Oregon City Fishing Report

[Bait O' Eggs]

I have drug my self out of bed early every day for almost 2 weeks. I have been fishing from a little after 6AM to 7:40AM. I can count the number of fish I have seen caught on one hand in the last 2 weeks. I saw one little springer caught yesterday and none today. If it wasnt for the 3 I saw caught saturday (fished till about 10AM) the numbers would be even more pathetic. 3 of the 5 fish I have seen have been steelhead. http://www.ifish.net/forum/images/graemlins/frown.gif

I dont know if the bite is coming on better in the later day, but there has been absoutely no early morning bite. My fishing has been between the mouth of the Clackamas and the Falls.

Anybody fishing this weekend might think about somewhere more productive. I am starting to get discouraged fishing low water, with no current, and no fish.

[This message has been edited by Bait O' Eggs (edited 03-08-2001).]

[Hoosier Daddy]

BOE, how many other boaters do you have to deal with from 6-7:40?? I'm thinking about trying the same thing myself next week.

[Bait O' Eggs]

From mouth of clackamas to 205 bridge (garbage hole area) I would say it averages about a dozen boats. Most of them hog lined.

From 205 bridge to Oregon City bridge it ranges from about 5 today to about 12 yesterday, probably see about 8 or 10 average.

From Oregon City bridge to Falls only 1 or 2 boats. This is where I usually start off and work my way down the river.

[M.G]

Maybe the river cooled down.Plus the lousy gillnetter's just got through.There's alot of steelhead around.

[Killertraylor]

Lousy Gillnetters? They get 6000 springers total of the 600,000 plus that come through the mouth of the Columbia. I have a friend who does this and he got 8 last time out and was pretty happy! I find that most people have a misguided perception regarding gillnetting - they catch an incredibly small percentage of the fish compared to sportfishermen and yet they get blasted for working for a living. Sorry - had to vent a little!

[Rippenlips]

I've gillneted once and they get a hell of a lot more than six fish Killertraylor! We got 380 sturgeon in one pull of the net and then had to through them all back because it wasn't sturgeon season. The next day we filled the bottom of the boat 2 feet deep with salmon. I haven't gone again! Maybe your friend hasn't been doing it long enough.

[Trick]

6000 reported fish.....whats the true number. If he's happy with only 8 fish on a trip, then how the hell can you make a living at it and what's the point?

[boater]

gillnetting salmon for a living in washington, you have got to be kidding, if thats all these netters did they wouldnt come close to getting enough hours for unemployment for the rest of the year. these guys have jobs and i would bet that alot of them have good jobs and can show a great loss on there income tax for there boat and licence.

[Killertraylor]

Actually, my friend makes about $250,000 a year crabbing and another $150,000 to $200,000 a year fishing Bristol bay for Reds. He gillnets for both sturgeon and Salmon for fun and he and his dad are two of the better fishermen I know. Rippenlips - if you truly have gillnetted before, you know that the fish cops are always at the dock when they have to turn in their catch at the end of the opener. The guys I know don't cheat - all fish are reported by the cannery they sell to. I've gillnetted 3 times with him during one of the 3 days each year they get to sturgeon fish - we did very well each time, but never got over 100 keeper sturgeon (they have to be between 4 and 5 feet for whites and I think between 4 and 5 1/2 feet for greens) We cought less than 25 "shorts" and all were released unharmed. The last time we gillnetted for sturgeon, Butch Smith from Coho charters limited his whole boat by 9:00 a.m. just 3 hours after the gillnetters pulled their nets out - it hardly harms the sturgeon fishery. There must be a few gillnetters who are doing all right for springers because they will meet the 6000 fish quota, and there are very few gillnet boats who do it - most of them fish Alaska in the summer and crab also - I didn't mean to imply that they only made their living gillnetting for springers. I'm an avid sport fisherman like the rest of you and I just get tired of the misperception about gillnetting - I think if most of you tried it on the mouth of the Columbia you'd see how difficult it was and how few fish most of them really get compared to us sports - most of the people who are truly informed about gillnetting know that the true threat to sportfishing is the Native American treaty rights. Just trying to do my part to educate as I'll bet 90% of people who badmouth gillnetting know nothing about it.

[Beer Waggin]

Oh Killer. No offense, but you may have bitten off a little more than you can chew. This was probably not the best place to show your support of gillnetters. I'm not an expert on the situation, but I am a sportfisher, and I know they have an impact on the amount of fish we catch. I also know that gillnetters are allowed to keep the native fish that we so desperately need up river spawning.

[AngleThis]

Nevermind all the fish gillnets catch... its all the ones they DONT catch, or have to throw back..that DIE, after beating the odds, and for NO good reason reason.

DC

[Killertraylor]

I agree, NorRivDave, this is probably not the best place to show my support for gillnetting. I just get so sick of reading posts from uninformed people who don't know anything about gillnetting except what they see on tv happening in the Atlantic Ocean. I'm not trying to make friends, just trying clear up the misconceptions - gillnetting in the Columbia is so tightly regulated that it doesn't harm our fishing at all - just gives stubborn closed minded sportfishermen another thing to ***** about when they don't catch fish...Peace, my North River brother.

[Gizmo Man]

KT:What do you mean it doesn't harm our fish at all. Go down to the river and watch all the dead steelhead floaters that go by when those curtains of death are in.

Why is it that 65% of the fish netted in the last 2 weeks have been unclipped. No impact on the run at all.

Those nets that do no harm are responsible for the decline in the ave. size of coho. This is documented. The nets take the largest fish allowing only the smaller fish to pass through them. Now we have smaller fish spawning.

Good luck trying to tell us they do harm.

Giz...

[garyk]

Sorry Killer, hate to see someone, and a new person at that, get flamed, but you're defending the indefensible.

Ocean trollers have to use barbless hooks, sport anglers can only keep clipped-fins, then this handful of holdovers comes in and drop nets that kill indesciminately.

The commercial gillnetting on the Columbia should have been banned with fishwheels.

You can't even defend it economically. A sport-caught fish have a value of something over a thousand dollars to the state economy. At $5 a pound that salmon is worth only about $100 in a gillnet fishery.

It would make more economic sense to pay gillnetters NOT to fish.

[Rippenlips]

I don't want to start anything but the one time I went gillnetting, I don't think to many of the fish lived when we threw them back. The Sturgeon were bright red and didn't move. I haven't seen to many fish survive that looked like that.

[Predator Dawg]

"doesn't harm our fish at all" that is plain and simple ignorance.

Glad to hear your friends make so much money ****** a PUBLIC resource.

...and no, I'm not ******** about it, I'm ****** about it.

[Killertraylor]

No need to apologize, guys. I'm content with agreeing to disagree - and because I know the truth, I'm interested in reading what your perception of gillnetting is. I saw my gillnet friend this weekend and he's confident they ended up with less than 5000 fish of the 6000 fish quota. For example, there were only 3 boats that gillnetted out of Ilwaco this year, he knows all 3 of the gillnetters and they cought a total of 9 fish and Ilwaco was credited with 40 fish against the quota. He cought 35 for the season, his dad 41. His dad sold 5 of them to private people, he sold one. The rest went to the cannery and were reported. Almost all of the fish with adipose fins were 5 year old fish that were just unclipped Willamette river hatchery fish - not natives. I've never been too confident that the guys who clip adipose fins get more than 80% anyway. And, we've had hatcheries on coastal rivers for 80 plus years now in Oregon - meaning that many of our "wild" fish are actually hatchery fish. Like I said, this debate will go on forever when you get a bunch of stubborn fishermen together. I guess I'm just one of those semi-open minded people who has seen firsthand the effects of gillnetting and I'm convinced that taking 5000-6000 fish from the 600,000+ Spring Chinook coming over the Columbia River bar doesn't harm our sportfishery one bit. Flame on - or be like me and agree to disagree.