Made the annual run to the cool weather and beautiful Oregon coast for 2 weeks. Lack of any significant rainfall this past winter has the river low and warm and the bar at the mouth got bigger. Fishing wasn’t bad but wasn’t on fire either, bites would come with the tide changes but to me they didn’t seem to have the length they have had in the past. Waters on the outside could be affecting staging of the fish. Trolling 360* 11” flashers with an anchovy or a small hoochie where norm. Lots of jacks in the system right now with a few of the big Rouge fish showing. For our efforts we landed 7 adults (over 24”) most in the 11-13lb range with the biggest going 23lb and 6 jacks. Plenty of salmon for the wife and I for the year. My buddy is still there and will be until the middle of September, hopefully the big slugs show up for him. Looks like Labor Day weekend the BOR will dump some cold water from the lakes upstream which will pull the fish out of the bay and upriver.
Wow, beautiful fish.
Those are some nice fish Alan, are you guys able to keep all the jack salmon too? Sure looks like some tough fishing conditions, with all those boats.
Looks nice was it hard to get around with all the boat s? Good job Alan.
You buy a 20 salmon card that allows you 2 adults a day, then your allowed 5 jacks a day that you don’t have to record.
It’s actually pretty calm with all the traffic, everything goes counterclockwise and if you hook up you just yell fish on and the boats next to you and behind real up their gear. You have to chase the fish and people pull gear and move so you have a good chance on landing it. Of course there are some that don’t pay attention or are new and that can cause problems. The biggest issue we see is people running drags way to loose and after the fish hits they can make a huge run and people don’t have time to get their gear up or are so far away they wouldn’t typically have to worry. It’s not for everyone for sure, you need to be able to react and not get all wound up, these fish are beasts and really a rush to fight
Not if you’re comfortable driving a boat in close quarters, we have friends that we’ve meet that have never gotten comfortable with the “middle” and always stay on the edges. The other thing about the boats is almost everyone is on a kicker motor and driving from the tiller, those trying to steer and make gear adjustments with the wheel have more trouble