November 17th column

[Pete Heley]

Salmon fishing in this area has pretty much dropped off a cliff with a few exceptions. A few anglers are catching some chinooks out of Smith River on either roe or sand shrimp. Siltcoos Lake and that portion of the outlet stream above Highway 101 are still producing some cohos and a few salmon have even been caught out of Tahkenitch Lake. However, Tenmile Lake needs more water and more water would definitely help Tahkenitch Lake, as well. In the next several weeks, salmon catches will be dominated by the south coast streams and they all need more water to get chinooks into the streams although there are some salmon in the Elk River estuary.

Bottomfishing out of Winchester Bay remains excellent, although almost completely overlooked and the anglers fishing the South Jetty for greenling and other bottomfish have been few and far between although the fishing remains fairly productive.

For the last few weeks, dock crabbing success has been much better before daylight or after dusk, although some good catches are still being made during daylight hours. Boat crabbing is much better and crabs are being caught as far up the Umpqua River as about a mile above Reedsport. Unfortunately, many of the crabs have molted, but when you catch enough of them, you can cherry pick the ones you keep.The commercial crabbing season, normally scheduled to begin Dec. 1st, has been delayed until at least December 15th by fishery managers in California, Oregon and Washington after testing showed that the average crab was not sufficiently full to harvest.

Sometimes good news comes from unexpected places. Things looked bleak for northwest salmon and steelhead anglers when regional Audobon groups beat wildlife agencies in court and won protection for Caspian terns and double breasted cormorants who wreak havoc on lower Columbia River smolts as they attempt to adjust to water of higher salinity. According to Terry Sheely in his Northwest News column in Northwest Flyfishing, in an ironic twist of fate, eagles, owls and seagulls attacked the terns’ Sand Island rookerie, the world’s largest in unprecedented numbers eating eggs, adults and young birds and greatly reduced smolt predation by the cormorants and terns.

The explosion of northern pike in eastern Washington’s Pend Oreille River has developed a pattern. It seems that the pike quickly dominate impounded waters and then a few of them manage to get past the dam and slowly build up numbers in that stretch of river until they encounter more impounded water and then their numbers quickly increase until the cycle repeats itself. After breeching Alberni Dam on Lake Pend Oreille, the pike quickly came to dominate Box Canyon Dam and are now in the process of dominating the fisheries in Boundary Reservoir. Pike have managed to get through Boundary Dam and have been caught in Canadian sections of the Pend Oreille and there are reports of pike in the uppermost Columbia River including one report of a northern pike being caught in Franklin Roosevelt located in eastern Washington and the Columbia River’s largest reservoir. Should they become established in the reservoir there will be almost nothing fisheries personnel can do to control them and the Columbia’s anadromous fish really don’t need another apex predator that is active in relatively cold water. In an attempt to not be too much of an alarmist, there is an incredible amount of water between the northern pike and the Columbia River’s anadromous fish, but their eventual meeting seems inevitable.