they caught on 08/08/08 under the 'bridge'.  As Irene remarked, "it must be our lucky number". Pity they will have to wait 100 years before that date comes up again...

Mind you, knowing how good the two of them are at catching nice Chinook, my guess is that they will probably have some more pictures of King's to me very soon..

Do not forget everyone, the pictures on these pages are 'thumbnails', just click on them to see them full size.....

 

 

The Ocean coho season officially closed on Thursday 14th August. The quota of 9,000 fin-clipped coho had been reached before the official closeing date & the 'coho season' brought some much needed relief to our area as fishermen came to take advantage of the best bar crossing in Oregon. A fact which made our area the second highest catch zone on the Oregon coast.

 

Before the final closing day, Rich Heap took his son Rob & Rob's fiance Jessica out for a day's fishing on his boat 'Fiskare' when the young couple visited Rich & his wife Janice recently.

Here we have a few pictures of their catch.

      I should have posted this a couple of months ago, when Jim Welter received the ODFW Oregon Volunter of the year award. I sent the actual story out to the members of how Jim finally was acknowledged by ODFW after  more than 30 years of volunteer work for our organization & ODFW but, forgot to post the picture of his award presentation. So, to make amends, here it is.   Jim is pictured below with the ODFW Commision Chair Marla Rae & ODFW Director Roy Elicker.  

Just heard from Dave & Irene Brooks (Wed's July 30th). Seems like Dave had a rare day off from work on Monday, so both him & Irene decided to fish the bay area of the Rogue. Here is their description of the day.

Dave didn't have to work on Monday and even though it was a foggy drizzle, we left to go fishing, and we caught a fish!!  It was a 23.5 lb. Chinook salmon, 36" long.  It took us about 20 minutes to get it in the boat.  We were fishing in the Rogue River bay near the mouth. 
Needless to say, we were very excited and happy!!  :-) I'll try to attach a picture.  There were about 45-50 boats in the bay that day, and we saw only one Jack and three other adult salmon caught.  We were there from about 8:00 to 3:30.  Not very good odds.  We felt very fortunate that we were one of the lucky ones that caught a fish.

Nice one Dave & Irene, I will post the picture here when you send it.

 

One of our own has been recognised for his Azalea festival fund collecting to purchase fishing poles to give out to the kids, CAF & local schools in our area.

Clarence Benjamin has raised enough money over the last 4 years to purchase over 600 fishing pole combinations. Here is Clarence receiving his award from our own Rich Heap who is also the chair of STAC. (Salmon Trout Advisory Commitee) Which is a committe formed by STEP (Salmon Trout Enhancement Program) members from the groups which form STEP in Oregon. STAC's main objectives are to advise ODFW & to award grants to STEP organizations for their projects. The all day STAC meeting was held at Jot's resort Gold Beach. The following day, members of STAC were given a tour of OSCF's screw trap on the Winchuck, the bubblers in the port of Brooking's/Harbor & the proposed site of the net pen in Ferry Creek Reservoir. They were then given a BBQ lunch & a tour of Indian Creek Hatchery, which was hosted by Curry Anadromous Fishermen.

Well, we asked members for pictures of their Coho catches. I know that you have been getting Coho, guess you did not have your cameras with you.

So, here is a couple of pictures that Rich took of me when we were out on my boat 'Sweet Pea' (Pam's boat really). We caught our limit quite quickly on the day in question. In fact we caught 7 fish, 4 of which were fin-clipped Coho.

 

Ok everyone. Below is the link for making sure you can still ocean fish for Coho.

The site is still updating weekly, once it starts getting closer to the 9,000 available hatchery Coho we are allowed to catch, then it will be updated daily.

Coho Season Closed 11.59pm Thursday August 14th.........

2008 Oregon Ocean Coho Count.

 

Not everyone stays in our area for the summer, some members like Bill Ignatow travel to other states to their 'summer homes' & enjoy fishing in lakes & rivers.

Below are some pictures that Bill has sent of his catches on Blue Mesa in the Rockies of Colarado were Bill & his wife spend their summers. Bill is pictured below with his friend Jimmy Inskeep & his wife Bev

 

 

Springer fishing on the Rogue.

Meet me a 3.45 am, was still working through my fuddled brain, as I picked Steve Weber up & we headed for Gold Beach. Just over 6 hours earlier I had been finishing an afternoon/evening session with John Weber, Ray Brouette & Rich Heap. We had left the boat tied up next to another boat, which the owners were sleeping beside & promised to look after for John. 4.30am, Steve & I launched in the dark & made our way to 'The Spot'. We got the boat anchored just where Steve wanted it & set about getting two rods into action. Just over two hours later, one of the rod's bounced & line peeled off. Steve told me to grab it & as I did a 10-12 lb fish rolled & spat the gear back at me. Putting on a new trace, as the other was tangled. Steve baited up & we were back fishing. 5 mins later & the rod buried itself & another springer was on. Steve grabbed the other rod & got it out the way & left me with the screaming reel. As he slipped the anchor & got the kicker going, the salmon had taken a run of 60-70yds. It then got acrobatic for awhile, but each jump was a little smaller. We could see a fairly substantial 'pred' mark on one side & hoped it was a hatchery fish, as if it was wild, it could not be kept & it may not last long enough to spawn. As it rolled close to the boat, the tell tale missing adipose fin was plainly obvious & after another 2 or 3 shorter runs, I gently eased it towards the waiting net. Weighed nearly 2 hours later after being bled, the springer went just over 22lbs. You can quite clearly see the damage a sea lion can leave on a salmon when it 'grazes' it.

Klamath Springer fishing!

Dennis went fishing with Dave Castellanos on a fine May day & waylaid these two fine springers.Dave runs Cast Guide Services & he supported our 2008 raffle by donating a fishing trip for two people, which was won by Jim Welter. Jim, I guess you can look forward to some nice fish like these.

 

 

Surf Fishing trip.

Rich & Tony, fishing at Winchuk beach. It was meant to be a club surf fishing day but not many turned up.

April Fools day fishing trip.

April 1st. Wayne, Bill & Bunky go rock fishing. Here is some of their catch.

     

Coming soon (hopefully) a page containing the  33 year history of Oregon South Coast Fishermen.

More tales from the Chetco.

Thursday, March 27. Ray Brouette, Cliff Cruickshank and Tony Hobbs also side drifted the Chetco from Miller Bar to Social Security Bar in Ray's boat. Another Brookings sunny spring day, with temps in the 50's & the river running over 3,000cfs but dropping greeted the trio who had a late start due to being at Jack Creek screw trap earlier in the morning. We eventually started fishing around 11.30am with Cliff using #4 Hook, 3'-3½' leader with a tiny clump of roe & puffball. I used a slightly longer leader #2 Hook, a small piece of tied orange yarn with anise/krill sticky jell above hook & a puffball and tiny piece of roe on hook. When Ray got the chance to fish (he loves rowing) his rig was similar to Cliffs. We started fishing all the normal runs & pools with a few false bites, then for no other reason than curiosity I cast into a very slack piece of water with hardly any current. Almost immediately I had a firm bite which lead to a very colorful downer around 5-6 lb being gently netted after a 5 min fight. The male was battle scarred from spawning but, in remarkably good condition. After carefully unhooking & reviving, the striking red banded male, he surged off out the net to continue his trip back to the ocean. We thought that the rest of the drift to Social would be equally good, but apart from a few snags & light bites, nothing more came to the net. It was a nice trip down a gorgeous river, marred only by the sight of a motorcycle either stolen/dumped or just dumped in the river between Miller & the second bridge.We passed one other boat with a lone fisherman & 3 pit bulls in who was anchored up fishing a hole. He shouted across to us that it was the only way to catch fish at this time of the year, we thanked him for his advice but continued drifting serenely on our way.

 

Have you heard the one about 3 men in a boat?

Yes, another derby weekend coming up. Friday 7th & Saturday 8th. Any member who can spare sometime, please be at Sporthaven Tackle Store, Port of Brookings-Harbor  before 8.00 AM

Friday 22nd & Saturday 23rd Feb. Members are once again asked to donate 1-2 hours of their time in shuttle duties on the Chetco River. Meet before 8.00 AM at Sporthaven Tackle in the port of Brookings/Harbor

 

Check out the Chetco River Fall Chinock Project that Rich Heap compiled for the long term plan we hope to impliment with ODFW. Live today on this web site 02.14.2008.

Friday 15th & Saturday 16th of February are our first Friends of Cal-Ore fishing Derby day's.

Shuttle drivers needed!

All, who have helped before & new members who want to help, please be at 'Sporthaven' tackle store before 8.00am 

 

 

Monday 27th January. Wayne Barker & Bill Ignatow fished the Chetco. Bill writes.

Wayne Barker and I fished with guide Dustin Russell today on the Chetco.... Yes, we got rained on and yes, we got snowed on, but Wayne did manage to catch one of the very elusive steelhead... The first picture of Wayne really shows his enthusiasm for the day, with the snow in the background....

Click pictures.

                                                  

Photos by Bill Ignatow.

There were a few times on the river when I would have much preferred to be in a warm house learning to tie better knots.... But in retrospect, still, the worst day fishing is still better than the best day working....

Well done Wayne.

 

KBSC TV Channel 9 Cable station films OSCF members aiding ODFW in many STEP project's.

Candice Michel Executive Producer of KBSC TV, our local TV Station here in Brookings Oregon has been out and about with our members & has so far produced & aired Fishing Tales 1 & 2.

Fishing tales 1, is primarily concerned with the screw trap we operated on the Winchuck river last summer & the wild salmon smoult seining our members aided the Gold Beach branch of ODFW, including John Weber (Gold Beach STEP Biologist). in the port area of the Chetco in the early Autumn.

Fishing Tales 2, is all about the wild salmon brood stock collecting that our members again help ODFW (Gold Beach) in obtaining from the Chetco River. This happened in late Autumn around Tide Rock & Social Security Bar.

For those not able to get Channel 9 (cable only) here is the link to KBSC TV web site, where you can watch both these programs on your computer.    

Fishing Tales 1 & 2

   

dmoz.org

 

Oregon South Coast Fishermen

In 2007, our organization accomplished all this, and more, with your help and support. By renewing your membership, you can help make 2008 the best year ever for Oregon South Coast Fishermen and our fishery resources. New Members joining us ensures we can do even more in 2008 

· Provided shuttle services for the Cal-Ore derbies

· Placed and assisted with the operation of the Jack Creek screw trap

· Assisted with “Eggs to Fry” classroom activities

· Donated 15 rod/reel combinations and tackle to troops in Iraq with the Red Shirts

· Azalea Festival kids fishing pond, handed out 150 fishing rods to kids participating in the derby

· Donated 10 rod/reel combos to CAF for their kids Derby at Libby Pond

· Set up Joe Hall Creek acclimation site, fed the fish and released smolts into the Chetco.

· Set up and ran the Winchuck screw trap

· Seined the Chetco estuary to assess Chinook smolt size and condition

· Assisted with the production of TV programs for KSBC

· Participated with Curry Anadromous Fishermen at the Curry Co. Fair

· Developed and placed signs at the Port to aid in the recognition of salmon and steelhead smolts

· Participated with CAF at Huntley Park seining program for Indian Creek

· Seined broodstock in the Chetco

· Assisted CAF with spawning activities at Indian Creek hatchery

· Negotiated and paid for the Icebox access lease

· Provided rock to improve the access road to the Piling Hole

· Provided representation to Oregon Coastal Zone Management Association, Klamath Management Zone Fisheries Coalition, Pacific fisheries Management Council and Ocean Policy Advisory Committee meetings

· 1147 hours reported for STEP activities, another 700 hours estimated for club activities.

· OSCF is part of the larger STEP program which last year donated 71,874 hours, the equivalent of 35 full time ODFW positions.