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FISHING REPORT Fishing Report: Friday, Sept. 2 Comment MailTribune.com Writer Posted Sep. 2, 2016 at 12:01 AM Posted Sep. 2, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Social News OCEAN OUTLOOK COASTWIDE: Good ocean conditions today means anglers can likely run out of Brookings and Gold Beach for bottomfish and chinook salmon, but the bars and ocean will get windier and rougher as the weekend progresses. Today calls for five-knot winds and four-foot swells, followed by 15-knot winds Saturday and winds up to 20 knots Sunday, with wind waves aroud four or five feet both days. Salmon anglers are coming back Saturday through Monday for the Labor Day weekend, and catches should be better than they were earlier in the season. Expect to see anglers focusing closer toward the mouths of the Chetco and Pistol rivers as well as off the Rogue mouth. Vary depths during trolling. Rockfish anglers must stay inside the 20-fathom line while fishing for rockfish at least through September, and possibly for the rest of the season. It does not impact salmon, tuna or halibut fishing, but anglers can't venture past the 20-fathom curve if they have rockfish on board. Anglers can keep one cabezon a day. The Central Oregon all-depth halibut season reopens today and Saturday with about two-thirds of the August quota remaining. Fish are averaging about 50 pounds. The halibut season out of Brookings is open south of Humbug Mountain. Recent catches are averaging 24 pounds per fish, and two-thirds of the South Coast quota remains. Tuna anglers continue to run 30 to 50 miles out of Charleston, and anglers have been coming back with four to six tuna each when weather allows. The ocean and bays are open to crabbing coastwide. No minus tides are in the offing this week. Razor clamming is closed south of the Siuslaw River because of domoic acid levels, and razors are off limits through September on the North Coast for the annual conservation closure. Bay clams, butter clams and mussels are available coastwide. Before digging, check the shellfish hotline at 1-800-448-2474. LAKE OUTLOOK AGATE: The lake was listed Thursday at 32 percent full and dropping rapidly. Fishing is fair at best for a mix of bass, crappie and perch, but mostly perch around submerged willows. Smallmouth are near the dam. No trout stockings are planned this year. No gas motors are allowed, but electric trolling motors are fine. APPLEGATE: Fishing for rainbows should improve with the cooler weather, but there is a lot of smoke reported at the lake from the Gap fire in Northern California. Some anglers are catching rainbows 8 to 16-plus inches by trolling deep higher in the reservoir. Bass fishing is best off points and near submerged trees. The lake was listed at 55.5 feet shy of full Thursday, down more than five feet in the past week thanks to very little inflow. DIAMOND: The lake is starting to fish a little better during the day as the weather cools. PowerBait and worms are out-fishing trolling. Fly-fishing chironomid patterns with long leaders is working well, especially on cloudy days. Use long leaders. The rainbows are spread out. Mornings are more productive, especially on hot days. Another 300,000 fingerlings were stocked recently and should be avoided until they are of legal eight-inch size. Be careful when releasing tiger trout, which can't be kept. EMIGRANT: The lake was listed Thursday at 32 percent full and is dropping rather quickly. Trout fishing has slowed dramatically, with a mix of warmwater species taking up the slack. Fish crankbaits, plastic worms or grubs very slowly and deep around structure on cloudy days. Fishing plastic worms, jigs or grubs is very good in and around submerged willows in the Emigrant Arm and around Songer Butte. FISH: The lake was 36 percent full Thursday and is dropping 4 percent a week. Lake visibility has improved, and that has helped with the trout catches, particularly near underwater springs. Fish PowerBait for a mix of holdover rainbows and landlocked chinook near the Forest Service boat ramp and near springs. Tiger trout as big as 18 inches have been caught, but they must be released unharmed. Fishing around the springs is best. HOWARD PRAIRIE: Fishing is starting to pick up a bit as cooler evenings help cool the water to more trout-friendly temperatures. Trout fishing remains best in the mornings. Holdover trout in the 16- to 19-inch range are being caught, but rainbows eclipsing 20 inches are still being caught in deeper water. The lake has dropped slightly to 53 percent full and remains higher than Hyatt and Emigrant. HYATT: Trout fishing has slowed, and bass fishing is good. Anything red works for bass, especially around the Orchard and in the bay near the BLM ramp. Not much size to the largemouth, though. The lake dropped this week to 46 percent full. LOST CREEK: The lake is dropping faster, and the better fishing for rainbow trout remains upstream of Peyton Bridge where water temperatures are more favorable for trout. Fishing is fair to good for 10,000 legal-sized trout and 1,075 trophy trout stocked there in August. That's the last trout stocking scheduled for Lost Creek until October. Fishing is good with worms or single salmon eggs in the area where the Rogue flows into the lake above Peyton Bridge. Landlocked salmon have been holding deeper than the trout. Fish for largemouth in the submerged willows and for smallmouth off rocky points. The lake was listed Thursday at more than 50 feet below full pool, down about 10 feet from last week. That's because inflows are just 1,047 cfs and dropping, while outflows are holding steady at 2,200 cfs. LAKE OF THE WOODS: The lake is fishing fair to good for a mix of rainbows, brown trout and perch near the resort with worms under bobbers and PowerBait off the bottom. Fishing is best at dawn and dusk. WILLOW: Trout fishing has slowed for the mix of legal-sized and pounder rainbow trout stocked in July at the county boat ramp. The lake is dropping, but water clarity is good. EXPO: The pond got 1,000 legal-sized trout in June, and that was the last stocking for this summer. RIVER OUTLOOK ROGUE: The upper Rogue shifts to flies-only for the next two months, and early fishing should be good, while the middle Rogue is starting to see fresh fall chinook move in from the canyon. The lower Rogue bay is fishing well for a mix of fall chinook and coho, while summer steelhead and halfpounders are moving into the lower Rogue in good numbers for the second straight week. That makes the lower Rogue bay the best bet, thanks to a mix of excellent catches of really prime fish. The bay has been good for fall chinook for bank and boat anglers, with lots of 20-plus-pound chinook being caught daily. A mix of wild and hatchery coho are also starting to show up. Trolling smallish anchovies with a Rogue blade rig is best. With such hot water, all of the action has been from the Jot's Resort boat ramp down to the mouth. There appear to be lots of jacks in the bay, as well. Bank anglers in the Indian Creek area and off the sand spit are getting into the action, tossing pink RoosterTails or Little Cleo's for chinook. Bank casters also are starting to pick up summer steelhead. In the upper Rogue, it's artificial flies only from the Fishers Ferry boat ramp all the way to the deadline at Cole Rivers Hatchery. That means traditional fly gear or spinning rods with flies and bobbers but no added weights or attachments. That includes swivels. Swinging big streamers while wading or from a boat is the ticket for the next few weeks thanks to favorably warm water conditions. The summer steelhead are as active as they'll get now. Large streamers with sink-tip lines are best, followed by traditional streamers. Nymphers can use ugly bugs as droppers and single egg patterns or prince nymphs as the point fly. The 89 new steelhead collected Wednesday at Cole Rivers Hatchery is a bump up from last week and pushes the total so far to 1,483 fish, and that doesn't include 779 steelhead recycled back downstream to the Modoc Unit at Denman Widlife Area so far this season. The 10-year running average for this week in the run to Cole Rivers is 1,015 steelhead. Flows in the upper Rogue out of Lost Creek are holding steady at 2,200 cfs this weekend, and the rest of the river is holding accordingly. Flows at Dodge Bridge are just over 2,370 cfs, 2,364 cfs at the old Gold Ray Dam site and 2,262 cfs at Grants Pass. Flows at Agness were almost at 2,700 cfs for the first time this summer and that has helped fall chinook migrate successfully through the Lower Rogue Canyon so far this season despite warm flows. Middle Rogue anglers are starting to see more chinook in the Grants Pass area, but they are scattered from Galice to Gold Hill. Kwikfish or MagLip 4.5s or 3.5s in various colors are working best. Another 2,375 legal-sized trout were stocked this week in several locations in and around Union Creek along the far upper Rogue. These releases continue weekly through Labor Day. APPLEGATE: The river is open to trout fishing. All wild trout must be released unharmed. No fin-clipped rainbows are stocked there. CHETCO: The river is open to trout fishing. Look for some sea-run cutthroat and fall chinook in tidewater and far upper tributaries. 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