Oct. 19: Fishing Report

Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)

2018-10-19

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OCEAN OUTLOOK COASTWIDE: Winds up to 20 knots and swells up to 6 feet are forecast for today, followed by light winds but wind waves up to 6 feet Saturday. Sunday has winds up to 15 knots with the wind waves backing down a bit to 5 feet. The marine aggregate rockfish daily limit for bottomfishers is five fish. Cabezon must be released unharmed. Rockfish angling is open beyond the 30-fathom line, and it will stay that way for the rest of the year as long as rockfish quotas remain on the table. A descending device to help release rockfish caught in deeper water is mandatory on all boats. Look for good deep-water angling for lingcod, as most of the fish have moved into deeper water. Surfperch fishing will be questionable through the weekend because of heavy winds and rough surf. Recreational crabbing is open in bays but closed in the open ocean until Dec. 1. For clammers, there are no minus tides this week, but a new set starts to move in Thursday night. Razor clamming is closed from the mouth of the Umpqua River to the California border. Bay clamming is open along the coast, but the recreational harvest of mussels is closed from the Coquille River south jetty to the California border. Before digging, call the shellfish hotline at 1-800-448-2474. LAKE OUTLOOK AGATE: The lake is 7 percent full and holding steady. Cast worms off the dam for crappie and bass. No gas motors are allowed. Electric trolling motors are OK. The park closes at dusk. APPLEGATE: With only 12 cubic-feet-per-second of water flowing into the lake, the lake level keeps dropping quickly despite releases of only 171 cfs. The lake’s surface temperature continues to drop amid cold nights, and that is improving trout fishing for those getting down to the water. Trout fishing should be picking up, as the lake’s surface temperature has cooled to 63 degrees. The water level is down to 95 feet from full. Not much angling activity at the lake, but those fishing off the bank and along the dam’s face are doing well with worms under bobbers and PowerBait. Many of the lake’s trout are still sporting copapods. The parasites should be scraped off before cooking. Releasing sport-caught trout with copapods allows the parasites to spread. DIAMOND: Trout fishing remains very good with fewer anglers taking advantage of unseasonably warm and calm weather. Most of the action is on the south end with worms under bobbers in about 15 feet of water. Use a leader length that keeps the worm a little off the top of the weedline. Trollers should start with Wedding Ring lures spiked with a small piece of worm about 4 feet behind a small flasher. Fly-fishers can use chironomid flies stripped slowly in the bottom half of the water column. All tiger trout must be released unharmed, and they’re pretty easy to catch at the south end. EMIGRANT: The lake has risen a hair and is up to 13 percent full, but fishing action remains slow. Fish crank baits off points for bass. The trout continue to hang out around the springs, where the fishing is best. No boat launching is available, but some anglers are dragging canoes or pontoon boats for access. EXPO: Trout fishing is poor because of a dearth of fish. FISH: Larger rainbow trout were stocked recently, and fishing has been very good off the bank or from pontoon boats that must be dragged down to the shore. The lake has risen dramatically to 18 percent full, but still not enough for a workable boat ramp. Water quality has improved a little, but some algae remains. PowerBait has been an excellent bait of choice for a mix of rainbows, landlocked chinook, precocial steelhead and tiger trout, the latter of which must be released unharmed. HOWARD PRAIRIE: Fishing is good for rainbow trout for still-fishers in deeper water near the dam with PowerBait, and cooling waters have the trout more active now. The lake was listed Thursday at 34 percent full. HYATT: Access is very poor with no workable ramps. The lake is only 4 percent full. Boat access is limited to small boats that can be launched off the shore or carried to the water. The few people trying are reportedly doing well for rainbow trout on leech and woolly bugger flies or worms or PowerBait. LAKE OF THE WOODS: The lake is fishing decently for rainbows and perch with worms and PowerBait, while trolling has been fair to good for trout. Brown trout and kokanee fishing have been slow, but that should pick up with cooler evenings. LOST CREEK: The public access restrictions at Stewart State Park, Takelma boat ramp and bank access on both sides of Lost Creek dam have been lifted, and that’s where most of the action is. The lake is down to 63 feet from full and 3 feet below the normal low-water mark for winter flood control. Outflows are holding steady at 1,150 cubic feet per second. WILLOW: The lake was stocked in late summer with 5,000 legal-sized rainbow trout and 1,500 larger trout. Bass fishing has been popular of late. The lake has more water in it than most in Jackson County. SELMAC: Public access is allowed again after fire closures. Bass fishing is fair. RIVER OUTLOOK ROGUE: The lower Rogue Bay has mostly wild coho salmon, and anglers are getting tired of releasing these salmon they catch. The middle Rogue has a smattering of adult summer steelhead and starting to see the beginnings of a good halfpounder steelhead run this year. The upper Rogue has been fair to good for steelhead during the flies-only season, with the best action coming between Dodge Bridge and TouVelle State Park thanks largely to the nearly 1,000 recycled “retread” steelhead released there two weeks ago. And the retreads win the day for the upper Rogue, which remains the weekend’s best bet. It’s the last two weeks of the flies-only season, and catches have been somewhat underwhelming the past few weeks thanks largely to the cold water and releases of just 1,150 cfs of water from Lost Creek Lake. But the recycled steelhead are pretty much hanging in and around the Denman Wildlife Area, and that’s where anglers are finding the most steelhead. It’s mostly a nymphing show right now, with ugly bugs and single salmon eggs the top offering. The upper Rogue above the Fishers Ferry boat ramp is open for flies only through October. Flows at Dodge Bridge Thursday were at 1,307 cfs, up about 50 cfs from last week. Look for them to hold steady as no rain is in the immediate forecast. Flows at the old Gold Ray Dam site were up to 1,651 cfs Thursday. In the middle Rogue, chinook fishing is closed upstream of the Hog Creek boat ramp. Wild summer steelhead are around most creek mouths and behind early chinook spawners, but that really won’t get going for another week or two. Halfpounders are starting to show up to join what has been a steelhead catch dominated by smaller fish this year. Anglers using plugs are hitting some summer steelhead from Valley of the Rogue State Park through Grants Pass. Cop Car and black-and-silver Weewarts are working, as are MagLip lures. Also lots of smaller steelhead are getting caught on worms or Panther Martin lures. In the lower Rogue, mostly wild chinook remain in the bay, and anglers have started to vacate the estuary in search of either steelhead in the Agness area or chinook in the Chetco or Coos estuaries. Excellent numbers of adult and halfpounder summer steelhead are moving through the lower Rogue, and halfpounder catches are starting to pick up from Agness down. Fall chinook are getting caught by back-bouncing eggs and sandshrimp from Foster Bar down to Quosatana, but most of the fish are dark. APPLEGATE: The river is open to rainbow trout fishing, and only hatchery trout can be kept. Don’t expect to find them, however, because only fin-clipped winter steelhead are released there, and they are small and should be avoided. All cutthroat must be released. Rainbow trout longer than 16 inches are considered steelhead, and the river is closed to steelhead fishing until Jan. 1. CHETCO: Trolling the estuary for fall chinook has been fair to occasionally good with anchovies. The upriver fishery doesn’t open for two more weeks. NORTH UMPQUA: Steelhead fishing is slow. Angling closes at 2 p.m. daily to protect wild summer steelhead threatened by low and warm conditions. Also, all angling is closed within 200 feet of tributaries between the Scottsburg Bridge and the River Forks boat ramp.