Although Charleston remains the best crabbing option, some decent catches were made last weekend at Winchester Bay. One boast, crabbing in Half Moon Bay last Saturday ended up with 14 keepers, but admitted they had to work hard for them. With the gradual wind-down of commercial crabbing in the ocean and a steady decrease in Umpqua River water flows, the crabbing at Winchester Bay should at least h...

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Trout plants have finally started for the northern Oregon Coast. For our area, this means that virtually all of the lakes and ponds between Elbow Lake and Alder, Buck and Dune lakes (seven miles north of Florence) will all be stocked this week. Here are the fish numbers scheduled to be dumped into each lake: Alder, Buck and Dune lakes are each slated to receive 850 barely legal and 36 trophy (16...

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Thanks to the South Umpqua River, the entire mainstem Umpqua was much more turbid than it has been and crabbing suffered. At some point, the water should clear and crabbing should show some improvement. Now that a number of spring chinook have been caught in the lower Columbia and Willamette rivers, interest should begin perking regarding the Umpqua and Rogue spring chinook fisheries. Over th...

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This was a great week for anglers here in Central Washington. It looks like a new state record has been set for lake trout (mackinaw) at Lake Chelan. Steelhead fishing re-opened on the Wenatchee and Icicle rivers, too. There is a lot to be excited about. Phil Colyar, owner of Colyar Jewelry in Wenatchee, was the lucky angler that caught the big lake trout. When I visited with him at his s...

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While the best crabbing in our area is still at Charleston, the boat crabbers trying the Half Moon Bay area on the Umpqua River near Winchester Bay all seem to be catching at least a few crabs and some are doing better than that.While venturing out into the ocean, when possible, would almost certainly improve one’s crabbing success, a decent portion of the commercial crab fleet spent considerable ...

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My wife and I were on the last day during of our two week fishing vacation in Cabo San Lucas. Our Captain and I decided to stay on the Sea of Cortez side for our 5 hour trip to prevent my wife, Sandy from getting “beat up” in the waves. It was the first day in early December where any appreciable wind blew. We had boated a nice Dorado that would top off our 2 coolers with 100 pounds (less the w...

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Jan 24th: There are benefits to the colder weather we are experiencing in Central Washington. While some complain and have had enough, others are glad to see it and are sharpening their ice augers and packing their sleds to head out to area lakes to go ice fishing. I did a survey of some of the more popular ice fishing lakes in our region earlier this week. This is what I learned. Up ...

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The “Best of the Creek” steelhead contest was held this last weekend on Tenmile and Eel creeks, Information on the contest, obtained via Gould Buford, had Noah Myfiewiez winning the two day contest with four steelhead weighing a total of 34.10 pounds. Noah also had the second largest steelhead weighed in at 12.70 pounds. Doug Jones had the largest steelhead weighed at 14.91 pounds and had three st...

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Walleye Over the past decade walleye angling has increased in popularity here in the Northwest and has a very loyal following with many anglers dedicated to targeting just walleye. It has been predicted that the next world record walleye will come out of the Columbia River. So I broke my mold of writing strictly about salmon, trout, and steelhead to bring you some great info...

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We’ve settled into the mid-winter rhythm of fishing here in Central Washington. Anglers are splitting their time between fishing the main stem Columbia for steelhead and Rufus Woods Reservoir for triploid rainbow. We’re still waiting for the ice to form on the popular ice fishing lakes. While we’re waiting for the ice to get solid, there are some other distractions. The sport shows that take ...

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I had a busy week. My sidekick Eric Granstrom and I decided to take a trip up river and fish for steelhead from shore. Day two we traveled to Brandts Landing on Rufus Woods Reservoir and tried our luck for triploid rainbow. We finished our trip with a visit to the new Colville Tribal Hatchery and learned what this state of the art facility will mean to the future of salmon fishing in our region...

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I finally have some snow in my yard here in Leavenworth, but overall the weather remains mild in our region. It makes it easy for me to make plans to get out on the water. No freezing temperatures or high winds to worry about. The closure of many of the rivers in our region to steelhead fishing hasn’t slowed me down. There are enough fish on the upper Columbia to make for some great days. ...

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