Big Creek Snag Fest

[Pitch Pocket]

Big Creek is full of tules right now. There are about 25 guys on the bridge “fishing” buzz bombs. It looks like the foul to fair hook ratio is about 70/30. It is a snag fest out there. Is this sport fishing or what?

[Torchman]

Big Creek is now CLOSED, but I have tugged on some of those Tules in the last couple of weeks!! Last weekend, the Hatchery was a "snagfest"....Nothing INTENTIONAL, that I saw, but put 20 people in one small hole....The fish spook, start racing around, and voila!!!! "Someone" gets "bit"!!!! Out of the mayhem, "somewhere downstream", I was able to find quite a few willing biters...NOTHING to KEEP, but getting into a wrassling match with a 30# fish after work is ALWAYS fun!! :-) Top THIS!! I watched some Gomer in Orvis waders trying to "fish" a long riffle with NOTHING but a landing net!!! For TULES, for goodness sakes!!!
[img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[ 09-02-2001: Message edited by: Torchman ]

[urb]

That isn't fishing, its just a bunch of idiots that don't know any better.

[Silent Lucidity]

Actually from what I understand fishing below the bridge on down to the mouth is open. It's just above the bridge that is closed.

With the number of fish that are going up the creek right now (locals figure it's the best since at least the late 70's) why not reopen it? The hatchery will get their escapement numbers easily (if they don't already) and the rest will go to cat food factories at only a few pennies per pound (eggs and all). Heck, open it below the hatchery for snagging. Let's harvest them instead of letting them pitchfork them.

A few years back a buddy of mine was fishing below the hatchery and they were catching salmon tails. The rest of the fish was gone, just the tails. The hatchery was full, so to keep the fish from coming in they were cutting their tails off. True story! [img]images/icons/mad.gif[/img]

That's a lot of wasted fish in there. Harvest them.

[SandyRiverFisher]

As far as chopping fish's tails off to keep them from going into the hatchery, I dont quite buy it. Ive seen ODFW biologist doing studies on the Salmon river where they cut the tails off of salmon carcasses while taking a census on a stretch of the river. By chopping the tails off of the already dead salmon they insured that they didn't confuse the already counted fish with those that spawned and died later before they went back to count again. Could this be what was going on in Big Creek?

[Silent Lucidity]

Possible....