Document text
OCEAN OUTLOOK COASTWIDE: Good ocean conditions are forecast through the weekend, which has been rare of late. Look for 5-knot winds and 2-foot wind waves today, followed Saturday by winds up to 10 knots and a mixed swell of about 3 feet. Sunday will see much of the same as Saturday. The marine aggregate rockfish daily limit for bottomfishers has dropped from five fish to four for the remainder of 2018. The cabezon quota has been reached, so cabezon are off the table through the rest of the year and must be released unharmed. Rockfish angling is open only inside the 30-fathom line through the rest of the month. A descending device to help release rockfish caught in deeper water is mandatory on all boats, but only one per boat is required. Lingcod fishing is very good when anglers can get out, particularly out of Brookings. This weekend should be very good for lings. Focus on kelp beds and position your boat behind rocks to shield from the wind when it kicks up. The ocean chinook salmon season is closed on the South Coast. Look for good surfperch fishing once the waves subside. Lots of surfperch are in the Rogue River mouth, but the open beaches have been better when winds cooperate. That’s not likely this weekend. Fish with Berkley Gulp sand worms or sandshrimp, as well as lug worms. Recreational crabbing is open coastwide, and ocean and dock crabbing in the Charleston area is improving. A series of early morning minus tides continues today with the best tide peaking at minus-1 foot early Saturday. Razor clamming is open in a small area around Coos Bay. Bay clamming is open along the coast but the recreational harvest of mussels is closed from the Coquille River’s South Jetty to the California border. Before digging, check the shellfish hotline at 1-800-448-2474 before digging. LAKE OUTLOOK AGATE: Some perch and bass fishing is occurring on cooler days. Pressure is light because the water is so low at just 17 percent full. Some fishing off the dam is happening for bass and perch but little else. Wind-drift worms with light weight or just a swivel, or cast small spinners or flies. No gas motors are allowed. Electric trolling motors are OK. The park closes at dusk. APPLEGATE: The lake is down to almost 57 feet from full and dropping quickly thanks to precious little inflow. Not much angling activity at the lake, with most around the Hart-Tish and French Gulch boat ramps. Smallmouth bass fishing is good for those casting crankbaits toward rocky points. Slow trolling could be good for trout, and still-fishing in the French Gulch cove with PowerBait should be good. The surface temperature has been hovering around 75 degrees lately. Hart-Tish Park is closed for the season even though the ramp remains usable, but the Copper Ramp is viable and the French Gulch ramp also is open. DIAMOND: Trout fishing is picking up again with cooler evenings. Most of the action remains on the south end with worms under bobbers in about 15 feet of water. Find the leader depth to get 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. Still-fishers and fly-fishers working the south side, the shrimp beds and the old cheese hole have done OK this week but not as well as last month. Fly-fishers can use chironomid flies stripped slowly in the bottom half of the water column. All tiger trout must be released unharmed. EMIGRANT: The lake is down to 17 percent full. Some early morning and evening bass fishing can be good with plastic worms and crankbaits but there is not a lot of structure out there now. Trout action is very slow. The county boat ramp is open during daylight hours. EXPO: Trout fishing is slow amid hot water conditions and a dearth of fish. FISH: The lake is dropping fast and is down to 17 percent full, leaving the Forest Service ramp inoperable and close to de-watering the resort’s rock ramp. Water quality has improved a little but some algae remains and the water quality is somewhat poor. However, those fishing from shore or from kayaks or float tubes are doing well for trout, particularly near submerged springs. Use streamer flies and small Rapala plugs that look like tui chubs. The plugs will excite the tiger trout, which are growing quite large. HOWARD PRAIRIE: Fishing is good for rainbow trout for still-fishers in deeper water near the dam with PowerBait, but warm water has the trout less active. Access to the gravel ramp near the dam will reopen Sept. 17, and look for improved fishing along the dam’s face. The lake was listed Thursday at 40 percent full. HYATT: Access is very poor with no workable ramps because the lake is down to 9 percent full, and boat access is limited to kayaks, canoes, driftboats launched off the shore or cartoppers that can be carried to the water. The few people trying are doing well trolling and still-fishing for trout near the dam and along the creek channel. 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: Stewart State Park and the marina are open, but U.S. Army Corps of Engineers facilities are closed due to wildfires. Bank access around the dam and the Takelma ramp are also closed. Most of the action, however, is fishing out of boats in the lower 20 percent of the lake. The lake is down to more than 45 feet from full, but outflows are dropping. WILLOW: The lake was stocked in late summer with 5,000 legal-sized rainbow trout and 1,500 larger trout. Evening trout fishing has been best, while bass fishing is good early in the day. SELMAC: Bass fishing is fair amid warm water conditions. RIVER OUTLOOK ROGUE: The lower Rogue Bay has seen three straight days of excellent fishing heading into this weekend for both chinook and coho while the middle Rogue is starting to heat up for fall chinook and some summer steelhead. The upper Rogue is flies-only now, and catches are a bit slow for summers but good for cutthroat trout. The best bet remains the lower Rogue bay, and this looks like an excellent weekend to do it. Light winds are forecast, and there are lots of fish in the bay. Anglers were averaging two-plus fish during a hot mid-week bite, with a mix of fish about 14 pounds and another group in the mid-20s. Fish have been biting best early in the fog and on the incoming tides, but some outgoing tides have been solid. Cohos are starting to show up in the catch, including some hatchery fish. Troll anchovies with a variety of blade colors. Green-on-green and chartreuse-and-green are good bets, with some decent catches coming on bladeless anchovies. The two-rod validation in tidewater has ended and anglers are back to using just one rod per licensed angler. 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. The upper Rogue above the Fishers Ferry boat ramp is open for flies only through October, and early catches have been somewhat slow. Water releases from Lost Creek dam this weekend won’t help that. The Corps beginning today will start walking flows down from 1,850 cubic feet per second to 1,600 cfs by Sunday morning. Smoke continues to be an issue at times in the Shady Cove and Eagle Point areas. Check the DEQ smoke report for Shady Cove before going. Swinging large streamers should be best until the end of September until the water cools. Black, blue and purple are great colors, particularly in combinations. Nymphing with prince nymphs and single egg flies also will be popular, particularly on overcast days. Molded plastic eggs aren’t flies. Fishing with spinning rods and plastic floats should be good in the deeper runs. No added weights or attachments are allowed. Upper Rogue summer steelhead migration has slowed, with just 42 new steelhead collected this week at Cole Rivers Hatchery. The 1,419 fish counted so far is ahead of the 10-year running average, but not by much. Also, the counts-to-date are now lagging behind the past two years. Flows at Dodge Bridge Thursday were at 2,012 cfs and dropping. Flows at the old Gold Ray Dam site were likewise at 2,117 cfs Thursday and dropping. In the middle Rogue, bank anglers are starting to see fall chinook at the mouth of the Applegate River and driftboaters are finding chinook in classic spots like Taylor Creek Canyon, but the pikeminnow are thick there. Cast roe or beads or a combination of them from the banks and roe-sandshrimp combinations from boats.. Anglers using plugs are hitting some summer steelhead and occasional fall chinook 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. Bear Camp Road remains closed again. In the far upper Rogue, trout are stocked weekly at places such as Union Creek Campground, and fishing for them is consistently good with worms and single salmon eggs. 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: The river is open to trout angling, and sea-run cutthroat trout should be present in the lower river and estuary. NORTH UMPQUA: Steelhead fishing is slow. Angling closes at 2 p.m. daily to protect wild summer steelhead threatened by low and warm conditions.