With the ocean opening up tomorrow who is going where to prospect for fish. I for one will be nudging the boat north up towards Long Beach looking for those early chinook that like to hang around the surf edge.
Also made it out on the 16th over a rough bar. Got into slow but steady action SW of the CR but they were ALL NATIVE. Had 12 fish to the boat to keep 2. Worst clip ratio I can remeber. Fun day, silvers are BIG now
Saw Coho charter and two others coming into Ilwaco at 3:15. To me thats pretty slow fishing. Watched the crew coming off the Coho king today with only one fish per person.
Any reports for this weekend? Heading out tomorrow morning and was hoping for some intel given the free fishing weekend.
Any folks fishing around CR the last few days?
We got our 6 at the 400 foot line had to work for them and lots with too many fins, the fish where the fleet was west of the CR were barely 16 inches so we went west and found some with size and no fins but was very a long day!
Sounds about right, I checked my gps and we were about 18mi out yesterday. Makes me with I had just took my tuna gear and gone another 10-15 mi for a better meat payout.
Natives seem to be winning the hook ups this year. Why the shortage of hatchery hits is still a guess. Sea temps have been high and I have to wonder if they're sensitive to that or the moon phase or both. My visit with NVS this morning had interesting temperature variations which goes along with reports the salmon are out in the cooler pockets of deep water. Forage has to be out there too I suspect.
I'm prepared for an epic B run and can hardly wait. The longer they wait outside and get fat the better the fishing will be in a few more weeks, maybe a month.
I hope I'm not disappointed with forcasted returns being bunk. Hatchery fish usually come in before natives and.... well... that's not been the case SO FAR! They gotta come, it's just a matter of when. :lurk:
I know this has been discussed already, and I'm mostly optimistic that those on here aren't as problematic for this as those I'm seeing on the water. But the little I fished around the fleet out there, I saw way too many wild fish mishandled and turned in to floaters. Saw one of those bigger cabin cruisers that sits way off the water in the stern net a fish, haul it all the way up to the deck, and take well over a minute of it flopping/rolling on the rail in the net before they tossed it overboard to the birds. Can't stand seeing that stuff. I saw multiple floaters being pecked at by the birds while we fished.
Handle these fish as little as possible. Coho are remarkably easy to kill by handling even a little bit, especially due to their habits of thrashing and rolling.
I hate to be the Debbie downer on the coho but something isn’t quite adding up in my mind. Shouldn’t we be seeing absolutely epic coho fishing off the CR as the fish stage to come in? Instead it sounds like scrath fishing with mostly non limits and some really really tiny salmon. I still see pictures of 3-4 pound cohos all around the web and guide pages. Yes I get that the water is too warm maybe but the whales and birds seem to indicate plenty of food. Many ocean fishermen and experiences ones are saying the fish at other Oregon ports have disappeared. Sure there are some exceptions but lots of non limits. I hope very much I am wrong. I want to catch some of these and don’t have an ocean boat. Maybe they are still coming?
I guess I am only stating the obvious from the recent reports, but perhaps the coho are staging or feeding much further out than is usually the case because they are finding better conditions out there than at the usual near shore waters.
Perhaps the warm water is effecting the salmons migration pattern? it's been a couple decades since I fished off the Col, back than buoy 10 to buoy 2 was as far as you needed to travel, never did we go 10+ miles to find salmon, the 3 days we fished for salmon 8-7, 8-9 & 8-10 each day we went further & further to find salmon, should of been the other way around, coho size is a bit of a mystery for sure, as they should be putting on a pound every 2 week, they are a little bigger than at the start of the season, but not as much as expected, it's been a great but strange year overall.
The Coho are out just as people are saying a long ways off shore. If you are willing to venture out further you will find them in decent numbers. The rule of thumb for us has been if your catching a majority of natives then move away from that area. Check the size of the eggs in the Coho and they are no where near enough ready to come into the river. Good luck out there.
We were out there today till late afternoon. Like everyone said, its work to get the fish. We almost limited out; for the 4 of us, we were a couple shy...several natives we had to release and several lost. But we were 6 miles West of the CR. Around the CR we were catching very small fish and the ones we hooked were natives. We had to move farther west to get into hatchery fish and they were bigger.
Water is kind of warm out there too; 66 degrees 5 miles west of CR. I don't recall it being that warm there...
The quota numbers were just posted today. We've caught 59% of the quota for silvers and 49% of the guideline for chinook. We only burned through 8% of the silver quota in the most recent week (8/12 - 18), compared to 14% in the previous week. I think it's looking good for a complete season this year.
I bet the quota would be 100% filled at a minimum if they actually checked the fish and reported them when they came in. 59% is absolutely a BS number! Each time I’ve cane into the dock 30+ fish go unchecked and that’s just from the boats that are at the dock st that given time. Imagine how many hundreds or thousands are not checked.
I moor in Chinook and have seen up to 2 checkers working those docks at the same time. I have been checked but I mainly fish the river. I remember when I moored in Ilwaco and never got checked the whole season
Friends from Kennewick down 3 pob. Took a look at the bar crossed at about 6:30. Started at buoy 2 with 1 missed strike. Moved to buoy 3 trolling west found a rip 2 keepers in the box. We would run north troll south along the rip finished with a limit of salmon with 1 16 lb chinook in the mix. Only released a couple of wild fish. Back to the dock about 12:30 before the wind really got going. Fun times were had by all. We fished buoy 10 together 35 years ago camping at the state park outside Illwaco. Awesome weekend.
Imagine how much the licensing and other fees would go up if they hired enough people to physically count every fish on every boat and every bank pole. Plus, it would cause an even bigger jam up at the boat ramps and docks if every fisherman had to wait to be checked before getting out of the way. Averaging is fine by me and math can actuality be pretty accurate.
Back to the reports. Wen out Saturday. Crossed the bar about 630 am. Fished until 2pm. 5 silvers kept. 23 total caught. Herring and super baits were the ticket. Fished 3 rods. 17,23,25 on the counters with divers. All got bit. Fished in front of Long Beach by the dogs where the kite festival was going on!!!
We were out on Saturday 8/24 with 2 on board. Crossed the bar at 6:30 and up to Long Beach around N46 23 in 30' to 40' of water trolling herring behind a fish flash (one green and the other red). Fished around and north up to about N46 28 (farther than we usually need to go) where between 10am and 11:15 we got our 2 Cohos and 2 Kings. The Cohos were 6# to 8# and the Kings were 14# and 17#. The Red Fish Flash seemed to be better this day as it caught both Kings and one of the Cohos. Also interesting was that the leader was shorter than usual as we fished the river the prior week where I used a 3' leader instead of the usual 5' to 6' leader...
The only other action was an early soft bite that chewed a herring and a Thresher Shark that took his tax bill out of our leader. All in all a very nice day for us.
We were out on Saturday 8/24 with 2 on board. Crossed the bar at 6:30 and up to Long Beach around N46 23 in 30' to 40' of water trolling herring behind a fish flash (one green and the other red). Fished around and north up to about N46 28 (farther than we usually need to go) where between 10am and 11:15 we got our 2 Cohos and 2 Kings. The Cohos were 6# to 8# and the Kings were 14# and 17#. The Red Fish Flash seemed to be better this day as it caught both Kings and one of the Cohos. Also interesting was that the leader was shorter than usual as we fished the river the prior week where I used a 3' leader instead of the usual 5' to 6' leader...
The only other action was an early soft bite that chewed a herring and a Thresher Shark that took his tax bill out of our leader. All in all a very nice day for us.
Good report. You did well[emoji106]. A lot boats where searching and searching. Pretty hard to stay on fish IMO this year. We fished Long Beach off condo’s and found some then moved outside near buoy 1. Ended up with 11 fish on and landed 7 for 2 rods. Delta divers and anchovies but one rig had a rogue style spinner ahead of the bait. It fished well. 25’ to 30’ on the counter. Only kept 2 coho. The natives released where pretty nice coho. Also saw another shark. Lots of sharks this year. !
The estimation will not be necessary after next year so it is a mute point, with the online license and tags, they will immediately know who took what kind of salmon, halibut, and sturgeon size and from where
3 pob 2 hatchery coho kept lost one chinook turned 3 wilds turned lose north of the condos 70 to 25 feet of water
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Ask a question
Ask a question
IFish Fishing Forum
6.9M posts
80.7K members
Since 2000
A forum community dedicated to anglers and fishing enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about safety, gear, tackle, tips, tricks, reviews, reports, accessories, classifieds, and more!