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56 °F Forecast | Road Cams Sunday, April 4, 2004 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find a Rental Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Email Story to a Friend March 18, 2004 First Rogue spring chinook Music to his ears By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune GOLD BEACH — The rumors echoed off the wooded hills daily in this town at the mouth of the Rogue River, yet every one fizzled into just another story about the one that got away. First, a veteran boat angler supposedly caught two just upstream from Elephant Rock on March 6. Then two days later, a local heating and refrigeration contractor allegedly caught one, but both claims ended up as nothing but fish tales. The quest to usher in the Rogue’s most popular sport-fishing season dragged deep into the second week of March, and still no one had caught the year’s first spring chinook salmon. "That first one must be a real fighter," Rogue Outdoor Store clerk Randy Mickelson said last week, "because no one seems to be able to land him." Yet all it took was a music man from Detroit to put a little spring in the Rogue. Advertisement Bob Music, a 64-year-old retired millwright from the Oregon timber town, caught the first confirmed Rogue spring chinook while bank fishing Friday, ending weeks of attempts among the faithful to turn rumors of the salmon’s return into reality. "I fish down there every spring, and that’s the first time I got the first one out of the river," says Music, whose chinook was verified by state biologists and the Rogue Outdoor Store, Gold Beach’s unofficial keeper of first-fish records. Music’s salmon, an 18-pound hatchery fish, is the opening salvo in what is expected to be yet another solid spring chinook season on the Rogue, where a healthy mix of wild and hatchery chinook is expected. Good ocean-rearing conditions, deep mountain snowpack, an expected higher number of returning hatchery fish and other factors point to lots of salmon due for the Rogue and plenty of happy anglers. "It could be a pretty big return this year," says Tom Satterthwaite, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist who has spent more than two decades researching the Rogue. "From the perspective of freshwater anglers, the extensive snowpack means angling conditions in the Gold Beach, Agness and Grants Pass fisheries should be good at least into the middle of May," Satterthwaite says. But the jitters over just when this supposedly strong season would begin dogged anglers for weeks as dozens spent long, fruitless days mining the Rogue for that first chinook. "It’s a big deal for these guys," says Todd Confer, a biologist at the ODFW’s Gold Beach office. "It gets pretty exciting for a lot of people when the first one gets caught." Most first chinook of the year are caught by boat anglers anchored in migration lanes just upstream of tidewater, waiting for schools of the Rogue’s largest salmon to turn upstream from the sea and begin their spawning pilgrimage to the upper Rogue. Prized most for their mild and tasty flesh, these big chinook are a finicky lot that leave anglers burning more calories trying to get one than they get eating one. "Springers, generally, are tough to catch," Confer says. "But this time of year, you can spend a lot of time out there doing nothing." For Music, all it took was being in the wrong place at the right time. He wasn’t among the Elephant Rock faithful Friday. He wasn’t even close. Music was near the mouth of Lobster Creek, about 11 miles upstream from Gold Beach. And he was plunking off the bank. For winter steelhead. Sort of. "Actually, I was sitting in my truck and watching my rod, trying to stay out of the wind," Music says. Music had taken his homemade 10-foot rod and cast a large rainbow trout Spin-Glo — a standard steelhead lure for plunking — into six feet of water along a gravel bar. A heavy lead weight held the Spin-Glo a foot off the bottom, spinning wildly while awaiting for something to swim by. This is a standard technique for intercepting late-run winter steelhead that hug these shallow turns while finning upstream. When the steelhead bite, they tend to run downstream and start jumping. The fish that bit Music’s Spin-Glo acted differently. "He hit it and just started going," Music says. "I knew exactly what it was." Thirty-five minutes later, he caught the first Rogue spring chinook of the year, which was netted by his cousin, Robert Stearns of Jefferson. "The next day, my cousin caught a 31-pounder," Music says. But the second fish is nary a footnote in what could be a year with plenty of fish stories. Good ocean conditions allowed a record return of wild fall chinook last year, and wild spring chinook often — but not always — follow suit, Satterthwaite says. Also, anglers likely will see several thousand more spring chinook in the Rogue this year because about 300,000 extra hatchery chinook were released from Cole Rivers Hatchery during 2001 and ‘02. The releases normally are around 1.62 million smolts, but the extra fish were reared to make up for the loss of more than 1 million chinook during a water-system failure at the hatchery in 2000. Survivors from those extra releases are due to return as adults this year, and Satterthwaite expects bountiful returns. "At some point, the ocean survival rates will decline again, and the run numbers will decline," Satterthwaite says. "It’s a cyclical pattern that’s been around since fish counts began." Music and his chinook finished their cyclical journeys Tuesday, both in Music’s pickup that traveled the 300 miles to Detroit. But he won’t be home for long. "The fish are coming," Music says. "I’ll be back in a couple days." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2004 Mail Tribune. 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