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Volume 17 • Issue 8
PUBLISHER
James R. Baker
EDITOR
Andy “nice turns of phrase” Walgamott
THIS ISSUE’S CONTRIBUTORS
Dave Anderson, Scott Haugen, David Johnson, MD Johnson, Randy King, Scott McCorquodale, Sara Potter, Buzz Ramsey, Bob Rees, Troy Rodakowski, Dave Workman, Mike Wright, Mark Yuasa
GENERAL MANAGER
John Rusnak
SALES MANAGER
Paul Yarnold
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES
Janene Mukai, Gabriel Patel
DESIGNERS
Kha Miner, Gabrielle Pangilinan
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT
Emily Baker
OFFICE MANAGER/COPY EDITOR
Katie Aumann
INFORMATION SYSTEMS MANAGER
Lois Sanborn
WEBMASTER/DIGITAL STRATEGIST
Jon Hines
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CORRESPONDENCE
Email letters, articles/queries, photos, etc., to awalgamott@media-inc.com.
ON THE COVER
Gordie Walling holds a black rockfish caught off the North Jetty at the mouth of the Columbia River. His brother-in-law MD Johnson shares rigs, tips and tricks, landing techniques and other advice for safely fishing from the rocks on page 97.
(JULIE JOHNSON)
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127 TAGGING LATE-SEASON TOMS
Hold the phone – there are still weeks of spring turkey season left! So what sort of play should gobbler gunners make in May? David Johnson has the adjustments to make in response to changing tom and hen behavior. And as long as you’re in the woods, bring a paper bag –there’s forest food at your feet to forage for: morel mushrooms!
71 OREGON OFFERS PLENTIFUL MAY FISHERIES
Ack! From the briny blue to the high desert, there’s almost too much to fish for in the Beaver State this month. But Bob Rees is up to the task of breaking down May’s best angling bets!
85 A NORTH IDAHO GEM
Abused by logging and mining activity in past decades, North Idaho’s North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River is rebounding and today is a destination fishery for lots of westslope cutthroat.
89 ‘SPOT’ ON ADVICE FOR PUGET SOUND SHRIMPERS
Mark Yuasa previews the highly anticipated spot shrimp season and shares gear, bait and tips to make the most of it!
105 GET YOUR BUTT OUT FOR BASS! Springers, shmringers – there’s lots more to be caught in the greater Willamette Valley in May and June than just salmon. Troy Rodakowski shares his favorite bass waters and how to fish ’em!
(DAVID JOHNSON)
54 FOR THE LOVE OF THE TUG
All I Am Saying Is Give Shad A Chance
After a bad shad fishing experience, Sara gave up on the abundant species for years, but helping a local guide catch some for bait clued her into “the maddest little fish I have ever met!” Hop aboard with the fam for a shad-tastic tutorial that shows the fishery’s also great training for landing salmon!
COLUMNS
63 BUZZ RAMSEY Not Too Early To Chase Summer-runs
The calendar says spring and “springer season,” but that doesn’t mean summer-run steelhead can’t be caught. Buzz sets you up for success on Lower Columbia tribs with stocking stats and great setups for getting after early-arriving chromers.
75 CONFESSIONS OF A NEWB How I Became A 3.5 Soft Tie Guy
Leave it to the editor to figure out a way to lose four spring Chinook in a row on his new home waters. Rather than shoot for a fifth with his fishy though clearly fallible setup, he launched himself into converting from wire to 3.5 soft spinners, a fun process that also proved pretty productive for springers and fall kings!
97 OUTDOOR MD Reader Mailbag, Jetty Edition
True, the initials MD in MD Johnson’s name do not denote any medical expertise whatsoever, but our practitioner of all things outdoors does have a prescription for the reader who asked for bottomfish tackle recommendations for the jetty and the best ways to land lings and sea bass while fishing safely from the unforgiving rocks.
109 CHEF IN THE WILD Time To See What I Can Do With A Princess Pole
Elsa might have been trilling “Let it go, let it go” to Chef Randy that day on the water, but there was no way he was going to release the fat crappie he was landing on that Frozen-themed rod – especially when he needed fixin’s for a fab fish fry recipe!
135 GUN DOG Picking A Hunting Dog That’s Right For You, Part I of II
It might not seem as momentous a decision as, say, having kids, but getting a gun dog shouldn’t be taken lightly. In the first of a two-part series, Scott takes a look at what to consider before jumping into the long-term committment.
141 ON TARGET Long-Range Handgun Event Underscores Challenge for Fall
Each spring, Dave W. packs up his hunting handguns and heads east for the annual Elmer Keith long-range shoot. It’s part practice for deer season and part celebration of a Washington handgunning pioneer and close-knit community. As Dave drives us down memory lane, he also shares advice you can use this fall!
147 BECOMING A HUNTER Outdoor Closet Cleanout
Spring cleaning isn’t just for the home – it is also the perfect time to take inventory of your hunting and fishing gear. Dave A. takes a no-holds-barred look at what to hold onto, what to give away, and what to sell.
(SARA POTTER)
(B. BERRY)
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Westport waters never cease to surprise—even the saltiest of fishermen and women—and offer far more than just fresh table fare.
THE EDITOR’S NOTE
Claire Loebs Davis is big mad she didn’t get her way with new Governor Bob Ferguson like she was used to with Jay Inslee. Last month, Ferguson returned Jim Anderson and Molly Linville to the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission, as well as appointed Victor Garcia to the citizen panel that oversees state Department of Fish and Wildlife policy. But Davis, who heads up Washington Wildlife First, chief among the groups trying to “reform” state critter management these past few years via strategic Inslee appointments and other avenues, vowed to try and block them through the Senate confirmation process and get her guy, Tim Ragen, the retired US marine mammal director, back on the commission.
Only problem for her: Senators have had slightly more pressing business in Olympia of late, so see you in 2026, and meanwhile the trio can continue to serve on the commission.
THE GOOD NEWS came as we worked on our 200th issue of Northwest Sportsman, and it was cheered by sportsmen’s and tribal interests.
The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation was “pleasantly surprised” by Anderson and Linville’s appointments and “optimistic” that Garcia, a longtime educator and outdoorsman originally from Grays Harbor County, “will prove to be a reasonable and balanced presence on the commission.” The state chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers termed Anderson and Linville “outstanding stewards of our state’s wildlife management, and we are thrilled to see them return to their roles.” The American Sportfishing Association was“encouraged”by the trio’s appointment, adding, “Their diverse expertise and commitment to conservation are vital for sustainable fisheries management and supporting Washington’s robust recreational fishing industry.” And the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission thanked Ferguson and staff “for doing the right thing to keep fishers from having to sit on the banks and watch the fish swim by.”
For former Commissioner Kim Thorburn of Spokane, the appointments confirmed Ferguson was taking the Ruckelshaus Center’s recent report on fish and wildlife governance dysfunction “very seriously.” Indeed, the governor indicated the report, which “raised several concerns about the commission, including the appointment process,” weighed on his mind, so he launched an “extensive interview process, utilizing a diverse interview panel” to vet candidates, a welcome change from Inslee’s days, which were more about ideology than balance and good governance.
Thank you, Governor. NWIFC, a recreational-tribal coalition and sportsmen’s organizations and groups also deserve thanks for advocating for the turn-around from what might have been.
CRY NOT FOR Davis and the reformists, for they are the victims of their own overreach. The earthquake in fish and wildlife management they attempted in Washington created a tsunami, all right, one that washed their guy out to sea. The irony is that it was they who spurred the Ruckelshaus report. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. After all the outsized dysfunction and disruption this small group has sown, heartburn and strife caused, Ferguson put the interests of Washington’s wildlife first, not Washington Wildlife First’s. –Andy Walgamott
‘Old Toilet Seat Head’ And Other Washington Elk I’ve
Known
Retired wildlife researcher’s new book recounts decades spent studying wapiti and other Evergreen State critters for state, tribes and feds.
Elk are a curious species to study, none more so than those that colonized the Arid Lands Ecology Reserve near the Hanford Site in desert-like Southcentral Washington starting in the 1970s. Conventional wisdom stated they shouldn’t live year-round in that environment, but as a grad student, Scott McCorquodale –here decades later in a flight suit – studied how they were making a go of it, “groundbreaking work at the time.” The herd persists to this day and numbers around 2,000 animals. (SCOTT MCCORQUODALE)
Editor’s note: The following is excerpted with permission from the book Chasing Wildlife Secrets: A Biologist’s Journey by Scott McCorquodale (Washington State University Press, 2025), available at bookstores and at wsupress.wsu. edu/product/chasing-wildlife-secrets.
By Scott McCorquodale
In every elk study I led, we sought to track the movements and determine fates of individual elk for a variety of reasons. That required telemetry collars, and deploying telemetry collars required capturing elk. Marked elk facilitated meeting a host of objectives across our diverse research projects. Although we captured many elk by helicopter darting, we also used other methods. We trapped elk in panel traps, in large clover traps, by using helicopters to drive them into corral traps and processing them in livestock squeeze chutes, and we ground-darted free-ranging elk. My teams were skilled at capturing elk using whatever method seemed most likely to succeed and be safest for the animals. Our toolbox contained an array of tools, and we knew how to use them all quite well.
Sometimes my research had broad objectives. When elk permanently colonized the shrub-steppe of the Columbia Basin on the Arid Lands Ecology Reserve around 1972, it was big news. They weren’t supposed to be there, according to the prevailing knowledge about elk. No one knew anything about their strategy for living year-round in a desert. My master’s thesis research – described in the chapter “Twenty-seven Elk” – was a broad study of behavior and natural history of this unusual elk group. It was groundbreaking work at the time.
My elk research on the Yakama Reservation – work that supported my doctoral degree from the University of Montana – had multiple objectives. I was defining movement patterns and migration behavior, estimating survival of adult elk, quantifying seasonal habitat selection, and developing a new tool for estimating elk abundance from sample aerial counts in
winter. I was working on reservation elk populations that had never been studied. Everything we learned was new information.
Other projects had more narrowly defined objectives. One of my first projects for WDFW, in the Blue Mountains from 2003 to 2006, focused on estimating survival rates and mortality sources of adult and yearling bull elk and adult cow elk. The study came about in response to a dramatic uptick in elk poaching in the area.
While leading the Blue Mountains elk research, I also led another large WDFW research project on the eastern slopes of the Cascades near Yakima. That project focused on defining cow elk movements and habitat selection and understanding the body condition dynamics of these elk, as driven by prevailing habitat conditions and their effects on elk nutrition. It was a big, complex, nearly five-year project done in partnership with the US Forest Service and elk nutrition experts John and Rachel Cook of the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement.
IN 2005, WE initiated a new research project in northwestern Washington – the
Skagit and Nooksack River country. This elk population was smaller than most in the state and had declined substantially in the 1990s. Both tribal and state-managed elk hunting was closed down in hope of increasing elk numbers. To promote recovery, we also captured elk at Mount St. Helens and moved them to the area in fall 2003 and 2005. I was in the helicopter during those drive trap operations.
There was no rigorous approach available to estimate elk numbers in the Nooksack. No one knew how many elk there were or whether the numbers were increasing in response to actions designed to put more elk on the landscape. There had never been a solid formal estimate of Nooksack elk numbers when we started our work in 2005.
The Nooksack project focused on developing a new mathematical approach that could provide a statistically valid estimate of elk abundance. To obtain defensible population estimates, we developed a new sightability correction model and a mark-resight model application. Mark-resight models use probability estimates of resighting collared animals known to be in an area during a survey to account for both marked and unmarked animals that go unseen during aerial surveys. It was challenging,
interesting, and productive work. This was a tough place to capture the study animals we needed for a successful outcome, but we caught them. It was a collaborative project. I led the work, but I worked closely with local WDFW biologists and biologists from the Point Elliott Treaty tribes. By 2007, we were generating reliable population estimates and providing evidence that the population was indeed increasing. Today, Nooksack elk are thriving and our tools are still in use.
THE 1980 ERUPTION of Mount St. Helens took me to southwestern Washington to study elk twice, twenty-seven years apart. The local cataclysm eradicated an entire generation of elk over a large swath of southwestern Washington. By 1982, elk –always great colonizers – had dispersed from a larger landscape around the blast zone to begin repopulating the range of the former elk herd. The University of Washington was studying this phenomenon. Doctoral student Evelyn Merrill, my former UW officemate, was leading the field work. Having just arrived from Montana as a new graduate student, I was ready to start my work on the shrub-steppe elk colonizers at the Hanford Site but had yet to receive my federal security clearance. Evie needed assistance, and I needed something to
McCorquodale (yellow helmet), famed pilot Jess Hagerman and another crewmember lift off in a doorless Jet Ranger helicopter during an elk-darting project in the Nooksack area of Northwest Washington. Choppers and their pilots proved invaluable to the author over the decades, though the missions also carry risks. Tragically, biologists McCorquodale has known have died in crashes during similar operations. (J. GAYDOS)
The author affixes a collar to a Westside elk. McCorquodale employed clover and panel traps and other devices to capture mule deer, bears and elk for various research projects across the decades. (B. BERRY)
do for a brief time to earn my university stipend, so I was deployed to southwestern Washington to help her.
Though I was in the field at Mount St. Helens only briefly that fall, I worked on the study long enough to appreciate the incredible process that was going on with elk recolonization. In the blast zone – where the eruption had pulverized previously existing forest and animal communities and that flush of nutrients had entered the soil as incredibly rich organic fertilizer – the ground was already greening out. For more than a decade after the eruption, the landscape was fertile, productive, and a wonderful place for elk to live. Evie went on to document this in her dissertation work while I returned to Hanford to start my own work with colonizing elk.
In 2009, I returned to Mount St. Helens to lead a new elk research project under much different circumstances. Things had changed a great deal in twenty-seven years. After the eruption, much of the landscape owned by private timber companies had been replanted with young trees, and a new forest began to develop. In the first few years after the eruption, the landscape was like a huge, productive clear-cut –great habitat for elk, and they prospered. But as the forest recovered, with the help of active reforestation, the forest canopy closed, and the productive forage layer began to decline. That trajectory had big consequences for elk.
By the early 2000s, episodes of high winter elk mortality began to occur – not every year, but often. That was unusual for elk – they are typically hardy animals. There was increasing evidence that too many elk were now trying to live on this landscape. The capacity for the land to meet the needs of the elk herd (in biologist jargon, the carrying capacity) had declined and been exceeded, and elk were dying from malnutrition. As in Nooksack, no formal estimates of elk abundance existed at Mount St. Helens – not in 2009 or prior. I was assigned the familiar job of leading research to explore elk nutritional status, estimate elk survival, and develop a defensible
approach to quantifying elk numbers.
There were many facets to the work we undertook in 2009. We eventually radiocollared 150 adult elk, all by helicopter darting. These elk gave us estimates of survival, pregnancy, and body fat, and those estimates formed the basis once again for deriving methods to generate formal estimates of elk abundance. I developed a new sightability correction model and a mark-resight application specific to Mount St. Helens elk.
The work lasted until 2012, and we met all our objectives. While our team was doing elk research, liberalized hunting harvests were reducing the elk density to push the elk population downward toward the new carrying capacity – unknown as it was. We developed a new population monitoring approach, as we had in Nooksack; quantified elk survival, productivity, and body fat dynamics; and gained valuable insights into drivers of winter mortality and juvenile elk survival.
OUR RESEARCH AT Mount St. Helens was successful, but managing elk on this landscape remains challenging because direct and indirect effects of weather, plant succession, and elk density intertwine.
Carrying capacity is not a fixed value; it varies in time and space. Reducing elk density should help, but there is always a time lag in the recovery of habitat under reduced herbivore grazing – an overgrazed plant community is damaged and takes time to heal. More recently, a new challenge for elk has occurred in southwestern Washington – the outbreak of a malady known as elk hoof disease. That is another story and a complex, ongoing issue.
As the work at Mount St. Helens wrapped up, I took on two new, consecutive projects on the same landscape. These were my last two extensive research efforts on elk. The study area for both was not far from home [in the Yakima Valley] –the neighboring LT Murray and Colockum Wildlife Areas, between Ellensburg and Wenatchee. The first was a study of adult cow elk, and the second was the bull study described at the start of this chapter. Both studies focused on movement behavior, especially migration timing and the proximity of core winter and summer ranges. We also sought to obtain good survival estimates for both genders of elk.
We captured and collared 110 adult cow elk in the first study – all received GPS-equipped radio collars. During the
bull project, we helicopter darted fifty-five branchantlered bulls – all of which received GPS collars. Both were multiyear projects. The collars generated a wealth of data, and we met our study objectives. Both efforts will contribute to informed management of Colockum country elk for years to come.
BY 2005, I’D been doing elk field research for over twenty years, and I thought I’d seen it all. But in late winter of that year, working on the multiyear elk study near Yakima, my crew and I had an I-didn’t-see-that-coming moment. A central feature of that work was recapturing adult female elk wearing radio collars at the beginning and end of each winter. We used a portable ultrasound and additional field measurements to estimate body fat levels of these elk both going into and coming out of winter. I was collaborating with ungulate nutrition experts John and Rachel Cook from La Grande, Oregon, who had pioneered field techniques to accurately estimate the body fat of live, wild elk. We started this work in 2003, and by 2005 our process was efficient – one might even say routine. We could easily process fifteen elk in a day, even on short winter days – everyone knew their jobs and did them well.
As usual, we were rolling through our recapture list of collared elk one winter day. We’d already had a couple good days – no surprises, great data, awesome weather. I was shooting [the dart gun] well, [pilot Jess Hagerman’s] flying was amazing, and the crew worked like a well-oiled machine. Midmorning, we had finished handling an elk and moved on to the next one on our list. We headed to her last known location in the steep canyon country on the north side of the Wenas Valley between Selah and Ellensburg.
My receiver was tuned to our target elk, but as we crossed one canyon and then
two more, we heard only the buzz of static coming through the intercom. No signal. Then, as Jess kept weaving through the terrain where we expected to find our quarry, we both heard it at the same time – the faintest “chirp, chirp, chirp….” “There! Got it!” Jess said. Pulling back on the stick, he flared the helicopter to a stationary hover, then waved the nose back and forth to get our bearing from the antenna on the aircraft’s nose. “That way,” Jess said as he pushed the cyclic forward again, and we sped off, tracking the strongest signal – the hunt was on. Redirecting a couple more times according to what the occasional nose wags told us, Jess was honing in, and the signal
“Though researchers studied elk intensively over the last few decades, I still found questions about them that were worth chasing. And chase them I did,” McCorquodale writes. This large bull was captured on the Yakama Nation’s Toppenish Creek Game Reserve. (SCOTT MCCORQUODALE)
was getting stronger. I was busy prepping in the back seat for the impending shoot. As we flew over another canyon, the signal was noticeably stronger and centered on the canyon when Jess swept a ten to two o’clock arc across the canyon with the Jet Ranger’s nose. “We got her now,” came Jess’s voice through my helmet’s earphones, and off we went. As we chased the signal up the canyon, the three of us onboard were now intently scanning the rolling landscape ahead and below, looking for the dark brown heads and yellow butts of elk. The higher we flew toward the ridgetop, the gentler the wrinkled landscape became, and there were no trees. “This will be perfect,” I thought. Slow
pitch – middle of the plate.
Suddenly, I saw them, a small herd of about twenty-five elk loping steadily up the hillside ahead – they knew we were coming now. “Right there, Jess – two o’clock,” I said. “Got ’em,” was Jess’s reply, “You ready?” “Ready,” I replied as I leaned out the doorway with the dart gun and Jess closed the gap between us and the little group. “You see her?” Jess asked. “There, left side, fourth from the back.”“Got her. Here we go,” Jess said as we started the run at our target animal with its visible white collar. The grass was a blur beneath us as we caught up to and passed the last elk in the group and then the next – they were running hard now, trying to evade the noisy thing above them. With each labored breath, the warm moist exhale turned to a visible mist around each elk’s muzzle in the frigid air. I could see our elk just ahead, trying to turn away from the helicopter to our right. Jess matched her moves with those of his own as he skillfully maneuvered to put her into my target zone – slightly ahead and to the right of his door.
“Almost, almost – here she comes,” I thought. Then there she was, right where I wanted her for the shot. I put my sightline on her left thigh, paused, and we sped past her. We flew right through the zone where I had a perfect shot, but I didn’t pull the trigger. As she disappeared behind us, Jess asked in a bewildered tone, “What do you think that was?” “Well, I’m pretty sure it was a toilet seat,” I said into my helmet mic, somewhat mystified. “Yeah, that’s what I thought it looked like, too,” Jess responded. Both of us were at a loss for words. We realized that the signal we’d been tracking did not come from the elk I put in the crosshairs a moment ago because it did not come from a radio collar around her neck. We were in uncharted territory here.
AS WE CIRCLED back around on the small group, Jess asked what I wanted to do. We could just go back to tracking and find the elk we were looking for, apparently somewhere just ahead on the same line as the group we first encountered coming
up the canyon. But we had all the gear needed to deploy new collars, which we did routinely. “Okay, let’s get her and take that thing off,” I told Jess. Immediately, without a word, he was back in chase mode as we closed on the group again. I leaned out and readied for the shot. A few minutes later, we watched our toilet seat elk stumbling along the hillside, walking a wobbly serpentine path with my dart dangling from her rear leg. She would be down soon.
As always, we had radio communication with our ground crew, which helped collect data from the elk we captured. This day, our crew included one of the agency veterinarians, Briggs Hall; John and Rachel; and one of our enforcement officers, Shawn Myers. Jess cued up the aircraft radio, “206 Charlie Hotel to Wildlife 851, you copy?” A moment later, I heard Briggs’s voice reply, “851 – go ahead Charlie Hotel.”“Anyone got a saw in their truck?” Jess asked. I imagined the ground crew exchanging puzzled looks at this request. What would the air crew need a saw for on a treeless landscape in winter, they must have wondered collectively. Despite the mystery, Briggs told us that Shawn had a bone saw in his truck. “We’re going to need it,” Jess transmitted back.
By now our elk was down, in a sedated heap amid last season’s dormant bunchgrasses and remnants of the winter’s snow. Jess dropped my mugger and me off near the sleeping elk and flew off down the hill toward the rest of our crew. Moments later, after we had checked vitals and blindfolded our elk – we did this routinely to keep debris out of their eyes and reduce stress if their sedation level was light – we heard the Jet Ranger flying back up the canyon. Jess landed, and the crew exited with their gear – including a handsaw.
Jess had explained the situation on the flight back. There was a lot of head shaking and more than a bit of laughter as we got down to business. I cut off the toilet seat, one that looked just like mine at home, minus the elk in the middle. Rachel got busy with the ultrasound and other body measurements – she ran this part of the processing for each elk. John and Shawn put a radio collar on our elk, ear-tagged her, and gave her the usual shots to mitigate the stress of capture. A little less than an hour after Jess and I looked out our doors at
something neither of us thought we’d ever see – a wild elk loping across a hill with a toilet seat bouncing up and down on her shoulders – she was awake, sporting a collar upgrade, and running off in the direction of her herd.
We surmised that at some point she had been drawn by the minerals in human urine – a known animal attractant – to an outhouse probably set up by hunters in some past season. The seat must have been up but fallen while she was nosing around for the smelly minerals. As the lid fell, she startled, ripping the toilet seat from its base, and had carried the thing awkwardly around her neck ever since. Hard to imagine any other explanation. I loaded the two pieces of toilet seat into the Jet Ranger’s storage compartment –the trunk, as we called it – more souvenir than trophy. We joked that we’d probably substantially raised her social status in the herd. No longer “Old Toilet Seat Head,” she now wore the best collar government money could buy. Elk bling. Never say you’ve seen it all.
I BELIEVE I have the honor of being the lead researcher on studies of more Washington elk populations than anyone. That’s not the result of being special or gifted – I was just in the right place at the right time. The opportunities found me, and I’m forever grateful. Elk are magnificent creatures, and I still get excited each time I see one in the wild. Though researchers studied elk intensively over the last few decades, I still found questions about them that were worth chasing. And chase them I did. Those experiences were incredible, formative as a researcher, and the memories will not fade any time soon. I enjoyed the work immensely.
Of all the sounds I have heard in woods, on prairies, and over the shrub-steppe, none thrill me more than that melodic, high-pitched calliope ending with a series of guttural grunts – the screaming bugle of a bull elk in rutting season. It always stops me in my tracks and makes me more attentive. Elk are near, and that is always exciting to know. Although I still think the grizzly is my spirit animal, my extensive time in the field among scores of wild elk make them feel like kin. NS
A WILD RIDE
Ithink deep down inside every Northwest sportsman is an urge to be a fish and/or wildlife biologist. Maybe we don’t recognize it as such, but it’s there – a fascination with the natural world and how it all works. Why are bucks and bulls where they are at such and such time; why do salmon and steelhead do what they do? How can I use this info to not only be more successful, but also ensure the critters have what they need to survive and thrive for the long haul?
I’m also very interested in the folks who make such a calling a professional career, and so I was very excited to read Scott McCorquodale’s new book Chasing Wildlife Secrets: A Biologist’s Journey about his life and times as a Washington wildlife researcher. As a longtime Northwest hook-and-bullet magazine editor, I thought I knew a lot about what all goes into it, but in his memoir, McCorquodale really opened my eyes to the thrills and chills as well as the drudgery that the scientific monitoring of elk, deer, bears and more entails.
Mixing in laugh-out-loud moments with deep insights, McCorquodale chronicles his 40-year career from grad student to regional wildlife manager, from studying Hanford’s inexplicable wapiti herd to trapping Klickitat muleys to dealing with Buttons The Elk That Thought She Was A Human, a span of time that also saw vast technological improvements in data collection and number crunching, which he also traces.
Indeed, it’s not just a book about McCorquodale darting, collaring and tracking critters – of which he did puh-lenty of –but the folks who trusted him to do the science or assisted him in the field: his tribal and state bosses, fellow “muggers” and especially, the gifted and daring pilots like Jess Hagerman who helped make it all possible. I appreciated that he dedicated space to tell their stories, ones that otherwise might go untold.
While McCorquodale has written numerous scientific papers, here his words flow across the pages like elk running through Washington’s meadows in highly readable prose that is also educational and advocates for a collaborative approach to wildlife management. Through his book, I have a higher appreciation for those who make studying wildlife their career so that hunters can harvest a few, the public can enjoy viewing them, and elk and other wildlife have what they need to thrive forever. –Andy Walgamott
snowday on the
(KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)
Fishing was on the slow side at March’s opener on Burke Lake in Central Washington, but Jo Jewett stuck it out to put her five rainbows on a stringer. “I got up early, I’m not leaving until I limit out,” she told her dad, Brandon, and that was that! (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)
For your shot at winning a knife in our Knife Photo Contest, send your full-resolution, original images with all the pertinent details – who’s in the pic; when and where they were; what they caught their fish on/weapon they used to bag the game; and any other details you’d like to reveal (the more, the merrier!) – to awalgamott@media-inc.com or Northwest Sportsman, 941 Powell Ave SW, Suite 120, Renton, WA 98057. By sending us photos, you affirm you have the right to distribute them for use in our print and Internet publications.
Kyle Grafstrom reminds us of a whole ’nuther spring pursuit – largemouth bass! He caught this nice one at a Pugetropolis lake on a wacky-rigged Senko.
A
Olympic Peninsula’s Calawah River served up some seriously cold steel for Darrel Smith. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)
Ten years on from catching this nice rainbow – her very first fish! – at Canby Pond in the Willamette Valley, Sabrina Little, now 13, is one of the members of Northwest salmon fishing’s growing jet ski fleet! Taking after her dad, Matt, she nabbed this hatchery coho off of one of the personal watercraft last season. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)
Jarod Higginbotham, the world’s tallest razor clammer, took a day off from the Rooster Tail factory to get some digging in at Long Beach with Andrea George. (JAROD HIGGINBOTHAM)
PHOTO CONTEST MONTHLY Winner!
You’ve seen their father in these pages over the years, and now it’s Maddison and Kaylee Perez’s time to shine! “They are already looking forward to the upcoming trout season,” reported their steelhead-andChinook-catching dad, Adam, in March. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)
After the editor blogged about an animal-rights activist who took issue with a “trophy shot” of a girl holding a greenhead taken on a state wildlife area and published in the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s annual hunting prospects, Kyle VanderWaal proudly sent in this pic of daughter Karlie, 4, from their first-ever duck hunt together. “It blows my mind that people have issues with that sort of thing and actually have time to bring it up. Unfortunately, their voices are often louder than ours,” VanderWaal wrote. Maybe so, but pictures are pretty powerful too, and so thank you, Kyle – and all of you – for all the great and respectful and memorable photos of you and yours with Northwest fish and wildlife harvested over the years. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)
Spencer Ewing shows off a nice Cowlitz River winter steelhead caught in March on the Blue Creek stretch while fishing with his grandfather Frank Urabeck and guide Dylan Houfek. They went three for seven that day, reported Urabeck, a longtime Washington sportfishing advocate. (FRANK URABECK)
Elena Lockwood smiles over her first elk, taken while hunting with her dad, Steve Lockwood. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)
Mike Bolt followed up a notable fall salmon and steelhead season with a pretty successful hunt, bagging this spike bull with a near-160-yard shot out of his muzzleloader. He also tagged a decent three-point mule deer. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)
Recently, we accepted the award from the Hewes family for being the 2024 Top Sales Dealer — an honor we don’t take lightly. I’m thankful for the support from Hewescraft and especially our sales, parts, and service teams at Tom-n-Jerry’s. Great job, team!!!
— Kelly Hawley, President.
Tom-N-Jerry’s Boat Center 11071 Josh Green Ln Mount Vernon, WA 98273 360-466-9955
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KUDOS MIXED
Sometimes I think I have a pretty varied workweek, but they do not compare whatsoever to what comes at Northwest game wardens on a daily – heck, hourly – basis. Take the Oregon fish and wildlife sergeant and trooper who found themselves underneath a truck in February – no, they weren’t there to change the oil; they were rescuing a deer.
Somehow, a young doe found itself wedged between the rig’s drive shaft near the rear axle and the bottom of the bed. How? Just how?!? Who knows, but the troopers and the truck owner first worked to remove a skid plate that the deer’s left front hoof was stuck in. After that they raised up the back end of the truck to give the doe a bit of room to work herself out.
“Once the deer was freed, it wandered off toward a field,” reported the troopers.
No word on what Ms. Goodwrench told the herd about her experience.
JACKASS OF THE MONTH
We do a lot of highlighting of shellfish swine who try to steal waaaay more clams and crabs off beaches and out of fishing areas than the regulations allow, but the problem isn’t limited to the piggish public.
Last month, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife reported officers received a tip about a commercial crab crew that came into Westport with undersize Dungeness. A quick inspection of the boat confirmed that and led Captain Dan Chadwick and two other officers to pick through the entire 3,900-pound load. All said and done, they found 500 undersize Dungies. Their combined weight of 714 pounds represented $5,000 worth of crab on a market where prices are as high as they’ve been in recent years.
“This is one of the worst violations of this kind we have seen in many years,” said Chadwick.
WDFW Police stated that it was “more than just letting a few undersize crabs slip through during the normal sorting process. This type of illegal activity puts a black eye on an industry where the majority of the fleet are professional fishermen who follow the rules ... Undersize crab are next year’s harvestable breeding stock that managers count on to maintain a stable population.”
Grays Harbor County prosecutors will make the final call, but WDFW said it could be charged as a Class C felony given the value of the undersize crabs, each of which can also be categorized as a gross misdemeanor.
WDFW reported that the too-small crabs were donated to local food banks.
By Andy Walgamott
Blues Elk Case Dismissed
It’s one of the most fascinating Northwest big game cases you’ll ever read about, stretching from 2022’s season back to 1889, from attorneys’ offices to burned-over backcountry in the transborder Blues.
Last month, Michael Wright of the Spokane Spokesman-Review told the tale of Shawn Humphrey and his seven-point elk, taken on Oregon’s Governor’s Tag with local outfitter Brian Sanders in the WenahaTucannon Wilderness. Hunt video posted on YouTube led to a tip that Humphrey might have killed the bull in Washington, sparking an investigation by game wardens.
Wright reports that using the video and bones found at the site, they used onX Maps to plot where Humphrey had shot from and killed the elk, leading to illegal hunting charges in Washington’s Columbia County.
Prepping for trial, Humphrey’s attorney Tim Note fixated on latitude numbers from court papers, 45.99928 and 45.99977 north, where his client had fired three shots from and where the bull had expired. Something didn’t add up for Note until he recalled learning that Oregon’s borders fall between 42 and 46 degrees north, a fact backed up by Washington’s 1889 constitution, which describes the southeastern border from the Columbia across the Blue Mountains to the Snake as the “forty-sixth parallel.”
While as few as just yards from the border, latitude digits under 46 would coincide with Oregon. When Note called the prosecutors, they dropped charges, Wright reports, though they still feel “the reality on the ground does vary a bit from that parallel.”
Maybe so as you zoom in tighter and tighter and things shift on your sceen. But as Note told Wright, “Their actions [dismissal] speak louder than their words.”
An onX spokesman told Wright that the company “reminds users to visually verify boundary markers and consult deeds and other official documentation, especially in edge cases like this one.”
The dismissal vindicated Sanders, the outfitter, who knows the Blues like the back of his hand, as well as Humphrey, though his son wants an apology from game wardens.
(OSP)
‘Somebody In Town’ Is Full Of It
Heads up if you live in the Coos Bay area and depend on “somebody in town” for advice interpreting the Oregon sportfishing regulations pamphlet: You should get a second, more informed opinion.
Oregon State Police Fish and Wildlife Division troopers say that in January a Coos Bay-based sergeant came across two different anglers who claimed to have gotten the word about the rules from some nebulous local authority.
The first was a striped bass angler on the lower Smith River who was seen fishing with two rods. Upon contact, the fisherman told the sergeant that “somebody in town” had told him he could use a second rod for the species.
In fact, the two-rod validation is only allowed on “standing waterbodies such as lakes, ponds and reservoirs, including Snake River impoundments above Hells Canyon Dam,” and certain streams such as the Willamette when specifically authorized, according to Oregon’s actual regulations.
After giving that angler a citation, the sergeant proceeded upriver and came across a couple who were fishing but admitted they didn’t have licenses to do so.
“The male subject said someone in town told him it was Free Fishing Weekend,” troopers reported.
Only problems? It was in fact a Friday, and the winter edition of Free Fishing Weekend actually falls on Presidents’ Day Weekend in February.
Said angler could only shrug his shoulders and accept his citation (his companion got a warning).
“It is unknown if the violators got their bad info from the same somebody in town or different somebodies, as they were unsure who the somebodies were who gave them the angling regulation tips,” troopers reported.
Hopefully, said townie helps pay the costs of the anglers’ citations, though it seems more likely to have been a locally known spur-of-themoment excuse.
OUTDOOR CALENDAR
April 26-May 3
Tentative razor clam digs scheduled on select WA Coast beaches – info: wdfw.wa.gov
1 Northern Pikeminnow Sport-Reward Program fishery begins at balance of Columbia and Snake Rivers stations – info: pikeminnow.org; Halibut opener on WA Marine Areas 1-4 (open dates vary by area) – info: wdfw.wa.gov/ fishing/regulations/halibut; ODFW staff-recommended halibut opener on OR Central Coast, Southern Subareas – info: dfw.state.or.us/mrp/finfish/halibut/ management.asp
3 Youth Outdoors Unlimited fundraiser and auction, Hells Canyon Grand Hotel, Lewiston – info: youthoutdoorsu.org; Jim Brauch Memorial Youth Fishing Event (ages 4-14), Jennings Pond, Marysville – info: Facebook.com @EverettSteelheadandSalmonYouthOrganization
17 Columbia Springs Kids Fishing Festival (register), Vancouver – info: columbiasprings.org; Jim Brauch Memorial Youth Fishing Event (ages 4-14), Smokey Point – info above; ODFW Fly-Fishing Workshop ($50, register), Camp Sherman – info above
17-18 ODFW Denman Wildlife Area 3D Archery Events ($10, register; youths 17 and under free), Denman Wildlife Area – info above
22 Fishing or harvest opener on numerous OR streams
24 Fishing opens on select WA streams
25 ODFW Shotgun Skills Workshop ($25, register), Myrtle Point – info above
27 ODFW Access & Habitat program Big Game Raffle Hunts application deadline (10 a.m.) – info: tinyurl.com/4wevpusk
31 Last day of spring turkey season in OR and WA; Last day of spring black bear season in OR; CAST For Kids fishing event on Bowman Pond, Winston, OR – info: castforkids.org
7 CAST For Kids fishing event on Lake Charles, Albany – info above
7-8 Free Fishing Weekend in OR and WA
8 ODFW Shotgun Skills Workshop ($25, register), Myrtle Point – info above; CAST For Kids fishing event on Potholes Reservoir – info above
10 Tentative Skykomish River hatchery Chinook, hatchery steelhead opener
12 Date OR controlled hunt draw results expected by; ODFW Intro to Oregon Hunting ($10, register), Newport – info above
14 Free Fishing Day in ID
16 Tentative lower Skagit River sockeye opener
21 Initial tentative Areas 2-4 salmon opener (open daily, limit one; all salmon except coho; above rules run through June 28 on Area 2, July 3 on Areas 3-4); CAST For Kids fishing event on Sarg Hubbard Pond, Yakima – info above
25 Tentative Area 1 salmon opener (open daily, limit two)
Continued on page 42
28 CAST For Kids fishing event on Emigrant Lake, Ashland – info above 29 Area 2 tentatively switches to two-salmon limit (open daily, all salmon)
JULY
1 Leftover OR big game tags go on sale at 10 a.m.; Start of OR Youth First Time hunt application period; New WA sportfishing regulations pamphlet takes effect
4 Areas 3, 4 tentatively switch to two-salmon limit (open daily, all salmon)
12 Merwin Day of Fishing for Kids (free, for youths with disabilities, register), Merwin Fish Hatchery, Ariel – info: wdfw.wa.gov; CAST For Kids fishing event on Prineville Reservoir – info above; Baker Lake sockeye opener
27 CAST For Kids fishing event on Yaquina Bay– info above
AUGUST
1 Columbia River fall fishery opener (dates, species vary by area) 2 2025 Washington Sanctioned Duck and Goose Calling Championship, Abrams Park, Woodland – info: washingtonwaterfowl.org
23 CAST For Kids fishing event on Clear Lake, Fairchild AFB – info above
ONGOING & UPCOMING EVENTS
During respective fishing seasons: Westport Charterboat Association Lingcod, Halibut, Chinook, Coho, Albacore Derbies; charterwestport .com/fishing.html
Now through Oct. 31: WDFW 2025 Trout Derby, select lakes across Washington; wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/contests/trout-derby
May 3: Detroit Lake kokanee derby; kokaneepoweroregon.com
May 3-4: Columbia River Walleye Anglers Association Rod Meseberg Walleye Classic, Potholes Reservoir; crwaa.profishingtournaments.com
May 10: 22nd Surf Perch Derby, Long Beach Peninsula (Bolstad Beach approach); surfperchderby.net
May 16-18: 2025 Pikeminnow Fishing Derby, Wanapum Pool; quincyvalley.org
May 16-18: Detroit Lake Fishing Derby; detroitlakeoregon.org
May 17: Brownlee Crappie Shootout Kayak Fishing Tournament; facebook.com/brownleecrappieshootout
May 17-18: CRWAA-LRWC Gordon Steinmetz Memorial Walleye Classic, Banks Lake; info above
June 7-8: CRWAA Moses Lake Walleye Classic; info above
June 7-8: 4th Annual Walleye Willie Shootout Memorial Benefit tournament, Bonneville and The Dalles Pools; give.adventisthealth.org/walleye-willie
June 13-14: 4th Annual Kokanee Derby, Wallowa Lake; crossthedivide.us/fishing-derby-2
June 21: Crescent Lake kokanee derby; info above
June 28-29: Lake Roosevelt Walleye Club Washington State Governor’s Cup; lakerooseveltwalleyeclub.com
July 11-12: Wenatchee Salmon Derby sockeye tournament; facebook.com/ccancwwenatchee
Mark Young Outfitters
The Rocky Mountain Front – the area where the eastern slopes of the Rockies meet the Great Plains – is regarded for its abundance of wildlife and stunning natural scenery. Nestled at its base is the small ranch town of Augusta, Montana, home to whitetail, mule deer, antelope and more. It is also home to Mark Young Outfitters, a hunting and fishing guiding business established for well over three decades.
“We started outfitting in 1988, when we were first married,” says Julie Young, coowner of the business with husband Mark. “Mark started outfitting the ranch that he and his father owned. Over the years we were fortunate to buy a few other ranches and added them to our outfitting business.”
Mark Young Outfitter’s private land includes lush farmland along creek and river bottoms, ideal for hunting trophy whitetail or mule deer. In addition to Mark, the Youngs’ sons, Chase and Rhett, serve as hunting guides as well. Meanwhile, the Sun River flows through 10 miles of the ranch, making for excellent fly fishing opportunities for brown and rainbow trout.
“There are several rivers and streams stretching out of the mountains; our ranch has three of those streams and lakes, including private ponds,” says Young. “Because of the hay and barley fields along the rivers, there are plenty of deer and antelope. Often hunters remark at how many deer are in the area.”
In the early days, guests stayed in local motels during their hunting and fishing trips, but in the early 2000s the Youngs built a comfortable and beautifully furnished 1,500-square-foot lodge on-property called the historic Oscar Kenck House.
“We built a lodge onto a historical 1890s house, which we remodeled over the years and exposed, chinked and preserved all the old hand-hewn logs, providing a beautiful house for our guests and clients,” says Young. The lodge includes a full kitchen, one bathroom, living room with fireplace and TV, two bedrooms and Wi-Fi, plus a utility room with washer and dryer for guest use.
When not heading afield or relaxing in the lodge, guests can venture into the town of Augusta (population of 300), which Young describes as looking “like a scene from an old Western town restored.” She adds, “Our town has four amazing restaurants. The clients thoroughly enjoy meeting the local characters and cowboys at the local establishments.”
As Augusta is a ranch town and Mark Young Outfitters is based on an actual working cattle ranch, guests can even get
in on the action themselves.
“Our clients are able to see how a ranch operation works with the cattle and crops and everyday operations,” remarks Young. “Oftentimes after they have been successful with their hunt they will join in the everyday activities of harvesting the grain, working cows, or whatever project is going on at the time.”
Mark Young Outfitters is truly a family operation, and their guests – some of whom have been visiting the ranch for 15 to 20 years – are treated as such. Indeed, when you’re at the ranch, you will find “a warm Christian family atmosphere,” says Young.
Not only do Mark and Julie live centrally,
but the rest of their family lives nearby as well, adding to that homey feel.
“Rhett and Hailey with their four small kids live 12 miles north, Chase and Emilee with their three small kids live 7 miles west, (and) Britta and Hunter, who come home often to help, live in Belgrade, Montana (three hours away),” says Young. “We have been blessed with eight grandchildren and three other children who live on the ranch. It’s such a blessing to have all the littles with us when we deliver meals out to the field, or when we are working cattle. Family is everything!”
Editor’s note: For more information, visit markyoungoutfitters.com.
DESTINATION BIG SKY MONTANA
All I Am Saying Give Shad A
COLUMN
Is Chance
FOR THE LOVE OF TUG
By Sara Potter
The beauty and bounty of May in my neck of the woods never ceases to amaze me. Spring is in full swing as blooming dogwoods skirt the river and creeks’ edges. Morels pop and are ready for foragers. Pockets of irises and wild lilies throughout the forest floor all indicate that it is that special time of year once more.
Coveted spring Chinook make their way home and for years they were the only fish I targeted. They left me wanting to bash my head against the table rocks of my home waters, as springers have never come easily to me. I would never just give up on the beautiful beasts that pull like no other, but what if I could find a fish that was a little more laid back and actionpacked? Say, shad?
In all honesty, I did find these fun, filterfeeding fish some years ago on the main fork of my river. I just struggled finding their line in the river, and I also struggled with the line of fishermen on the bank in search of them. Rude dudes were abundant and the energy as a whole on that shore sucked! I wasn’t welcome, so I walked away from shad that day planning on never returning. I would rather chase springers and bash my head against the rocks than take sh*t from any of those men ever again. And so I didn’t for years.
LIFE AND PASSION have a funny way of dangling opportunity right in our faces; it just depends on whether you bite or let it pass by. As most of you know, I prefer my feet firmly on the ground, but there are times when the privacy and capabilities of a boat is indeed best. For me, targeting shad is one of them.
Shad are a funny fish in that we don’t want to fire up the barbecue and share the harvest with those we love like we do with a springer. No, that’s not what shad are intended for. They are, however, intended for action-packed learning and fun, and they make killer crab and halibut bait. My good friend Ted Jones of Northwest Oregon Outfitters needed to gather himself as much bait as he possibly could for his salty season ahead, so saying yes
After a less-than-stellar experience on a shad river, author Sara Potter gave up on the species for years, but a bait run with a local guide changed her mind. “They are the maddest little fish I have ever met!” she writes. (SARA POTTER)
COLUMN
to his invite not only was helpful to him, but an opportunity for me to learn a new approach to the filter feeders that left me feeling so disenchanted years ago.
Anyone who loves to fish will find an abundance of fun in shad! Light gear, tiny rods and pretty pissed-off fish make for a good time! Depending on your group’s ability and desire, there are a couple of ways you can target these fish from the comfort of your boat. I was fortunate in
learning from the best. Many times when I fish with Ted, the guy doesn’t really get to fish. He’s busy, busy tending to all the angles of a given fishery. Indeed, guides are rarely able to get their own tug on. But this was different in that we were gathering bait, not putting clients on fish.
THE DRIFT FISHERMAN in me loved taptapping along with a tiny jig and plastic grub in search of the bite. Ted did too, and
it was fun seeing him swinging away and winding down to tug town! I got the hang of it pretty quickly and have to say, shad are fun! They are the maddest little fish I have ever met! This method was all I had ever really heard of until that day.
Shad are funny in the fact that they travel in a line. School teachers only wish their students would follow suit like the shad! That makes it important to find the underwater travel lane. You have to have your gear in it to find success.
Anchoring up along a seam in the river is where you start. We drift fished for them trying to find the line of fish. Using your bow cleats and anchor ropes will help you get in the zone by moving side to side versus pulling and dropping your anchor more than you need. Once you find that first fish or two, you know you are in line and can then take a slightly different approach.
This approach is full of strength-building skills for anybody and everybody who fights salmon from the boat. You might not think so, but it’s true. Whether you are trolling or on anchor, a shad angler’s actions and responsibilities from a boat stay the same for the most part. Using a dart or grub as our lure is the same between the methods, but the trick that allows you to put the rods in the rod holders is pretty neat. How can you get your bait to swim down and stay down and yet not just get hung up on the bottom? Make them swim! Using a 2.5 Mag Lip by Yakima Bait allows just that. Remove the bottom hook and attach a tied leader with your tiny jig and grub to the post. Feed the setup out into the river just as you would for springers and then place your rod in the holder. These steps ensure that your bait is fishing. And for those who aren’t that fond of drift fishing or are possibly struggling with it, it allows them to have a rod that is fishing full time.
WALKING AWAY WITH a good passel of bait for my buddy and a buffet of new knowledge about shad fishing, I felt it was best for us to grab the babes out of school early and go put this knowledge to work in our own boat while it was fresh in my mind. My husband Ben loves his North River Commander jet boat just as sure as the sun sets in the west and is always down
With her newfound knowledge, Potter was able to put son Nate and daughter Ava into a mess of good shad action that doubled as low-stress training for boat fishing for salmon. Many of the fighting and netting processes are similar but come without the risk of losing a Chinook. (SARA POTTER)
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to go on an adventure in it. Surprising the babes with a get-out-of-school free ticket, we headed out to the main fork of the river in search of some rather beautiful crab bait of our own.
While my trip with Ted had been in the morning, we decided to give the evening bite a whirl. With a warm and wonderful setting on the river, we arrived to the shad spot without another soul on the river.
That in itself is what I am after. Solitude in the beauty of nature with my three most favorite people on this planet. Pursuing a new fish isn’t always a fishy endeavor, so the fact the beauty of nature and lack of humans were on our side was a blessing. My captain dropped our anchor as I readied our rods. I decided to set up two with a plug right out of the gate and drift two hoping to find the fish if we weren’t quite nestled into the right line. The plug rods went on the port side, the drift fishing rods on the starboard side, and we were river hunting. I chose the port side for the plugs because you can’t really cast out that side of the boat, but behind a Mag Lip, they
100 percent fish! I’m glad I did because, sure enough, we were a little too far on top of the seam. Getting two back-to-back fish off the port side led Ben to dink with his bow cleats and move us in a couple feet. Repositioning the rods, we fished two plugs out the rear, casting two out the starboard side. That turned out to be a great move that led to total shad mayhem! I honestly haven’t ever heard rods and ringing like that outside of chasing tuna! How exciting! Doubles galore, the family was in the fish! Those of us who wanted to get their drift on and feel the bite could, while everybody got great practice in fighting fish that were hooked from a rod holder.
Finding the lane shad are traveling in is absolutely vital for hooking these hard-battling fish. You can do so by drift fishing at different distances from shore or boat, or by chocking your anchored sled side to side until your gear is in their path. (SARA POTTER)
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Along
THE WAY YOU retrieve your rod from its holder and lift is damn near identical to how you do it with salmon, just on much smaller gear. Shad do tend to put up a good fight, giving my trout reels quite the workout, but again, this serves to help you learn how to fight the fish! You fight the fish until you have reached the point you can reel no more, and then lift, allowing the fish’s head to surface and you go in with the net, scooping head first. This is such great practice for everyone! It’s fun and instructive, and I guarantee that everybody can handle losing shad better than losing a salmon! This fishery was the first where I saw the crucial parts of salmon fishing correctly from a boat unfold without the true pressure of a salmon at the end of the line.
I absolutely loved it! We all found fish! Sister – Ava, my daughter – had the most fun and got some beautiful practice
in netting and fighting fish. This will no doubt be helpful to her salmon game, and she didn’t even realize it because it was so much fun! But honestly, it was helpful to all of our games, as well as awesome to stockpile our own shad for the crabbing season ahead that we take quite seriously.
In fishing and in life sometimes our first shot at something doesn’t go the way we hope. Matter of fact, sometimes it can be a nightmare, but one should never hold onto that one time it went wrong. If the opportunity arises again, it could go right. Chances are that it popped back into your realm of possibility because you are intended to give it another whirl. Shad surprised me in what their bounty truly consisted of. That family fun, peace in the beauty of nature and knowledge was far more than simply catching bait. My heart is on the river and I couldn’t change it, even if I tried. NS
with getting practice on the net, Ava also enjoyed fighting a few shad, all of which should help her salmon fishing game out. Best part?
“She didn’t even realize it because it was so much fun!” Mom says. (SARA POTTER)
“You fight the fish until you have reached the point you can reel no more, and then lift, allowing the fish’s head to surface and you go in with the net, scooping head first. This is such great practice for everyone!” states Potter. (SARA POTTER)
Fishing guide Cody Luft shows off a fin-clipped summer steelhead his friend Tim Reitan just caught last season. (BUZZ
Not Too Early To Chase Summer-runs
BUZZ RAMSEY
The run of summer steelhead returning to Lower Columbia tributaries like the Cowlitz, Kalama, Lewis and Sandy, along with Willamette-system rivers, was much improved last year compared to recent seasons. Always the optimist, I think fishing should be pretty good this year too.
The early portion of the run is mostly made up of Skamania-stock hatchery fish, with many quickly moving into Lower Columbia tribs and still more lingering in the mainstem before migrating into the waters where they were released as smolts.
Because the Lower Columbia west of I-5 won’t open for steelhead until May 16 (it’s all about protecting above-Bonnevillebound spring Chinook), anglers eager for steelhead action should target earlyarriving fish inside the big river’s feeder streams beginning the first weeks of May. This run, along with fish bound for Willamette River tributaries, will only improve as we move into summer.
Although a few streams no longer host summer steelhead hatchery programs, here is a list of the ones that do, including how many juvenile fish were released in 2023 for return this summer:
Cowlitz River: 600,000
North Fork Lewis River: 235,000
South Fork Toutle River: 20,000
Elochoman River: 30,000
Klickitat River 90,000
Kalama River: 90,000
Washougal River: 80,000
Sandy River: 75,000
Clackamas River: 70,000
North Santiam River: 110,000
South Santiam River: 130,000
McKenzie River (Leaburg): 100,000
Middle Fork Willamette River (Dexter): 40,000
Unlike steelhead bound for tributaries further up the Columbia, Skamania-strain summer-runs start their migration early in the year. And while I’ve caught these fish as early as March, most of these fish flood
RAMSEY)
into tributaries from May through July. However, given decent water conditions and tolerable water temperatures, they can be caught all summer long and into fall.
Skamania steelhead got their start at the hatchery located on Washington’s Washougal River in – you guessed it – Skamania County, but they are now reared at several facilities in both Oregon and Washington.
SUMMER WATER CONDITIONS favor techniques like drift fishing, float fishing, bobberdogging and the casting and retrieving of spoons and spinners. If you own a boat and your river has enough depth, back-trolling plugs and diver-bait methods should also be added to your arsenal of tricks. These fish have a real nose for natural baits like shrimp (coon or sand shrimp), egg clusters and crawdad tails –even nightcrawlers – that are often drifted near bottom, suspended under a float or back-trolled behind a diver.
If you have yet to try drift fishing in a river, here’s how: Cast out, across and upstream and let your outfit drift downstream through the holding water
(bouncing the bottom as it moves along in the current). Once your rig swings in near shore, it’s time to reel in and cast again. Drift fishing is a series of casts, drifts and retrieves. The bite will be subtle, so pay close attention and if your outfit stops drifting, hesitates or feels different in any way, set the hook! Bait combined with a small Corky or Spin-N-Glo is what many anglers use when drift fishing.
Float fishing produces best where the water is slow moving or when fishing current edges. This method enables you to get a precision drift without hangups, since your offering should be positioned a foot or two above bottom. Although all of the natural baits listed above work with a float, you might try suspending a steelhead jig, 4-inch plastic worm or a hard or soft bead (like those made by BnR) under your bobber.
There are two ways to rig a plastic worm: on the jighead or wacky style. When attaching to a jighead, my advice is to cut your worm at the collar and thread the tail end onto the jighead. And while those chasing bass rig their worms by lancing the center of the worm, aka wacky style,
Here are a couple of popular rigs for drift fishing (the two leaders shown are for photographic purposes only; use fluorocarbon).
(BUZZ RAMSEY)
Fishing a jig under a float is a great option for summer steelhead. The jig is most effective when positioned in a horizontal fashion. (BUZZ RAMSEY)
OREGON
CULVER
Culver Marine (541) 546-3354 www.culvermarine.com
FLORENCE Y Marina (541) 590-3313 www.ymarinaboats.com
PORTLAND Sportcraft Marina, Inc. (503) 656-6484 www.sportcraftmarina.com
WASHINGTON
CHINOOK
Chinook Marine Repair, Inc. (800) 457-9459 (360) 777-8361 www.chinookmarinerepair.com
SHELTON
Verle’s Sport Center (360) 426-0933 www.verles.com
MOUNT VERNON
Tom-n-Jerry’s Boat Center, Inc. (360) 466-9955 www.tomnjerrys.net
TACOMA
Tacoma Boat Sales & Service
(253) 301-4013 www.tacomaboatsales.com
I’ve always started my hook point near the center of the worm and worked the hook towards the head. When properly rigged your worm should look like an upsidedown “U”, which will provide the horizontal presentation fish like best.
A string of split shot works for keeping your bait or soft bead straight below your float. Start 18 inches up from your offering and space your split shot every 2 to 3 inches up your line. The number and size of split shot required will depend on
current speed, water depth, line diameter and float size. I usually start with four to six split shot.
BOBBERDOGGING IS DIFFERENT than float fishing in that you want to rig your bobber so that it is free sliding on your main line and employ an adjustable bobber stop such that your weight will tap bottom while the bobber is pushed and pulled along by the current pushing against your bobber. With bobberdogging, you are
really using the bobber as more of a strike indicator for drift fishing.
As such, your bobber, especially if it’s a long one, will be riding along in an angled fashion. This keeps your offering on the bottom where steelhead hold and everything drifting straight downriver, in line with the current. Because of this, bobberdogging offers a more realistic drift presentation compared to drift fishing, in which your outfit is swinging cross current much of the time due to
Plastic worms are proven fish catchers. Rigging them wacky style or on a jighead are a couple of proven setups. (BUZZ RAMSEY)
Some of the items you might need when bobberdogging for summer steelhead. (BUZZ RAMSEY)
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line belly. In addition, the upward pull of the bobber helps keep your weight from hanging up.
Rigging up for bobberdogging requires you to thread a free-sliding bobber onto your main line above your sinker. A plastic bead is used between your bobber stop and float such that it will keep your bobber 6 to 12 feet (position depends on water depth) above your weight when drifting down the river. The advantage of having your bobber rigged to slide is it will be positioned just above your weight for casting but slide up your main line after your outfit hits the water.
Whether bobberdogging or float fishing, you’ll want to keep close tabs on your bobber, and if it disappears – signaling a fish has grabbed your offering – you will need to set the hook, and quickly.
THE MOST COMMON way to fish a spoon or spinner in a river is to cast out, across and slightly upstream and reel it back to you with a retrieve speed that keeps it
shore, it’s time to reel in and cast again. Another productive technique is downstream casting, which works best on wide holes or tailouts. Cast your spoon or weighted spinner out across and angled downriver. Since the current is moving away from you, it requires a slow retrieve, or none at all, as your lure swings across the fish-holding water.
In extreme clear water, where upstream-looking fish might spook when seeing you, casting your spinner upstream can be the go-to method. Position yourself within casting range of the fish-holding water and cast at an upstream angle. If the water is shallow, begin your retrieve as or just before your spinner hits the water. Reel as fast as possible until you’ve picked up all your slack line and begin to feel the resistance of the spinning blade; then slow down your retrieve speed some and work your lure just above bottom. A high-speed spinning reel is the best for this method. NS
Editor’s note: Buzz Ramsey is regarded as a sportfishing authority (as related to trout, steelhead and salmon), outdoor writer and proficient lure and fishing rod designer. Buzz built a successful 45-year career promoting gear related to Northwest and Great Lakes fisheries during his tenure with Luhr Jensen, Pure Fishing and Yakima Bait. Now retired, he writes for Northwest Sportsman and The Guide’s Forecast.
working near bottom. Fished this way, the river current will swing your lure downstream through the fish-holding water. Once your lure swings in near
This Skamania summer steelhead slammed a Mag Lip plug backtrolled through a drift from a oneperson pontoon boat. (BUZZ RAMSEY)
Spinners having a wide blade shape are the most popular. While levelwind baitcasting reels are popular for back-trolling plugs and can be used when drift fishing, spinning rod and reel outfits are the most popular when employing float and spoon and spinner methods. (BUZZ RAMSEY)
Lots To Fish For In May
Your monthly Oregon fishing outlook provided by The Guide’s Forecast.
By Bob Rees
With better weather on the horizon, and warmer water temperatures stirring additional opportunities for anglers, May is set to be a busy month for saltand freshwater anglers in Oregon.
From offshore halibut to high desert trout, spring often brings with it some of the best opportunities of the year.
SPRING CHINOOK WILL be on the minds of many anglers, with the Willamette basin and possibly the mainstem Columbia offering up prime options
for the region’s highly sought after salmonid.
Although Willamette River catches often peak in April, early May can remain especially good, depending on water temperatures and adult return rates.
If the Willamette remains cooler than 60 degrees, anglers will find fair to good success from the Multnomah Channel to Willamette Falls and even upstream. When the Willamette hits 57 degrees, hardware such as wobblers and spinners becomes much more attractive to these spring kings. The problem, however, is that spring runoff in the Columbia often backs up
the Willamette, causing a low-flow situation, which stagnates the bite. It’s likely to happen again this year, so anglers will want to look for swift flows, most often found downstream of the mouth of the Clackamas River near Oregon City.
Springers will also be nosing into Tillamook Bay and the Umpqua and Rogue Rivers too. New restrictions have impacted Umpqua anglers, but check the regulations carefully no matter which drainage you fish. The Rogue peaks in mid-May, while the Tillamook systems and Umpqua produce better catches in June.
Summer steelhead should also be
Columbia anglers like Danton Rodriguez will be hoping for another crack at spring Chinook in May, but if there aren’t enough to reopen the big river, there’s always the Willamette, Tillamook Bay, Umpqua and Rogue. (BOB REES)
FISHING
available on the Wilson, Nestucca and Siletz systems, but dropping and clearing rivers definitely make it more challenging. Numbers are likely to be down from last year, however.
TURNING
OCEANWARD, SALMON seasons were set in mid-April but aren’t officially approved until mid-May by the federal Department of Commerce. For the most part, hatchery coho quotas are more robust than 2024, while the September non-markselective season will again have a 30,000-fish quota. Last September was a banner fishery and there’s no reason to believe it won’t be one of the state’s most productive again this season.
In the meanwhile, offshore halibut opens up in early May with some of the most liberal seasons Oregon anglers have seen in decades. It’s a seven-day-a-week season with a twofish daily bag limit, likely to last all spring and summer long for anglers
south of Cape Falcon. The Columbia River subarea is more restrictive, so check the regs carefully, but other rockfish species will likely be legal to retain as well. The daily rockfish limit remains four per person along with a two-fish daily bag limit on lingcod too.
Ocean crabbing should be improving before the July molt. And speaking of shellfish, May often offers some of the best minus tide series of the year for clam diggers – in 2025 they’re at the start and end of the month – so watch out for those options as well.
BACK ON DRIER
ground, Central Oregon’s high lakes start to stir in May. The highest success rates are often seen right after ice-out. That phase is solely temperature dependent, with some of the highest elevation lakes likely to remain icebound into June in some cases. There’s a plethora of trout species to pursue, with some high-quality kokanee options
available as well.
The famed Deschutes River mayfly hatch often happens around midmonth; it’s an epic experience for wild trout, properly designated a blueribbon opportunity. The McKenzie River fishery is another productive option for fly and gear anglers.
Other Willamette Valley lakes and reservoirs will still receive hatchery trout this month, but warming waters often slow the bite this time of year.
And finally, May also marks the start of the invasive shad season. These are a great sportfish for younger anglers and with no bag limit, they make excellent crab bait or garden fertilizer. The Willamette is the first to receive catchable numbers, with the first two weeks of June peaking for the magnum run on the mainstem Columbia below Bonneville Dam. NS
Editor’s note: For more information, visit TheGuidesForecast.com.
Losing a Willamette River spring Chinook and a fishy spinner last season due to a snap swivel failure – the fault of either undersized equipment or the angler himself – led the editor to switch to 3.5 soft ties topped with a beadchain swivel to reduce the number of connection points in his rigging. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
How I Became A 3.5 Soft Tie Guy
CONFESSIONS OF A NEWB
By Andy Walgamott
There was a lot riding on spring Chinook number 4 last May. This fish was not going to slip my treble and get away like the first three of the season had!
Sigh, I suppose if I must … Springer 1 was a real nice big fat one that bit my 3.5 wire spinner behind a chrome 360 flasher and gave me quite the rodeo in front of a good crowd before I lost it right at the freakin’ net. Escapee 2 bit a similar setup and led to cursing and creeping suspicions I’d somehow become a worse angler from my inaugural season on the Willamette. Number 3 was a smaller king that hit on the turn and gave me a few head shakes before it and my hard spinner parted ways.
Communications with my wife and friends chronicle deepening desperation, including the scouring of every tackle outlet in a very fishy town 120 miles removed
from the river for a specific spinner that had gotten one of the above fish to bite and which I’d subsequently dropped overboard. By late May, when my favorite English soccer team managed to lose the very winnable national tournament to their hated rivals, things looked particularly grim. I texted Amy, “Can’t catch a springer. Can’t win the FA Cup. There’s no reason to go on anymore.”
So, yes, Springer 4 was in fact an actual existential crisis, thank you very much. When it bit, I was taking no guff and insisted it continue upstream with me so as to stay out of anglers’ main trolling lane and avoid nearshore obstructions. It had other ideas, as well as strength in those convictions, and so unfortunately I discovered another good way to lose a Chinook. When it popped off and I reeled in, the spinner was gone and the snap swivel that had been holding it was … open.
Now, I am an idiot, but I like to think that I’m a smart enough idiot to close my snap swivel after putting the eye of the
lure through the clasp. Like to. This has happened before, I will admit, including with a 3.5 spinner and a very nice coho above the falls the previous year. I suppose it’s possible both fish muscled the swivels open on their own or I misclosed them, but now I’d had enough. I decided then and there to completely cut out the middle man – the traitorous snap swivels – in my setup.
LEARNING
ABOUT
SPRINGER
and other such fisheries around my sorta-still-new-to-me home perched at turkey-vulture-cruising height above the Willamette, I kept coming across something called a “3.5 soft spinner.” This transplanted Pugetropolite needed Google Translate to decode the Portlandian. Turns out, a 3.5 soft spinner is the opposite of what I’d been running, i.e., a hard salmon spinner featuring a 3.5-size Colorado-style blade, several beads, tubing and a treble, all rigged around a wire. Soft refers to the 30- to 50-pound-test leader material that replaces the wire that a hard spinner is built on. Essentially, a 3.5 soft tie is a lure and 24- to 32-inch leader all in one.
I may be a slow learner, but after losing that fourth springer in a row, I sensed it was time to use something different than a wire spinner and my usual leader setup, which I tied with snap swivels at both ends for efficiency to quickly swap between setups or to easily change between leader lengths if a shorter or longer one was called for with a particular lure. I acquainted myself with various 3.5-soft-tie videos from professionals like Pro Escobedo of VIP Outdoors and Jarod Higginbotham of Yakima Bait and boned up on advice from various sharpies on Ifish and elsewhere. After rooting around in my fishing gear for supplies, I set to work and soon had my very first 3.5 soft setup, complete with the coup de grace at the top end – a beadchain swivel for linking the leader straight to the flasher’s connector.
Hit the highway, snap swivels!
Ahem, the best that can be said about that first rig is that technically it could have been trolled, which is to say that it did not look fishy in the least. The tubing was the color of urine from someone who needed to drink a lot of water asap, the beads looked like they had come from either Amy’s sewing boxes or one of the boys’ Lego
This is Dodger. On a late-season depredation goose hunt in March, he retrieved over 200 specks in three days, several of which were beyond 400 yards, and a handful over 800 yards – that’s half a mile away. He’s well trained, in top shape, has drive, and I loved watching him work. Owner Todd Lemma has put in the time and effort that gun dog ownership demands. (SCOTT HAUGEN)
Smokercraft Sunchaser Pontoon
Smokercraft Sunchaser Pontoon
Alumaweld Stryker X202
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tubs or maybe the kitchen junk drawer, and where the hell’d I find that blade anyway?!?
BUT THE EXERCISE did show me that tying a 3.5 soft spinner was within my limited abilities, and that called for a run to the sporting goods store – my kind of shopping trip! There, I picked up a selection of 5mm and 6mm beads in various colors, a fun pack of different-colored rubber tubing, springerish-looking 3.5 blades, more beadchain swivels, packages of 1/0 and 2/0 Big River hooks and some wire clevises, and headed out to the garage for a tie-athon!
Only after whipping up a bunch of setups did I become troubled by two things. For some inexplicable reason I’d used random 40-pound Maxima Tuna Blue line instead of my handy spool of 30-pound clear Maxima mono – I mean, are we fishing for albies or Oncys, Andy?!? Perhaps it wouldn’t actually matter, but the other thing seemed more serious. Despite repeatedly reading advice not to do this, I’d used metal clevises to affix the blades on the lines. Metal clevises are said to burn fishing line as they are spun by the blade when trolled, weakening it. I did not need to discover yet another way to lose a springer, so it was time to retie again. Well, first it was time to go shopping for, among other items, plastic clevises.
Back in the garage, I tied some setups with just a treble; on others, a treble and stinger via a Nush knot. During the various festivities, I texted a pic of my bustling workshop to one of my more frugal writers, who replied, “Silly amount of stuff.”
Somehow it got sillier. I realized there was a good reason I’d bought all of Pro’s 3.5 wire spinners in the first place – they get bit! So I – please don’t hate me, neighbor –decided to cut up some of my surplus VIP hard spinners and rerig them as 3.5 softs.
Expensive? Yes! Total copycat? True too! Effective? Well, that required testing.
THERE IS JUST something about new gear that gives you a confidence boost on the water, and so it went on the Willamette trying out my new 3.5 soft spinners for the first time. And by a miracle, I landed my first Chinook of the season on one – first try! (Actually, the miracle part was mostly not losing all my rods, gear and the springer and
drowning in the log jam I drifted into while fighting the fish; besides it, the only casualty was the 18-inch bumper that got wrapped in my kayak’s pedal drive, disabling it.)
Three days later I had a second springer in the net, this one on a different 3.5 soft spinner. Four sleeps after that, a third, on a third different setup.
“Silly amount of stuff for the win!” I cackle-texted back to my writer.
It was quite a turn-around from losing four straight to landing three in a row. In fact, I would go on to land every single Chinook
I hooked on 3.5 soft spinners last season, including a Lower Columbia fall king that almost didn’t fit in my net.
Now, would I have caught all those fish running wire 3.5 spinners behind my very, very lucky chrome 11-inch Pro-Troll 360 instead? Possibly. If you fish, you’re bound to lose some, so maybe my personal odds just happened to shift favorably concurrent with switching from hard to soft spinners. Or perhaps after losing four in a row I subconsciously became a better, more careful fighter and lander of Chinook from
Work in progress – 3.5 soft spinners come together in the editor’s garage. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
my kayak – Mama and the boys need meat, after all!
A fellow angler suggested the problem might be related to my reflexive barb pinching, a relic of my Puget Sound angling days as well as desire to make it easier to unpin unkeepable wild fish. But my best 3.5s are barbless too, so I don’t think that’s it.
I really do think there is something to be said about the 360, er, revolution making newbs and below-average fishermen such as myself more successful. And outside of Willamette springers, last year just saw good returns of Chinook, so maybe dragging stuff past snappy fish was just going to work regardless. I saw one king on my Helix 7 at 24 feet and after quickly performing the complex trigonometric calculations in my head, I realized that with my gear set at 30 linecounter feet with a 16-ounce cannonball and trolling uphill at 2.2 mph in a 1.2 mph downstream current, there was a good chance my rig would flash in front of its face right about … now – bingo! (Note: No maths were actually done in the heat of the moment; I’m still working on that equation today – anybody have an eraser?)
And admittedly, I don’t have a huge sample size, and the 2025 campaign may reveal I need to switch back to wire 3.5s. If that’s the case, lord knows I’ve still got enough McOmie’s, VIPs and Simons! But I do wonder if there isn’t something in a 3.5 soft setup that makes it harder for a fish to shake than a wire spinner. Maybe the flexibility of the mono combined with the beachchain instead of snap swivels makes it less likely a fish will find an angle to spit the hook with the way I’m fishing from my low-slung craft.
THE GREAT THING about fishing is that you can come up with endless theories, and who’s to say you’re wrong? Well, I guess there’s always bites and hook-to-land ratios, but the bottom line is that my 3.5 soft spinner journey and initial success gave me confidence, and there’s a lot to be said about that, especially when I started taking my show on the road away from my new home waters. Plus it was just a lot of fun to tie rigs.
Some other things I’ve done along the way may also have helped. After that first springer, I measured my setup and retied everything down to that length – 32 inches.
Since then, I’ve shortened some even further, to the mid- to high 20s. Soft or hard, 3.5s are whipped best close behind a 360.
As I tied more and more rigs, I bought leader trays to store them in, and then organized the setups into springer- and fall-oriented boxes based on blade colors (chartreuses, pinks for the early season, Mexican flag, etc., for later). At the river, I scent them with Pro-Cure Bloody Tuna mojo, and then I clean them religiously after each trip with original Lemon Joy.
I also let my creative juices flow. That Columbia king and two back-to-back Siletz fall Chinook bit a curious tie, a 28-inch setup featuring a Simon 3.5 blade in hammered hex copper and Mexican flag, red 4mm bead, red 5mm bead, chartreuse 5mm bead, green tubing and two offset-tied 2/0 Big River hooks. The curious part is that for some reason I decided to stretch the top of the tubing back over itself, creating a bulbous additional color contrast behind the blade. Did it matter? Who knows, but initial market research suggested I could probably sell them at a pricepoint of $15 per pair. Hit me up!
These little piggies came home after biting three different soft ties last June. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
Alaska Rainbow Adventures
Rather than sliding on random beads, I stack them so they match the blade colors. And new for this season, I got blades from High Class Tackle Co. and Deep Throat Lures as well as some interesting metallic pink 6mm beads from Stabi Dave’s. The experiment continues ...
TO BE CLEAR, 3.5 soft spinners aren’t new –they’re basically just upsized and modified Wedding Rings from Mack’s Lure. But what other salmon anglers’ field testing and refinements essentially helped me do is reduce the number of connectors on my line that I might accidentally leave open and allow a prized fish such as, say, spring Chinook number 4 to escape. Now, instead of three snap swivels at the terminal end – one on the flasher and the pair on my leader – to keep an eye on, I have just the one, on the kicker end of the 360, to affix the beadchain at the top of all of my 3.5 soft setups.
Life’s been great ever since. I sleep well. My cholesterol is down. And I really do believe they’ve helped me land a few more fish than I otherwise might have. And those are true confessions of a newb. NS
A North Idaho Gem
North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River a destination fishery for plentiful westslope cutthroat trout.
By Mike Wright
When avid fly fishermen are asked to list their favorite North Idaho fishing destinations, the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene is sure to be high on the list. The North Fork has been called by many a “fly fisherman’s paradise.” With its crystal clear waters and old-growth forests, it’s home to a very healthy population of westslope cutthroat trout.
But that was not always true. Pollution from mining and sedimentation from logging once took a heavy toll on these slashjawed fish. At one point it was feared the cutthroat might be headed for extinction – a 1992 survey estimated there were only 800 left in the entire North Fork. Restoration efforts by county, state and federal agencies and conservation groups such as
Trout Unlimited have played a major role in protecting its native westslope cutthroat as well as bull trout populations. And to help the cutthroat further, catch-and-release regulations were placed on certain stretches of the North Fork.
If all of that has you reaching for your mapbook, fly box and wading gear, know that as of press deadline in mid-April snowpack in the Coeur d’Alene River watershed was slightly below average at 89 percent, so as long as it doesn’t come off all at once and blow out the system, spring fishing could be good.
THE NORTH FORK can be reached off Interstate 90 just 30 miles east of Coeur d’Alene at the Kingston exit. Take Coeur d’Alene River Road, also known as Forest Highway 9, north to Forest Road 208. Turn north past Prichard and follow 208 into the
North Fork’s upper stretches.
A whole network of Forest Service roads takes you to various tributaries, but the Idaho Panhandle National Forest has also obliterated dozens of miles of logging roads in the drainage to control erosion and siltation of the river, including 36 miles in the Yellow Dog Creek basin alone, so it would be advisable to have an up-to-date map when you are traveling in the backcountry.
The North Fork is excellent for walking and wading. Paralleled by paved or gravel roads for most of its length, the stream also has walk-in sections upstream from Tepee Creek. Excellent water can be found right next to the road.
Savvy waders seeking pocket water fishing keep moving upstream past Prichard to get to the fabled headwaters and its tributaries. Tepee and Independence Creeks are as
Abused by logging and mining activity in past decades, North Idaho’s North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River is rebounding and offers good access for cutthroat fishing not far off I-90 east of Spokane. (MIKE WRIGHT)
FISHING
hallowed names today as Yellow Dog Creek has been for decades of backcountry fly fishers.
Idaho Department of Fish and Game biologists regularly conduct snorkel surveys and over the years and decades have documented the cutthroat recovery. A 2010 survey found 521 per mile on the North Fork and 523 in the mainstem Coeur d’Alene, according to a Coeur d’Alene Press article at the time.
“Last year was the highest we ever had for cutthroat density, and we have been looking at that since 1969,” Ryan Hardy, an IDFG research biologist, told the paper.
For a 2019 article in the Spokane Spokesman-Review, Andy Dux, the agency’s regional fisheries manager, said the North Fork remained “an outstanding cutthroat fishery.”
With implementation of catch-
and-release regulations in 2008, cutthroat density increased, and a 2018 snorkel survey found one per every 100 cubic meters of water, the newspaper reported, adding, “More important, the quality of fish has increased, with the mean density of cutthroat larger than 12 inches has (sic) roughly doubled since 2008.”
The strain of westslope cutthroat in the North Fork grows faster than those in the famed St. Joe River a watershed to the south. The average 4-year-old cutt in the Coeur d’Alene is 10.8 inches while the average in the Joe is 7.68.
Most of the fish caught by anglers in the North Fork are in the 10- to 14-inch range, but 18- to 20-inch cutthroat are not uncommon.
For decades, rainbow trout and then triploid rainbows were stocked in the Little North Fork of the Coeur
d’Alene by IDFG, but the practice was discontinued in 2002. While all cutthroat must be released, rainbows can be caught and kept, so it is important to quickly identify them. The limit on rainbows is six.
AFTER EXITING I-90 at Kingston, the first two tributaries of the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene you will come to are the South Fork and the Little North Fork. According to Jordan Plum of North 40 Outfitters (north40.com), the South Fork has a decent number of fish but does not get a great deal of fishing pressure due to the fact that it is rather shallow and the water heats up fast. The Little North Fork is managed as a blue-ribbon cutthroat river, meaning no bait and only barbless hooks are allowed, from Laverne Creek upstream to its headwaters just below the divide between the Coeur d’Alene and Pend Oreille basins. Laverne Creek enters the Little North Fork 15 miles north of its mouth, which is 5 miles north of Kingston.
The Little North Fork is special to many people looking for quality cutthroat fishing and solitude in a small-stream setting. It rises at 4,363 feet in the Coeur d’Alene Mountains and descends to 2,211 feet at its mouth, tumbling down through a narrow course via a series of drops, falls, pools, riffles and glides that become quite narrow as summer flows decline.
Virtually the entire course of the stream is paralleled by Forest Road 209, and it is rather shallow and easy to fish, but anglers willing to hike into the stretches away from the road are the ones who catch more fish and often the larger specimens.
Back on the mainstem, the upper reaches of the North Fork are classic pocket water with pools and small riffles. Below Yellow Dog Creek the river turns into deeper pools and larger rapids. As Plum points out, “The further up the tributaries you go, the better fishing you will encounter.”
The recovery of westslope cutthroat trout in North Idaho isn’t just limited to the North Fork, but it is one of the more productive streams for the vibrant native fish. In a June 2020 press release, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game announced that Tom Weadick had caught a new state catch-and-release record for the species, this 21-incher. It has since been topped by Priest Lake and Clark Fork cutts. (TOM WEADICK VIA IDFG)
FISHING
The cutthroat are generally in the 10- to 12-inch range, but there are numerous fish from 14 to 16 inches, and an occasional real hog may show up.
Jim Fredricks, IDFG’s former regional fisheries manager and now the agency’s director, has said that alongside the North Fork and Little North Fork’s growing fish population, the number of anglers has also increased. Many of these anglers prefer fishing from a boat. Unfortunately, there was a lack of put-ins and take-outs, and the situation became very frustrating for many. In an effort to help solve this problem, the North Idaho Flycasters, Forest Service and IDFG worked together to establish a handful of new rough launches 8 to 10 miles apart in hopes of providing a much less crowded situation and good floats.
Speaking of stream work, above Yellow Dog Creek in the Tepee Creek section of the North Fork are restoration projects to improve the flow of the river, which should also benefit Independence Creek.
THE NORTH FORK of the Coeur d’Alene has been called a dry fly fisherman’s dream with its riffles flowing into deeper pools. Casting a fly at the head of the pool and mending your line to achieve a natural drift is probably the best strategy. Many times, fly selection is not as important as presentation. Often, anything that looks buggy will be taken. But since the water is very clear, approaching a hole stealthily is very important.
A list of good flies to use on the North Fork would include March brown, blue-wing olive and stonefly imitations, as well as Green and Grey Drakes. For nymphs, mayfly patterns
such as Pheasant Tails, along with stoneflies, Woolly Buggers and Prince Nymphs will work.
While this facet of the fishery is still months away on the other side of summer, as with Kelly Creek and some other North Idaho lakes and streams, cutthroat will move downstream and winter in deeper water. September, when the fish start schooling up, is the perfect time to use an October caddis.
By almost any standard, the restoration of the trout fishery in the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River and its tributaries would have to be considered a major success. All the hard work and dedication of state and federal agencies, along with numerous conservation groups and private volunteers, deserve a big thanks from fishermen and other outdoorsmen in North Idaho, Eastern Washington and Montana. NS
‘Spot’ On Advice For Sound Shrimpers
Prep now for the May 21 season opener on most of the inland sea.
By Mark Yuasa
March Madness is for hoopaholics, but May Madness is a “shrimply” irresistible time for anglers to partake in the spot shrimp fisheries.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced the spot shrimp fishery will open May 21 on most Puget Sound marine areas, with additional dates scheduled in several areas into early July.
“Spot shrimping is one of Washington’s signature recreational fisheries and the shrimp harvested are one of the finest things you can eat,” said Don Velasquez, a WDFW Puget Sound shellfish biologist. “However, with increasing shrimping effort we must be cautious not to overharvest this important resource. The 2025 season will provide increased opportunities in Hood Canal and Discovery Bay, but fewer openings in central and southcentral Puget Sound.”
Marine Areas 10 (Seattle-Bremerton waters) outside of Elliott Bay, 11 (Tacoma-Vashon Island) and 13 (South Puget Sound) will remain closed due to low estimated spot shrimp abundance.
WDFW fishery managers selected the shrimp fishing dates to offer opportunities to harvest spot shrimp while distributing participants and reducing the chance of exceeding recreational quotas. Due to high expected turnout, some areas cannot support weekend openings while remaining within their current quota.
To ensure a safe and enjoyable experience, shrimpers are encouraged to monitor weather conditions and
The Puget Sound spot shrimp season represents a great opportunity to harvest some delicious shellfish.
Author Mark Yuasa’s son Tegan and uncle Steve Yuasa show off a nice haul from sheltered waters. (MARK YUASA)
FISHING
avoid launching or leaving the dock if their vessel can’t safely participate. Check with local access ramps and marinas ahead of time to stay informed on potential closures or fee changes. Allow extra time for launching boats, show courtesy to others at the boat ramps and respect others’ gear while on the water.
SEASON DATES, RULES
Here are the 2025 spot shrimp fishing dates:
Area 4 east of the Bonilla-Tatoosh boundary line: Open daily beginning May 21. Shrimping is allowed during daylight hours only. The recreational spot shrimp season closes when the quota is met or September 15, whichever comes first.
Area 5 (western Strait of Juan de Fuca): Open daily beginning May 21. Shrimping is allowed during daylight
hours only. The recreational spot shrimp season closes when the quota is met or September 15, whichever comes first.
Area 6 (Port Angeles Harbor, eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca, excluding the Discovery Bay Shrimp District): Open on May 21-23, June 6-7, June 20-21 and July 18-19. Shrimping is allowed during daylight hours only. An announcement regarding additional dates may be made later in the season.
Area 6 (Discovery Bay Shrimp District): Open on May 21 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. only. An announcement regarding additional dates may be made later in the season.
Area 7 East (northern Rosario Strait, Bellingham Bay, Sucia and Matia Islands, Strait of Georgia): Open on May 21-23 and June 6-7. Shrimping is allowed during daylight hours only. An announcement regarding additional
dates may be made later in the season.
Area 7 South (Iceberg Point, Point Colville, Biz Point, Salmon Bank): Open on May 21-23 and June 6-7. During June 20-21, only the Iceberg Point section will be open for spot shrimp. Shrimping is allowed during daylight hours only. An announcement regarding additional dates may be made later in the season.
Area 7 West (San Juan Channel, Speiden Channel, Stuart and Waldron Islands): Open on May 21-23, June 6-7, June 20-21 and July 18-19. Shrimping is allowed during daylight hours only. An announcement regarding additional dates may be made later in the season.
Areas 8-1 (Saratoga Passage, Deception Pass) and 8-2 (Port Susan, Port Gardner, Everett): Open on May 21 and June 6 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. only. An announcement regarding additional dates may be made later in the season.
Area 9 (Edmonds, Port Townsend Bay, Admiralty Inlet): Open on May 21 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. only. An announcement regarding additional dates may be made later in the season.
Area 10 (inside of Elliott Bay east of a line from West Point to Alki Point): Open on May 21 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. only. An announcement regarding additional dates may be made later in the season.
Area 10 (outside of Elliott Bay west of a line from West Point to Alki Point, which includes the Bainbridge Island shrimp fishing grounds): Closed for spot shrimp harvest in 2025 due to low abundance. State and tribal comanagers are evaluating updated test fishing information to inform potential quotas and fisheries.
Area 11 (Tacoma, Vashon Island): Closed for spot shrimp harvest in 2025 due to low abundance. State and tribal comanagers are evaluating updated test fishing information to inform potential quotas and fisheries. The non-spot shrimp season will open sometime in early summer and includes a depth restriction.
Area 12 (Hood Canal Shrimp District): Open on May 21, May 22, June 4, June 18 and July 2 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. only. An announcement regarding
A well-stocked bait barrel tempted these spotties to come for a feast. Shrimping pellets mixed with oily tuna, whitefish or salmon as well as cat food cans with holes punched in the top are great baits for these deepwater denizens. (MARK YUASA)
FISHING
additional dates may be made later in the season.
Area 13 (South Puget Sound, Carr Inlet): Closed for spot shrimp harvest in 2025 due to low abundance. The non-spot shrimp season will open sometime in early summer and includes a depth restriction.
In all open areas of Puget Sound, the daily limit per shrimper is 80 spot shrimp with a total daily weight limit of 10 pounds (whole shrimp)
for all species of shrimp combined. Shrimpers who retain only spot shrimp may remove and discard the heads while in the field and before returning to shore. Shrimpers retaining any shrimp species other than spot shrimp must continue to retain the heads until finished and on shore to verify compliance with the 10-pound daily limit.
More info on recreational shrimp fishing rules, seasons and marine
areas is available on WDFW’s website, including a webpage on gear rules at wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/shellfishingregulations/gear-rules.
Shrimpers can set traps one hour before official sunrise during any open period in the marine areas without specified harvest hours. These include Areas 4, 5, 6 (except for the Discovery Bay Shrimp District) and Areas 7 East, South and West. The traps must be removed from the water in these same areas by one hour after sunset at the end of an open period. The start and end times for all other areas are listed above.
Seasons for non-spot shrimping (dock, coonstripe, sidestripe and pink shrimp only) will begin later this year and will be announced separately. During non-spot shrimp seasons 1/2inch mesh traps are allowed, depth restrictions are in place and all spot shrimp are required to be released immediately.
A shrimp species identification guide is available on WDFW’s webpage at wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/ files/2022-06/WA%20Shrimp%20 Creel%20ID%20Sheet.pdf.
SPOT SHRIMP FISHING TIPS AND TACTICS
Since there are a limited number of days to fish for spot shrimp, it is important to make sure you’ve got all your gear in proper working order and you know where and when to go.
The majority of spot shrimp can be found in deeper depths along steep ledges, dropoffs and sharp inclined bottoms. The prime habitat for spot shrimp is usually found in 200 to 350 feet of water.
The shrimp tend to huddle in massive swarms, which look like a huge cloud on a fishfinder. Once you’ve located a sweet spot be sure to scatter traps across a broad area and set them at various depths. Allow a one- to two-hour soak before making your first pull, which gives you at least two chances during a four-hour fishing period.
Prepping a good mix of bait
While these two little guys are pretty lightweight, given the depths spot shrimp inhabit and the weights needed to hold your gear in place against the tides, having a pot hauler like the one behind the author is a very good idea. (MARK YUASA)
FISHING
ingredients and thicknesses – which should be the consistency of dense yogurt – are two key factors when it comes to success. Since you’ve got to set traps deep you’ll want to ensure the scent cloud is still leaching out after it hits bottom.
Make sure your mixture has a good amount of shrimp bait pellets and also mix in oily tuna, whitefish or salmon in a 5-gallon bucket. Bring a large ladle or scooper and latex gloves, as it can get rather messy. Add several cans of cat food with several small holes punched into them just before you drop the traps. For backup, make sure to bring along 24 to 30 extra cans of cat food.
Investing in an electric pot puller is well worth the cost of avoiding a sore shoulder or wasting time by hand pulling up a 35-pound trap from 300-plus feet of water. The Scotty Electric Pot Puller is a good choice, and others prefer the Ace Line Hauler Pro that can be placed onto a Scotty downrigger mount and plug.
The standard setup is a yellow buoy (your full name and address is required on the buoy and must be legible). A phone number is recommended. A colorful flag or staff is optional but can be helpful locating your own buoy in a maze of other buoys set nearby. Always attach buoys with the rounded
end towards the trap and not the flat end, which creates more drag and can snag floating debris. Never use empty containers (like a 1-gallon milk container) as a buoy, plus it is illegal because they create drag and can fill up with water and sink.
For each pot use at least 400 feet of sinking lead line. The line length is dependent on how deep you plan to fish. Tide changes will alter your water depth, so a good tip is to use a line that is one-third longer than the maximum water depth you’re shrimping in to prevent losing a trap. Avoid using lines with a large diameter, particularly those greater than 5/16 inch, which creates more drag in a current and can pull lighter traps away from where they’re set. You can also add a weight to the line. Propellers can sever floating lines on the surface and will increase the chance of entanglement with floating debris. Before heading out, make sure the drop lines are coiled neatly and ready to deploy.
A medium-sized square pot will have a bait barrel (bring extras) connected to a four-way rope harness attached to each corner of the pot. Keep your bait barrel securely fastened to the trap with a wide strip of elastic cord. A biodegradable escape cord made of cotton (or other natural fiber) that will degrade and reduce the amount
PROPOSED STATE FERRY TERMINAL CLOSURE ZONES
Aproposed rule prohibiting deploying shrimp and crab fishing gear in Washington state ferry terminal closure zones could take effect when the 2025 spot shrimp season opens. Refer to the WDFW emergency fishing rules webpage (wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/regulations/emergency-rules) for updates.
If implemented, the rule would prohibit commercial or recreational crabbing, shrimping and fishing with purse seine or gillnets near 19 Department of Transportationmanaged ferry terminals in Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands.
These types of fishing and shellfishing equipment can cause significant and costly damage to state ferries. The closure would prohibit using these types of fishing gear within 400 yards from the end of the ferry terminal dock and 100 yards on each side.
The rule would not apply to trolling or other methods of recreational salmon, lingcod and finfish fishing.
View the proposed rule on WDFW’s rulemaking webpage at wdfw.wa.gov/ about/regulations/development/fishing-closure-near-wsdot-ferry-terminals. –MY
of shrimp wasted if the pot is lost is required on all shellfish traps.
Most importantly for your trap is to add extra weights, evenly placed; it may require 10 to 30 pounds of weight to keep the trap from moving around in strong currents.
ON THE TABLE
Spot shrimp are a healthy source of the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory astaxanthin and are high in Omega-3 fatty acids. They have a nice, sweet flavor to go along with their firm meat texture.
They’re delicious when eaten raw; if cooked whole, they should only be boiled for one to two minutes or until they turn pink. If possible, live spot prawns should be prepared the same day they’re caught.
To keep them alive, put them on ice immediately after you catch them. Shrimp can be kept in the refrigerator for a couple days to be eaten fresh. Freeze immediately if you plan on saving them. Never store them with tap water, as chlorine kills them. If kept overnight, remove the heads, as the digestive enzyme makes the flesh turn mushy.
MORE PRO TIPS
• Launch your boat well ahead of the start time. Nothing is worse than waiting in a line on land when the fishery gets underway.
• Be at your fishing spot with traps baited and ready to drop the moment it officially opens.
• Count your limit into separate containers to avoid overlimiting.
• And keep in mind that each angler can have only two traps and a maximum of four traps per boat, meaning when you are near the point where you only have one last limit to catch, you cannot have four traps sitting in the water. NS
Editor’s note: Mark Yuasa is a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife communications manager and longtime local fishing and outdoor writer.
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Reader Mailbag, Jetty Edition
assume that once you go into the river from the jetty, you’re not coming out, except with help from the Coast Guard after the fact. It can be a dangerous place, so you’re always on your toes. Sometimes literally.
That said, my usual method for landing, say, a black sea bass on the jetty is simply to get it close, preferably into a quieter pool in the rocks. Ideally, I’m timing my landing with the incoming waves. Then, I simply yard the fish vertically – or as vertically as I can, given the rock I’m standing on – up onto the boulders. This is facilitated by the use of 40- or 50-pound braided mainline and 50-pound Berkley Trilene Big Game monofilament leader.
Lately though, sir, I’ve gotten a bit wiser, or I’d like to think wiser, and am now including one-half (6 feet) of my smelt net rig in my jetty gear. Lord knows it wasn’t much use on the Cowlitz this year, but it does help, obviously, to extend my reach, keeps me back away from the water (somewhat), and lessens the chance of losing the fish due to line break or operator error … which still happens, but then it’s on me.
As for your second query – “tackle recommendations” – I’ll elaborate a bit here and go item by item, if you don’t mind.
RODS, REELS AND LINE
I prefer spinning tackle for sea bass – also known as black rockfish – and lingcod; baitcasting gear for surfperch. Personal preference, I reckon.
The rods are Okuma SST series, an 8-foot-6 or 9-foot spinning rod, medium heavy, and a 9-foot heavy casting rod. For bottomfish, I want a really sensitive rod, not so much for feeling the strike, but for feeling the bottom, i.e., sand, rocks or snags.
FOUTDOORS MD
By MD Johnson
irst things first. I wish to address the gentleman reader’s questions to the Outdoors MD, moi, from a month ago. To wit:
“I would like to know Mr. Johnson’s favored method for landing bottomfish when fishing off of the jetty, and any tackle recommendations for such. Thank you!”
Dear sir,
Thanks so much for your note. Glad to know someone’s reading my back and forth each month. Much appreciated! But now to your questions.
First, my “favored method for landing bottomfish from the jetty.” Well, let me repeat myself and say that as much as I dearly love fishing the Columbia’s North Jetty, it’s not a nice place. The rocks are big. The footing is sketchy at best. And, despite not having seen nor done it, I’m going to
I’m partial to the Pflueger President size 35 spinning reel, and the older Abu Garcia Ambassadeur 5500- or 6500-series levelwinds. Any good 40- or 50-pound – or 30-pound works fine, too – braid works, but I do like the aforementioned 50-pound Trilene Big Game mono for my leader.
TERMINAL TACKLE
Quality snap swivels. A selection of beads up to and including 5mm. Daiichi Bleeding Bait 3/0 or 4/0 offset worm hooks. Note: I do believe red hooks make a difference,
Gordie Walling, author MD Johnson’s brother-in-law, with a decent sea bass caught off the North Jetty at the mouth of the Columbia River. (JULIE JOHNSON)
COLUMN
especially when fishing anchovies under a bobber for late August silvers on the jetty. Leadhead jigs in ½- to 1½-ounce sizes; maybe a couple in 2-ounce models. Threequarter-ounce Ultra Steel Bullet Weights from Walmart. Twister tail grubs in a variety of colors and from 4- to 6-inch lengths.
What colors on those twister tails? I always have chartreuse, white, pink, pink/ white, motor oil, red, and a silver fleck, but you never know what’s going to work. Oh, and a 6-inch Berkley Gulp! grub in nuclear chicken. Trust me on that one.
GO-TO RIGS
Nine times out of 10, I run the rig that follows from the jetty. (I’ve tried others – many others – and this is the one that keeps me out of the rocks most of the time.) I run my braid through the ¾-ounce steel bullet weight, then a 5mm bead and a quality snap swivel.
My leader secret is to keep it short. Really short. As in 12 inches tops, with 8 or 10 inches being preferable. Double overhand loop at one end goes to the swivel; a palomar knot to the worm hook.
Finally, I rig my 6-inch nuclear chicken grub as a bass angler would do, i.e., head onto the sproat bend, turn, and then hooked weedless with the barb along the underside of the grub. Rigged like this, the hook itself isn’t catching on anything, and with a “bounce,” I can usually pop that bullet weight out of the rocks. Usually, not always, so I make sure I have plenty of terminal tackle and grubs.
I will, on occasion, go old school and throw a 1-ounce leadhead jig rigged with the same 4- to 6-inch curltail grub; however, and I don’t know if it’s the shape of the jig, the direct connection between me and the lure, or a strategic personal failing, but I don’t have as much luck staying out of the rocks with a leadhead as I do the short leader and worm hook setup.
My brother-in-law? All he works is a traditional leadhead/grub combination, and more often than not he cleans house. Touch. And feel. It all goes back to the rod and experience.
HOW I FISH ’EM
For sea bass and lingcod, I prefer quiet water. Slack tide. If the water’s running
Curltails, leadhead jigs, worm hooks and egg sinkers represent some of the standard gear for fishing off the Northwest Coast’s jetties. Bring lots, as you will snag up on the rocks. (JULIE JOHNSON)
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too hard, be it ebb or flood, I run into two problems. One, I have to increase the weight necessary, say, from ¾ ounce to 2 ounces, to find the bottom, which I don’t care to do. And two, with hard water movement, by the time I find the bottom I’ve become part of the bottom; rather, my line’s at 10 o’clock but my grub’s at 2 o’clock and I’ve become technically tangled. Ugh!
That said, my methodology is nothing short of simple. One thing to remember. There’s a point out from the jetty where the rocks end and the sand begins. Forty yards, maybe, but it differs from place to
Fore! Johnson learned about an interesting dropshot-style setup from an old jetty fisherman. “The golf ball, he said, sinks but is just buoyant enough that it helps keep you out of the rocks,” he explains. “Drill a small hole in a non-liquid-center golf ball, if you can help it. Screw in a short eye screw. Use the golf ball as your bottom weight. The ball weighs 1.6 ounces, which is good, but is as mentioned semi-buoyant, so it takes a little longer to sink. Unlike a traditional lead weight, the ball ‘bounces’ on the rocks; get stuck between two, and a good pop usually gets it out. I rig a dropshot-style hook, say, 12 to 14 inches above the
along with a Senko worm, twister tail grub, or Berkley Gulp! eel. There’s a little learning curve, but it does work.” (JULIE JOHNSON)
place. Ideally, you want to cast beyond the rocks onto the sand, and then work your grub to the rocks and over them and out. With a sensitive rod, you’ll soon learn to feel the difference between that steel hitting the sand and hitting the rocks. Time. And patience.
So I’ll cast to the sand, let my grub hit bottom – a slow count to 22 to 32, perhaps –hop it slowly until I feel that very first tick that says rock, pick the rod tip up immediately, and begin a slow retrieve, dropping the rod tip now and then just to maintain contact with the bottom. It takes time. You’re going to lose some gear. But you’ll get it.
FINAL ADVICE
Now there’s nothing scientific at all about what I’m about to say next. It’s a theory of mine. Lingcod are homebodies. They have a hidey hole in the rocks that belongs to them. You’re either going to drop your grub on their lips and catch them, or you’re not. Sea bass, I’ve found, seem to be similarly territorial, relating to bottom specifics for reasons known only to them. My point? Too often, I see anglers spend way too much time casting in one spot and never catching anything. These aren’t migrating salmon; these bottomfish live off the Jetty as permanent residents in
ball,
COLUMN
Work your way up and down the jetty for lingcod and rockfish instead of sticking to just one spot. And, as always, take care on the rocks. The Northwest’s jetties were built by the Army Corps of Engineers strictly for shipping and navigation in and out of bays and river mouths. They are not maintained for recreational use in the least.
(JULIE JOHNSON)
this spot or that spot. First cast to 10 o’clock … bang … Fish on! Second to 12 o’clock, same story. Nothing at 2 o’clock. I’ll stay 20 minutes flogging the water, and then move up or down the jetty 100 feet and do it again. Fish and move. Fish and move. You watch the guys who are catching sea bass and that’s what they’re doing.
I hope that answers your questions, sir. Most importantly, I want to re-emphasize the part about being careful on the jetty. It’s a beautiful place. It’s an unforgiving place. The rocks are hard. The falls are nasty. A typical day on the North Jetty, and I’ve lost some amount of blood. Just say’n. Good luck out there, and be safe wherever you go.
Sincerely,
MD Johnson NS
ASK THE M.D.
Admittedly, the MD in MD Johnson’s name doesn’t exactly stand for “medical doctor,” but as you’ve seen here, he’s a pretty thoughtful guy on a wide range of fishing- and hunting-related topics.
So we’re offering you a chance to pick MD’s brain on anything from clam digging to crappie fishing, muzzleloader hunting to duck decoying, and more.
Got a question for him? Hit me at awalgamott@media-inc .com and I’ll get him on it for a future issue. –Andy Walgamott
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Get Your Butt Out For Bass
Willamette Valley waters prime in May, June for chasing largemouth, smallmouth.
By Troy Rodakowski
Many of us avid bass anglers look forward to warmer May-June weather with sunshine and spawning bass that are aggressively protecting their bedrooms. Topwater action can be dynamite and there is nothing quite like hooking into an aggressive fish.
In the Willamette Valley, the bass spawn is driven by a combination of increasing daylight and relatively stable water temperatures approaching 60 degrees and will continue as the water warms up to around 70. However, in some waters it may begin with temperatures in the upper 50s or continue with temperatures up to 75. The best bet for peak activity will be looking for water temperatures that approach and remain 60 or above.
As a general rule, be prepared to find bass spawning somewhere in the Willamette Valley from mid-April through the end of June, depending on the type of spring we’re having. It will likely occur earliest at valley floor ponds and sloughs and then move to the river and reservoirs later on.
I’M LUCKY LIVING in the southern portion of the valley in that there are so many great options nearby for me to wet a line. Even if it’s only for a quick 15- to 30-minute outing, I always keep a rod and tackle handy in my vehicle.
Some of my top lakes and reservoirs include but are not limited to: Fern
Ridge, Cottage Grove, Dorena, Dexter, Lookout Point, Triangle, Siltcoos, Woahink, Foster, Yamhill, Green Peter and Fall Creek, as well as the Willamette River’s sloughs and tributaries, including the Tualatin.
There is also a plethora of small private ponds along the Willamette that, if you are able to gain permission, can be some of the best fishing around. The key to good fishing in these ponds is to get to
Good-sized largemouth bass are readily caught during the May and June spawning period throughout the Willamette Valley. (TROY RODAKOWSKI)
FISHING
While the Beaver State is known for its salmon and steelhead, the popularity of bass fishing here is reflected in the fact that Willamette Valley universities have fielded competitive bass fishing teams. Oregon State University’s bass fishing club was founded in 2009 and members continue doing a good job promoting bass fishing throughout the Northwest. (KATHY MUNSEL, ODFW)
them before the algae blooms begin. Thick algae along the shorelines will limit your access to fish and not all of these waters are accessible by watercraft, nor do all landowners want or allow boats to be launched on their properties.
Another of my favorite waters – and one that is less than a couplehour drive from my home – is the Umpqua River and the smallmouth that live there. Not only are they fun to catch and very active this time of year, but are excellent on the dinner table. The nice thing about the Umpqua is that there is plenty of good bank access at parks and near boat launches. However, some of the best bass fishing is from a boat, which allows you to access pockets of water inaccessible from the bank.
Umpqua bass tend to spawn a bit later due to the cooler nature of the river, so good fishing opportunities remain through early summer. I have found that the best time to fish for smallmouth is at low barometric pressure, since it encourages feeding.
Of course, well to the north and back in the Willamette Valley proper, Henry Hagg Lake is always a very
popular place for bass, and every year there are a good number of good-sized largemouth that come out of the lake.
RUBBER WORMS IN a wide selection, crankbaits in assorted styles and colors, skirted spinnerbaits and topwater tackle all fit into my medium-size tackle box labeled “bass.” Many anglers like to use the 80/20 rule and it seems to be on point when chasing bass. It says that 80 percent of your bass catches will come from 20 percent of the water or fishing spots you visit. This reiterates the importance of focusing on key areas and fishing techniques. Keep in mind that many aquatic creatures will migrate and be found near available structure or vegetation. Some lakes, ponds, rivers and streams become blown out with heavy spring rains, washing much of the habitat and food sources away that bass desire. However, if deep-water habitat is available, they will still be found there in great numbers.
Topwater action really heats up in May and June and hooking into a “ditch pickle” on topwater tackle will make you an addict quickly. I remember growing up watching my father toss a
Hula Popper across a small farm pond, twitching it slowly across and hooking multiple 3- to 5-pounders. Those are warm June days I’ll never forget. Of course, I usually sat in the warm sun sweating, swatting flies and getting a good burn while I intently watched my bobber and nightcrawler until it disappeared into the depths with the occasional fish.
Rubber mouse, frog and salamander imitations are great topwater baits that hungry, aggressive bass cannot resist. Most of the time cover and food sources will continue to be found around the edges as well as the less wind-blown sections of water. Boat docks, eddies and other convergences of water are great places to find fish in spring and early summer. Vegetation around them is not easily washed away by heavy rains and winds. This cover will remain throughout even the most turbulent of spring weather.
No matter where you choose to fish for bass this late spring, always make sure to have insect repellent and some good sunscreen. I have been caught without both and paid for it dearly. But hungry bass are also waiting, so start planning your next trip now! NS
COLUMN
Time To See What I Can Do With A Princess Pole
remain nameless, who used to take old Christmas trees and place them during low water in reservoirs and mark them on his GPS. He could then return and fish that structure when the lake came up and catch loads of fish. Let’s be clear, that is super-duper illegal, but I do know it happens. Mike’s sonar just so happened to stumble upon one old yule tree. Or at least that is what I think it was. It certainly was in the giving spirit, as we caught many, many fish over the structure over the space of most of an hour.
We had started the whole operation at 6 a.m. in Mike’s shed, where his boat sat. I was giving him grief for the length of his fishing poles; they were like 10 feet long! No crappie deserves that much pole. It seemed way past overkill. As we both started talking smack, he grabbed the other option: a Frozen fishing pole – yes, as in the movie. It had Elsa on the side and Olaf somewhere else. I did not let the fish go, if you are wondering.
After some rain and a slow start, we had landed about 30 fish before noon. A crappy day of crappie fishing, honestly. But it was a meat run nonetheless, and yielded the perfect amount for a good ol’ fish fry.
A HISTORY OF CRAPPIE IN THE NORTHWEST
While salmon and trout might get all the glory in Northwest fishing lore, warmwater species like crappie have their own history in the region.
CHEF IN THE WILD
By Randy King
The rain fell gently on the fishing boat as we drifted toward the bridge, the steady pinging not quite driving me crazy. The boat owner, Mike, was doing a good job at that, however. So much smack talk for 9 a.m. … But I love Mike; I do. Then a slight chuckle came from his
mouth as he studied his sonar with intensity.
“Dude, uh, would you look at that,” he whispered, pointing at the screen. The display showed a distinct treelike structure submerged about 10 feet below us. He smirked and dropped anchor.
I have known about the secret game underwater architecture has been playing out for decades, but have never actually participated in it. It’s kind of like fight club – you don’t talk about it.
I have a different friend, who shall
Black crappie (Pomoxis nigromaculatus) and white crappie (Pomoxis annularis) aren’t native to the Pacific Northwest. These sunfish relatives, originally from the Mississippi River basin and eastern United States, were first introduced to Northwest waters in the late 1800s and early 1900s as part of a national movement to establish popular game fish across America.
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife records show crappie were first stocked in Evergreen State waters around 1890, with Idaho and Oregon following suit in the early 20th century. That’s right, someone put live crappie on a freaking train and sent them across the country to Washington.
These introductions were often conducted by well-meaning sportsmen’s
Randy shows off a nice crappie he caught on a Disney Frozen spincast rod for a big fish fry. (RANDY KING)
Fried crappie filets with lemon wedges and salad. (RANDY KING)
CRISPY PAN-FRIED CRAPPIE
When I catch crappie – which is most of the time I fish for them – I tend to cook them very simply. Nothing fancy, but still delicious. The standard fish fry recipe is below. The beauty of fresh crappie is that you don’t need to overcomplicate things – catch, clean, cook.
4 to 6 crappie filets
1 cup cornmeal
¼ cup flour
2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon garlic powder
Vegetable oil for frying
Lemon wedges for serving
Pat the filets dry with paper towels –moisture is the enemy of crispy fish.
Mix the cornmeal, flour, salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder in a shallow dish.
Dredge each filet in the cornmeal mixture, coating both sides well.
Gently place filets in the hot oil, being careful not to overcrowd the pan.
Cook until golden brown on one side (about two to three minutes), then flip and cook until the second side is golden and the fish flakes easily (another two minutes).
Transfer to a wire rack or paper towellined plate to drain.
Serve immediately with lemon wedges and your favorite sides. And while it might seem lame, man, a nice salad with this dish goes a long way to making me feel kind of healthy while eating fried fish. –RK
clubs or government agencies seeking to diversify fishing opportunities. The adaptable crappie found perfect homes in the Northwest’s many lakes, slow-moving rivers and eventually reservoirs. By the 1950s, crappie fishing had developed a dedicated following.
Along with crappie, other warmwater transplants including largemouth and smallmouth bass, bluegill, yellow perch and channel catfish have established themselves in the region’s waters. These species filled ecological niches in the many reservoirs created by the dambuilding boom of the mid-20th century.
The Columbia Basin Project in Washington and similar water development initiatives throughout the Northwest created thousands of acres of prime habitat for these warmwater species. Mind you, some hydropower projects killed salmon and steelhead, so a tradeoff was definitely made.
By the 1970s and ’80s, state agencies began recognizing the recreational value of these introduced species, implementing management plans specifically for warmwater fisheries. Today, the Northwest boasts world-class opportunities for crappie, bass and other spinyrays.
It’s also produced some impressive crappie over the years. Washington’s state record black crappie weighed 4.50 pounds and was caught in Lake Washington in May 1956. Oregon’s record stands at 4 pounds even from the Lost River system near Klamath Falls, while Idaho’s record black crappie reached 3.56 pounds at Brownlee Reservoir. My personal best is a 157/8-incher from a lake in Texas. It went not quite 2 pounds.
CRAPPIE HUNTING ADVICE
For anglers looking to target Northwest crappie, here are some time-tested tactics: Seasonal patterns: In spring, focus on shallow coves and protected areas where crappie spawn. During summer, look for suspended schools near dropoffs or – as I discovered – submerged structure (Christmas trees or otherwise). Fall finds them schooling and feeding heavily, while winter pushes them deeper.
Gear choices: Regardless of whether you’re using a professional setup or a
princess pole, light tackle is “the way” – to continue my Disney theme – to go. A 6- to 10-foot ultralight or light rod paired with 4- to 6-pound-test line provides more than enough umph to get the fish out of the water and into the basket. The bite can be soft, but when they take your offering, it is often plenty powerful.
Bait and lures: Small jigs (1/16 to 1/32 ounce) in white, chartreuse or yellow tipped with Crappie Nibbles, a meal worm or hunk of earthworm are deadly effective. Honestly, ask the local tackle shop what to use. My buddy pulls streamers from a float tube with his fly rod and slays them.
Finding fish: Modern electronics have revolutionized crappie fishing. Sonar units help locate schools and –perhaps more importantly – the structure they relate to. Look for rock structures or suspiciously Christmas-treeshaped objects.
The bridge pattern: There’s a reason we were fishing under a bridge that day. Bridges provide shade, current breaks and often attract baitfish. The pilings create vertical structure that crappie use as ambush points.
To be very clear, “habitat enhancement” through unauthorized structure placement might seem beneficial, but it’s important to note that it’s illegal. State, federal and other agencies have legitimate concerns about water quality, navigation hazards and potential ecological impacts. NS
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Tagging LateSeason Toms
Adjust to turkey behavior changes to bag May birds across the Northwest.
By David Johnson
First, the basics: Spring gobbler seasons in Oregon and Washington continue until the very end of May, while the Idaho season ends May 25. Yet despite the improving weather and generous seasons, hunters take fewer turkeys in May than in the first two weeks of the season in April.
Obviously, there are just fewer toms wandering around than at the start of the season, but an important reason hunting gets tougher later in spring is that turkey behavior changes in ways that make them less vulnerable to hunters.
Turkeys, especially in warmer parts of their range in the Northwest, begin breeding well before the season even begins – this is a design feature of hunting regulations to ensure that toms have a chance to breed hens before being hunted. Whatever happens to the toms during the season, the hens will have a chance at nesting success.
But a knock-on effect of this is that at some point in May, hens begin getting broody, and will spend more and more time on the nest and less and less time breeding. Once hens start sitting on their eggs, they are not with toms at the start of the day (the toms continue to nest in trees at night).
Meanwhile, many of the dominant toms are physically run down from a month or more of frantic breeding
Erik Johnson shows off his first Rio Grande, taken in midspring last season in the Coast Range, as his dad and author David Johnson looks on. (STEVE JOHNSON)
HUNTING
and defending their hens from other toms. Actively breeding toms have lost weight and need to spend part of their days recovering. Especially in the afternoons, their interest in pursuing hens to breed declines, and their interest in feeding increases.
Hunters can adjust to these changes and still kill gobblers, however. Here are some tactics to keep in mind.
START EARLY IN THE RIGHT PLACE
Even late in the season, gobblers start the day hoping to breed. According to some studies, the most dominant gobblers travel less to breed than younger toms do; they let their strutting and gobbling convince
If you don’t kill a turkey at fly-down in the morning, find cover at the edge of a green opening and make soft feeding calls at midday. (ERIC BRAATEN)
This young tom fell into a pattern of exiting a feeding area in the same place each afternoon on its way to the roost. Patterning such birds can lead to success at the end of the day. (DAVID JOHNSON)
HUNTING
a little gathering into your
turkey
by harvesting some morel mushrooms. The delectable fungi pop up this time of year, typically in disturbed areas or moister spots east of
FOREST FOOD AT YOUR FEET
As you go about your scouting and hunting this spring, you might want to slip a small paper bag into your turkey vest. You will be moving through habitat that can support one of the great treats for Pacific Northwest cooks: morel mushrooms. They go well with wild game, notably venison and elk, but also turkey. A turkey hunt can provide a chance to fill a bag with a tasty side for your turkey dinner. Morels are mushrooms and mushrooms are a fungus. Like all living things, morels need the right elements in their habitat. Unlike plants, mushrooms do not directly use sunlight for their energy. They feed on decaying plant matter, mainly wood decaying in the forest floor. They prefer environments that do not get super dry. The part of the mushroom above ground that you pick and eat is the fruiting body, and morels fruit in the spring as soils warm up.
Trees that morels like include apple, cottonwoods, aspen, black cherry and ash. They also do well in older Douglas fir forests, particularly where logging or wildfire has occurred – the same disturbances that turkeys feed in. East of the Cascades, where many areas are drier than morels prefer, they tend to be on forested northern and eastern slopes and in wetter, forested creek canyons. They like relatively deep soil with lots of decaying wood.
Morels are a target for many casual mushroom hunters because they are relatively easy to identify. But you should take care to learn how to identify them nonetheless, because poison mushrooms are extremely toxic to people. –DJ
willing hens to come to them.
These gobblers try to travel only a short distance to find a hen right after fly-down. It’s always an advantage for a hunter to know where the birds are roosting, but it’s an even bigger advantage late in the season. Set up close to the roosting area without the toms seeing you before light, and they might fly down right to your calls.
If you don’t know exactly where the birds are roosting, you can narrow your search by keeping two things in mind: 1) Gobblers want to start the day near hens, and 2) hens, even the ones that are not yet broody, are deeply interested in being very close to good nesting habitat.
Good nesting habitat has a few key components. It will be brushy, with the undergrowth at least 18 inches high; it will provide cover, but also allow a nesting hen to see movement through the cover if a predator approaches; and it will be close to a more open area that provides the hen with a reliable and easy-to-reach feeding area. The feeding area or areas close by should provide both plant and insect feed because it will be the first feeding zone for newly hatched chicks and they need protein to grow and produce feathers.
This is a fair description of “edge” habitat. It will not be open pasture or bare hillside or new clearcut. It will not be closed-canopy forest, where no sunlight can reach the ground. It can be between forest and open pasture or hillside; it can be along brushy creeks; it can be an older clearcut near standing timber.
Critically, areas recovering from wildfire burns can produce a tremendous amount of new growth, both in the form of young plants and insects. If your hunting area contains a burn that is a couple of years old, there is a chance that turkeys roost in trees near the edge of the burn and feed and strut in the burn.
If you see nesting habitat near good roosting trees, make a note of it (gobblers like big fir trees, but
Put
spring
hunt
the Cascades. (MARY SMILEY, WIKIMEDIA CC BY-SA 3 0)
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HUNTING
will make do with pines, oaks or cottonwoods, as long as they can roost high enough to be safe from predators). The area is even more promising if the feeding areas near the nesting habitat also provide the gobbler with a good strut zone. If you can find several such places, you improve your odds of starting the day close to toms that want to breed.
Assuming you identify where at least some toms are roosting, a flydown call sequence in the late season can be quite a bit like what you would do on opening day.
LATE MORNING OPS
Another way to scout for toms is to find them in their strutting zones an hour or two after fly-down. You might not be able to get close enough to kill a turkey while he is in the strutting zone because it will be an open area and he won’t want to leave, especially if he’s already joined up with his hens.
Sometimes the strutting areas happen to be configured in a way that allows you to get close enough. A break in the terrain or a brushy edge to the field where the tom is strutting can allow you to approach through the cover.
Some strut zones have creek edges or slash piles or overgrown fences that will hide a hunter who gets there before the turkeys do. So if your scouting has shown a gobbler has a strong pattern of setting up in that strut zone every day, a hunter with patience has a good chance to fill a turkey tag.
Even if the tom is too far for a shot, sometimes calling can cause him to drift closer to you. He may not leave the open strutting area, but he might get close enough to the edge of it that he comes in shotgun range.
Once you are positioned as close as possible without the tom (or his hens) being alarmed by your movement, try calling using contented hen feeding noises. If you are sitting and can move your arm
without the turkeys spotting you, use your hand to scratch leaf or pine needle duff on the ground. You are imitating a hen scratching the ground to uncover food, which, depending on the habitat, can be acorns, pine nuts, seeds or bugs.
You can also do a call sequence that imitates a hen getting bred, which if all goes well will bring the tom closer. However, the real hens he’s with may try to drag him away from the “new” hen. Even if the hens drag the gobbler away, watch where they go. It’s possible that they are heading in the direction they enter and leave the open area.
If they don’t leave the opening, you can try to reposition for an ambush when they do leave. If they do leave without you getting a shot, remember where they exited the opening and entered the woods or cover. If they aren’t alarmed, they may enter the opening the next morning at the same spot.
GO FOR UNATTACHED GOBBLERS
Though hens’ interest in breeding declines once they go on the nest, many toms are still eager to breed hens if the opportunity arises. Younger hens also may begin breeding later than older hens, and any hen that has lost her first nest will try again. So there are still a few breeding hens around.
There are also younger toms that are not as worn down as the dominant gobblers that do most of the early breeding. Through late morning, these young toms can be enticed to come to the sound of an active hen.
If your initial roosting-tree setup doesn’t work early in the day, try moving and calling. The percentage of gobblers that respond may be smaller than on opening day, but you only need one eager volunteer. Cover ground, calling as you go, until you find him.
Your call sequence can be much like it was earlier in the year, but you can give yourself an advantage by switching up the type of call you
use. If you have called to the same birds all season with a box call, try a mouth call, slate or glass call. Or switch the type of mouth call you use. Your second-string call lineup might not be your favorite, but if the toms haven’t heard it yet, they might think you are a “new” hen – exactly what they are looking for.
AFTERNOON AMBUSH
As with the fall season, hunters who know the daily travel patterns of toms late in the spring have a better chance of filling their tags.
In May, the later in the day, the more likely you will come across small bachelor groups of toms that have little more than feeding on their minds. In many cases, the three or four birds in such groups will all be the same age. These toms will feed in fields and other openings like power lines where new forage is growing. Turkeys like unused dirt roads – they are easy to travel, and the sunlight reaches the ground on these roads, even in otherwise dense forests, so from the toms’ point of view, roads are like a line of fast-food joints along a street.
When I’m hunting turkeys I don’t bother to use binoculars very often, but afternoon scouting in late spring is an exception. Good glass can help you assess whether the distant turkeys you see are males or not, and if they are, whether all of them are jakes or whether there’s a good tom in the bunch.
If you watch a group of toms feed for a couple of minutes, typically you will find they are feeding in a certain direction. Late in the day they are most likely feeding toward the stand of trees they will roost in that night. If they show a pattern of feeding in one direction, try to circle around them and set up near cover they will pass by. That may not result in a classic case of you calling to a tom that gobbles back and comes to you aggressively (everyone’s favorite spring hunt), but it can give you a real chance to fill a tag before the season ends. NS
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Picking A Hunting Dog That’s Right For You Part
I of II
Many gun dogs and gun dog owners are still suffering from poor decisions made during the Covid chaos. Some hunters purchased gun dogs on a whim. Others because they wanted a companion. Decisions were made without considering bloodlines, the money it costs to raise a dog, and that 10 to 14 years of dedication is just starting.
In this first of a two-part series, we’ll take a close look at what hunters should consider before investing in a hunting dog.
LAST SEASON I hunted in a number of places around the country with a lot of people and a variety of dogs. Some dogs were rock stars. Some were downright bad. The good dogs were the result of quality bloodlines and dedicated training. The bad dogs, the result of just the opposite; they were also largely overweight.
If looking to get a hunting dog breed that’s right for you, there are many factors
GUN DOG
By Scott Haugen
This is Dodger. On a late-season depredation goose hunt in March, he retrieved over 200 specks in three days, several of which were beyond 400 yards, and a handful over 800 yards – that’s half a mile away. He’s well trained, in top shape, has drive, and great to watch him work. Owner Todd Lemma has put in the time and effort that gun dog ownership demands. (SCOTT HAUGEN)
COLUMN
to consider. First, what kind of hunting do you want to do? If it’s just ducks in water, a Labrador retriever is hard to beat. Most of my hunting buddies have Labs for waterfowl. They hunt rivers, fields and lakes with them. Another buddy has always had Chesapeake Bay retrievers for his diver and sea duck hunting addiction. If you want to also hunt upland birds, fall turkey, squirrels and antler sheds, a versatile gun dog like a pudelpointer, griffon or Drahthaar may be what you’re looking for. Athletic dog breeds like these can cover the miles, even on hot days.
NEXT TO CONSIDER, what’s your home and training situation like? If you live in a city apartment, a high-energy gun dog would be hard to manage. If you have to drive 30 minutes to run or swim your dog, every day of the week, often twice a day, will the distance and time restraints keep you from doing so? If the answer is yes, now might not be the best time to get a dog,
A healthy, hard-working dog will likely incur injuries at some point in their life. Having funds set aside for these unexpected setbacks will help ease the pain on your pocket book. (SCOTT HAUGEN)
If you want a four-legged hunting partner that does it all – waterfowl, upland game, shed antlers – a versatile gun dog is the way to go. Author Scott Haugen spends nearly 200 days afield with his pudelpointers Kona and Echo. (SCOTT HAUGEN)
COLUMN
no matter what the breed.
If you live in the country or have a big yard where you can let a dog run, this opens up opportunities for owning a hunting dog. But don’t think a backyard is all a hunting dog needs. We live in the country. I can open the door and instantly my two pudelpointers have access to over 20 acres of field to run and play in. This is also our training field. They cover it multiple times a day. On one edge of the field are thousands of acres of hills and mountains, climbing to over 2,500 feet in elevation. There’s a river that flows by us and a reservoir within short walking distance. I have all the optimal training grounds I need for my versatile dogs and use them every day we’re not hunting. We train twice a day, with exercise being emphasized during one of the sessions.
DON’T FALL UNDER the assumption that a few tosses of a bumper is exercise either. It’s not. Hunting dogs need to stay physically fit all year. As last month’s column made
clear, there is no offseason when it comes to keeping a dog in top condition. Working with dogs to keep them in shape can be done by them running alongside you on an electric bike or ATV. Riding a bicycle and letting the dog run with you is another good option. Letting them run circles in a field is not exercise; that’s leisure play. Swimming a dog alongside you in a canoe, kayak or on a paddle board will offer them the best workout. My vet has repeatedly told me the number one thing he treats hunting dogs for is being overweight, which is the cause of many serious issues. This is typically the result of a poor quality diet and a lack of discipline on the owner’s part to regularly exercise their pup.
Speaking of vets, have a slush fund for your dog in case of an emergency. Five years ago, Kona, my male pudelpointer, suffered stomach twist. Fortunately we were home and got him to the vet with only minutes to spare before it might have taken his life. A $5,000 surgery wasn’t even a question because we had the funds set aside.
I average about $2,000 a year in vet bills, barring no major surgeries. One season reached over $8,000 due to injuries suffered while hunting. Great dogs work hard and don’t know when to stop. They often hide signs of pain until the end of the day. That’s when you do the right thing and get them to a vet as soon as possible, credit card ready.
SPRING AND EARLY summer are the best times for hunters in the Pacific Northwest to invest in a pup because the weather is favorable for training, especially in water. With that, next month we’ll take a close look at the importance of quality bloodlines, healthy food choices and other areas that should be considered before investing in a hunting dog. NS
Editor’s note: Scott Haugen is a full-time writer. See his puppy training videos and learn more about his many books at scotthaugen.com and follow him on Instagram and Facebook.
Long-Range Handgun Event Underscores Challenge for Fall
ON TARGET
By Dave Workman
As May comes to an end, so will the Northwest’s annual spring wild turkey hunt, but I will be elsewhere by tradition, participating in a small, invitation-only, long-range handgunning event called the Elmer Keith/John Taffin Memorial Handgun Shoot.
Taffin’s name was added this year,
almost immediately after he passed away in March. He was a prolific writer for American Handgunner and Guns Magazine, he authored several books and, like Keith – who died in 1984 – became a legend in his own time.
Taffin was a proficient handgunner, with wide-ranging knowledge about single- and double-action revolvers, handloading and marksmanship. He was also a true gentleman, according
to people who knew him. I traded some email with him and found him both knowledgeable and courteous.
Back in the early 1980s, as Washington editor of a now-defunct regional outdoors newspaper, I was one of the loudest advocates for opening up Washington state to handgun hunting. Unlike most people at the time who opted for the .44 Magnum, my choice for this game was the .41 Magnum.
Proud to say I’ve killed three deer with
Author Dave Workman annually participates in the Elmer Keith long-range handgun shoot. He considers it practice for hunting deer with a handgun, should the opportunity arise. (DAVE WORKMAN)
two different handguns chambered for this marvelous cartridge; two with my Ruger Blackhawk and the most recent a few years ago with a Model 57 Smith & Wesson. All three bucks – a blacktail north of Snoqualmie on the old Weyerhaeuser tree farm, a muley forkhorn way up behind Lake Kachess before the threepoint rule was initiated, and a threepointer over in Douglas County – were not only challenging, they tasted just as good
as any buck I’ve shot with a rifle.
A LITTLE HISTORY is in order. Elmer Keith was a pioneer in long-range handgunning, starting off with hot-loaded .44 Specials and later, the .44 Magnum, for which he is recognized as perhaps the most driving force. There’s at least one photo of Keith and Clint Eastwood together sometime after the Dirty Harry franchise took off. It is widely believed that the Eastwood films
A Keith match participant takes aim at a wolf facsimile at 100 yards, in the upper right. Farther out, at about 175 yards, are more challenging targets. Hit them and you can clobber a deer, black bear or elk with a handgun. (DAVE WORKMAN)
made the .44 Magnum a star, but it was Keith, and subsequently Taffin and others, who demonstrated what the cartridge could do in the field against big game.
Keith’s most controversial shot with a S&W .44 Magnum was made on a muley buck near his home in Salmon, Idaho. He hit the animal twice at an estimated 600 yards. A bullet jacket recovered just under the skin when Keith’s son took off the hide is not the kind of evidence someone can fake.
Do I believe he made the shot? Oh, yeah. With my S&W .41 Magnum, some years ago while practicing for the Keith shoot over south of Spokane, the guy who was spotting for me said I hit a deer-sized target at approximately 590 to 600 yards. I had to walk the shots out, but one of my bullets apparently struck.
The Keith/Taffin handgun shoot attracts shooters from all over the Pacific Northwest. It’s a small event, and the participants are some of the finest shooters I’ve ever watched.
It’s being held in Idaho on the last weekend of this month, and I’m looking forward to it. My load for this event is the same I’ve used for hunting, a 210-grain JHP ahead of 20.0 grains of Hodgdon H110 ignited by a magnum primer.
AND THIS BRINGS me around to hunting big game with a handgun, which has
Shooters stood for a group shot two years ago at a Keith match held in Northeast Washington’s Stevens County. You’re looking at some remarkably good handgun marksmen and -women. (DAVE WORKMAN)
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been allowed in Washington for about four decades.
Ask a bowhunter or black powder hunter why they choose their weapons, and most will say, “It’s challenging.” Exactly. Having toppled deer in four different states with scoped rifles, I can say hitting a deer with a handgun takes considerable self-control and an extremely steady hand.
A lot of handgun hunters use scoped handguns for this game, and credit for advancing this aspect of the effort goes to the late Al Goerg, whose stories graced some of the hunting periodicals six decades ago. Tragically, this handgunning pioneer died in a plane crash in Alaska back in ’65, so I never met him, but did become acquainted with his son, Jim, publisher of The Reel News. Goerg inspired a lot of handgunners, and if he were still around today, I’d gamble he might show up at the Keith shoot, maybe not to participate, but to just sit at the campfire and thrill and entertain the rest of us with stories about the “good ol’ days.”
Look up his name on Google and you will find many people in the outdoors considered Goerg, a Washington resident, as the “Father of Handgun Hunting.” He honestly did pave the way, even more than Keith, perhaps, and even today, his book Pioneering Handgun Hunting and Pacific Northwest Hunting – both out of print – still have fans.
SPRING HUNTING OPPORTUNITIES
As noted earlier, spring turkey hunting continues to May 31, and I’ve seen recent photos from pals up in Stevens County showing good populations of turkeys. They will not be pushovers, but they’re worth going after.
With improvements in the weather through this month, my guess is more hunters will be out there, which may make for a lot of nervous longbeards. Remember to avoid wearing blue or red, try mixing up your camo patterns and be extremely still.
Still, I’d try my luck in Stevens County, down in Klickitat County, and/or over in the Tucannon area in Southeast Washington.
It is still a good month for popping coyotes; sort of preventive medicine against predation on fawns and calves.
On the subject of ’yotes, I did a little homework in relation to the highly publicized coyote encounters in the Bellevue area just east of Seattle. A check with the Department of Fish & Wildlife revealed that coyotes aren’t game animals, and the law actually allows for them to be shot in self-defense.
According to RCW 77.36.030, “Subject to limitations and conditions established by the commission, the owner, the owner’s immediate family member, the owner’s documented employee, or a tenant of real property may trap, consistent with RCW 77.15.194, or kill wildlife that is threatening human safety or causing property damage on that property, without the licenses required under
RCW 77.32.010 or authorization from the director under RCW 77.12.240.”
In the unlikely event someone needs to shoot a threatening coyote, keep a couple of things in mind: 1) Be absolutely certain of the target and what is behind it. A bullet, even a .32 H&R Magnum or .38 Special, can easily go through a coyote, and eventually hit something else. 2) Before it gets to the point of shooting, try scaring the animal, and report the problem to local law enforcement. WDFW officers killed two songdogs in the Bellevue area in March. They were believed to have been involved in several incidents reported by local residents.
Also be aware of local laws about discharge of firearms, especially in populated areas. –DW
Workman with the second of three bucks he’s taken with handguns. This was way back in the 1980s and the gun is a Ruger Blackhawk. (DAVE WORKMAN)
I look at the Keith/Taffin shoot as offseason preparation for fall. I’m no young guy anymore, but I still pack a .41 Magnum while hunting deer, in the event I stumble upon a buck that is dumb enough to walk in front of me at a distance so close the scope on my rifle would be a handicap.
THE KEITH/TAFFIN SHOOT raises funds for the National Rifle Association Foundation, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and/or the Foundation for Wildlife Management.
It also puts one’s handgun skills to the test. Targets are steel gongs of different sizes at ranges from 100 to 500 to 600 yards. My best performance was about 10 to 12 years ago when I took second place overall.
The most fun target is the 100-yarder, a steel facsimile of a wolf, which would probably drive fur huggers nuts. We all have fun plugging away at it. For those of us in Washington, it’s the only “legal wolf” we’ve been able to shoot at.
Other targets all have one thing in common: If you can hit one of them with a handgun, using factory metallic sights, you can definitely hit something bigger.
Participants in the Keith/Taffin shoot are not allowed to use scoped handguns. Keith didn’t. It was Goerg who laid the groundwork for long eye relief handgun scopes.
May is a good time to start practicing for a handgun hunt. The spring and summer months afford us with plenty of time for range work, and for reloading ammunition. Today’s hunting handguns cover all the bases, from single-shot center-fire Thompson/Center pistols in calibers ranging upwards from .223 Remington to really big-bore guns, plus revolvers from Colt, Ruger, Smith & Wesson, Taurus, Magnum Research, Freedom Arms and others, new or used. NS
At 50 yards, the author’s Ruger Blackhawk puts them where it counts. He has found the .41 Magnum to be an accurate cartridge, capable of putting meat in the freezer.
(DAVE WORKMAN)
Outdoor Closet Cleanout
BECOMING A HUNTER
By Dave Anderson
Over the years, I have accumulated an extensive collection of fishing and hunting gear. From fishing rods, reels and tackle to firearms, binoculars, rangefinders and high-end outdoor clothing, my hoard has steadily grown. In the past, I wholeheartedly believed that having a variety of gear at my disposal was a necessity. I always thought, “I might use this one day,” or “It could come in handy.”
However, as I have gotten older, my perspective has changed. Now, I firmly believe that less is more. If I haven’t used something in the past two years, it’s time to get rid of it. Selling unused, lightly used or used gear allows me to invest in equipment that lines up with my current interests and lifestyle.
A CHANGE IN PERSPECTIVE
When I lived in Western Washington, fishing – specifically, offshore fishing in the Pacific Ocean – was a significant part of my life. I fully immersed myself in the offshore fishing lifestyle and even guided charters from time to time. You can only imagine how much gear I accumulated during those years spent on the water!
However, since moving back to Idaho with my family, my priorities have changed. My focus has shifted from saltwater fishing to exploring the mountains of North Idaho with my wife and young boys. These days, I love spending time hiking, backpacking, discovering new wilderness areas, camping, and fishing in high alpine lakes. Because of this shift, much of my offshore gear is simply collecting dust. Rather than holding onto equipment I seldom use, I’ve decided to sell it to friends or put it up for sale online.
I finally came to the realization that if I ever want to go fishing offshore again, I have friends with boats who have all the necessary gear, so I really didn’t need it. And if my buddies are busy, booking a charter trip with an experienced guide is always an option. That way, I can still enjoy ocean fishing from time to time
Spring cleaning isn’t just for the home – it is also the perfect time to take inventory of your hunting and fishing gear. Evaluating what you use, what you don’t and what needs to be upgraded can save money and space. If you haven’t used something in the past two years, chances are you probably won’t use it in the future. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
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without having to maintain a whole collection of specialized gear.
SELLING AND TRADING GEAR
Over the years, I have passed down a lot of gear to friends and family who needed an upgrade or were just getting started out hunting and/or fishing. Selling secondhand gear has also been a fantastic way to recoup some of the money I’ve invested in my gear. Facebook Marketplace and various online forums dedicated to outdoor sports and hunting have been useful avenues for selling some of my gear and equipment. For a person getting into hunting,
Rather than letting hunting clothes, gear and equipment sit unused, selling it while it still has some value is a great way to put cash in your pocket and help others out. (EBAY)
these dedicated forums are great places to look for lightly used gear to start out.
For anyone just getting into hunting or fishing, buying lightly used gear is an excellent way to save money. Let’s face it, hunting and fishing can be expensive hobbies, and the cost of high-quality gear adds up quickly. While budget options do exist, I believe in the saying “Buy once, cry once.” When I first started hunting, I made the mistake of purchasing cheaper alternatives, only to be disappointed by their performance. In the end, I spent more money on replacing subpar gear than I would have if I had invested in quality products from the beginning.
To this day, when I’m about to make a significant purchase, my wife reminds me to go for what I truly want. I would much rather spend the money up front and save money in the long run. I usually don’t have to replace or upgrade my gear as frequently, since I focus on only investing in high-quality, durable gear and equipment.
Hunting season will be here before we know it. Whether upgrading equipment, finding quality used items at a discount, or simply making space for new gear, clearing out your closet can be a great way to refresh and reset, and stay organized and prepared for your next outdoor adventure with the clothing and gear that truly serves your needs. (DAVE ANDERSON)
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FINDING DEALS ON OUTDOOR CLOTHING
For those looking to buy or sell outdoor clothing, private online groups exist for specific brands such as Kuiu, Sitka and First Lite. These groups allow hunters and outdoor enthusiasts to buy, sell and trade high-end outdoor apparel. The benefit of purchasing from these groups is that you can often find great deals on premium gear and get more bang for your buck. The downside is that buying from an individual rather than a retailer means there is no option to return or exchange an item if it doesn’t fit correctly.
From my experience, I’ve learned that all of the brands fit differently. For example, everything I own from Kuiu is one size larger than my normal fit. If you are considering purchasing secondhand clothing, know your correct size beforehand. Buying used gear is a great way to save money, but ensuring it fits properly is just as important.
I have field tested various hunting gear and clothing brands throughout the
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years. While each has its pros and cons, I now exclusively purchase Kuiu products. I have found Kuiu to be the most durable and reliable option when it comes to quality hunting gear and clothing.
PURCHASING SECOND-HAND OPTICS
When it comes to optics – rifle scopes, binoculars, rangefinders and spotting scopes – many online groups specialize in buying and selling used equipment. If you are in the market for second-hand optics, I strongly recommend researching the manufacturer’s warranty policies. Some companies offer lifetime warranties, even for second-hand products, while others do not. This might not be a deal-breaker, but it’s something to consider before making a purchase.
Furthermore, I highly recommend visiting a retail store to physically touch, see and feel different optics before buying. Doing so in person can help you make the right choice. Optics are a significant investment, so knowing
exactly what you are purchasing is especially important.
WHEN TO FIND THE BEST DEALS
With spring here, summer approaching and big game hunting seasons not all that far off, now is an excellent time to keep an eye on sales. Manufacturers and sporting goods retailers often close out items to make way for new fall inventory. Whether you are shopping for outdoor clothing, footwear, optics or firearms, this is one of the best times of the year to find great deals.
Additionally, I also recommend telling friends and family what you are looking for. They may come across sales or closeout deals while browsing in-store or receive emails about promotions that you may not be aware of. Many of the best deals aren’t widely advertised, so networking with others can prove to be beneficial and you could get lucky to find a great deal that you may not have otherwise known about. NS
POTENTIAL CHANGES TO EASTERN OREGON MULE DEER HUNTS STARTING IN 2026
New hunt names, changes to historic hunt boundaries, larger hunt areas and (slightly) fewer mule deer tags could be on tap for the 2026 deer hunting season in Eastern Oregon.
Though the change won’t come till 2026, hunters should be aware as they apply for 2025 controlled hunts.
THE CHANGES ARE due to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s new Mule Deer Plan and efforts to improve data collection and management for this species.
The wildlife management units currently used to structure hunts were originally created in the 1950s and don’t accurately reflect mule deer movements and behavior. Extensive research with GPS-collared mule deer has shown that mule deer are often counted in one unit and harvested in another.
ODFW has already made the switch to collecting more accurate population estimates and other information based on new deer “herd ranges” – the entire area a herd uses in a year, including summer
ranges, winter ranges, and the migration corridors between them.
In order to effectively model populations, harvest data also needs to be collected based on deer herd ranges. The switch will better align hunting effort and associated harvest with Oregon’s mule deer populations and management goals, improve monitoring of population trends, and allow for quicker management responses/accurate evaluation of management actions.
IT’S IMPORTANT TO know that 2026 changes won’t close any areas currently open to deer hunting. It also won’t change the preference point system.
But as with all new hunts, ODFW anticipates a period of uncertainty regarding how hunters in 2026 decide to select hunts and apply their points. The number of preference points needed to draw a tag for a given hunt area will be undetermined initially. It will likely take a few years before accurate predictions can be made.
Proposed 2026 tag numbers will be
available online in July 2025 and the Fish and Wildlife Commission will be asked to adopt 2026 regulations, including tag numbers, in September 2025. Again, hunters can expect a slight reduction in overall mule deer tags in 2026 to deal with the period of uncertainty around the new hunts.
ODFW HAS DEVELOPED a webpage with more information about the proposed changes. The page includes a map showing how new hunt areas overlap with WMUs so hunters can start exploring the new hunt structure. In general, new hunt areas will be larger, giving hunters more flexibility to respond to wildfire or hunting pressure.
Go to MyODFW.com and search “Eastern Oregon deer hunts” for more, or use this link: https://myodfw.com/articles/ eastern-oregon-deer-hunts. –ODFW
Editor’s note: ODFW’s improved understanding of Oregon mule deer movements was featured in our October 2023 issue.
