Document text
Mark Freeman Commentary Spring surge whets anglers' appetites By MARK FREEMAN Each spring Curtis Camps sets his watch, fills in his calendar, eats his meals and determines his work schedule based solely on when spring chinook salmon reach the deep holes of the upper Rogue River. "I wait for the salmon to get here," says Camps, 39. "I go fishing the day they show up, and I stay until the day they're gone." Most years, that means Camps is busy working long days and sharing meals with his family through late May and occasionally early June, when he catches his first salmon and he switches his watch from daylight saving-time to Springer Fishing Time. But Camps already is well into salmon-fishing mode, a full three weeks early thanks to an unusually strong early run of Rogue spring chinook. This past week, he's caught three salmon while fishing along the upper Rogue from the bank before and after work. His two kids have weighed in with three others, and all are big and bright specimens. And the Camps are not alone. Spring chinook salmon fishing is off to one of its best starts in 35 years, bringing smiles to the Camps and scores of other sport-fishermen who adjust their work lives to stalk these fish deemed the crown jewels of the Rogue. More salmon passed through the Gold Ray Dam fish ladder and into the upper Rogue last month than all other Aprils back to 1966 except one, the 1995 run that brought 1,569 salmon over the dam through April 30. The 1,424 chinook that swam into the upper Rogue last month almost eclipsed the '95 run, and they were more than doubled in the next four days. The 2,919 salmon in the upper Rogue through May 4 has created an early outbreak of spring chinook fever, which normally waits until the Memorial Day weekend before germinating from a rash into an epidemic. But prime bank-fishing spots like the Slide Hole and Casey State Park along Highway 62, and key boat-fishing stretches from Eagle Point on downstream, are filling with growing numbers of anglers who are finding their first springer of 2000 has no interest in being fashionably late. The fish not only are plentiful, they are plump as well, says John Billows, whose Pat's Hand-Tied Flies shop already sports a wall of chinook snapshots. "This time of year, we normally see 18-, 19-, 20-pound fish," Billows says. "But this year, we're seeing lots of 23- and 26-pound fish. And those are the ones people have landed." One of those snapshots is of Rob Jones, a Medford fisherman who believes his early success is foreshadowing a good season. "If I hook one salmon sometime in early May, that's about average," says Jones, longtime visitor to the upper Rogue. "If I catch my first salmon before Memorial Day weekend, that's good. "But I've caught four so far this year, and I only caught three all of last year," Jones says. "You don't have to be a biologist to figure out that's good." Biologists like Tom Satterthwaite can find method in this madness. Satterthwaite is an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife researcher who has studied the Rogue's chinook for 20 years and has unveiled many of the secrets to the Rogue's chinook mannerisms. The salmon's early showing is tied to a combination of slightly warmer river temperatures, an increasing dominance of hatchery salmon in the Rogue and a shift in the age distribution of this year's migrating fish, he says. Chinook bound for Cole Rivers Hatchery are expected to comprise 80 percent or more of this year's run, chiefly because winter flooding in the late '90s likely killed many wild chinook eggs, Satterthwaite says. As water temperatures rise, the fish start moving heavily over Gold Ray Dam -- regardless of whether it is late April or late May, Satterthwaite says. More older chinook are heading upriver this year, in part because of cutbacks in sport and commercial salmon harvests in the ocean, he says. So anglers like the Camps catching bigger fish than they are used to seeing all makes sense. "In the past few years, if the ocean harvest hadn't been so low, you would have seen abysmal Gold Ray Dam (salmon) counts," Satterthwaite says. "Good news for the (sport) fishermen is bad news for the commercial fishermen." So good May fishing is essentially set up for anglers like the Camps, and they're taking advantage of it. Gold Ray Counts Gold Ray Dam Spring Chinook Counts April 16-30 1991 535 1992 171 1993 448 1994 1,569 1995 812 1996 1,087 1998 446 1999 82 2000 1,424 Camps is a latecomer to salmon fishing, having been a trout and bass angler in California before stumbling upon the Rogue's chinook eight years ago. "Once I felt a chinook, that was it," Camps says. "It was all over." Now, when the first few thousand salmon reach the upper Rogue, Camps heads to his favorite rock at the Slide Hole along Highway 62, and casts for chinook at daylight with sons Robert, 16, and Dustin, 14. He uses a four-ounce lead weight to get his No. 14 corkie to the bottom and in front of chinook's noses until it's time to haul the kids to school. He works until the afternoon, then takes up residence at his rock again until the fishing day ends. "You can only catch them," Curtis Camps says laughing, "if you're in your spot." Last year, May 16 was the earliest any of the Camps caught a chinook at their respective spots. This year, the first fish came in Friday, May 5, and five more followed over the next four days. Wednesday, the pre-school fishing expedition yielded no salmon. "I haven't given up yet," he says. "The day's still early." (Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470, or e-mail him at: [email protected] ) Outdoor Journal Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Mail Tribune � 2000 -- Medford, Oregon USA