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Volume 14 • Issue 10
Your Complete Hunting, Boating, Fishing and Repair Destination Since 1948.
PUBLISHER James R. Baker EDITOR Andy “like answering your phone from an unknown number” Walgamott THIS ISSUE’S CONTRIBUTORS Dave Anderson, Jason Brooks, Scott Haugen, Jeff Holmes, Sara Ichtertz, David Johnson, MD Johnson, Randy King, Buzz Ramsey, Tom Schnell, Dave Workman, Mike Wright, Mark Yuasa EDITORIAL FIELD SUPPORT Jason Brooks GENERAL MANAGER John Rusnak SALES MANAGER Paul Yarnold ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Mamie Griffin, Kelley Miller, Mike Smith DESIGNER Lesley-Anne Slisko-Cooper PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Kelly Baker OFFICE MANAGER Katie Aumann INFORMATION SYSTEMS MANAGER Lois Sanborn WEBMASTER/DIGITAL STRATEGIST Jon Hines DIGITAL ASSISTANT Jon Ekse ADVERTISING INQUIRIES ads@nwsportsmanmag.com CORRESPONDENCE Email letters, articles/queries, photos, etc., to awalgamott@media-inc.com, or to the mailing address below. ON THE COVER Hunter Higginbotham holds a pair of ocean-fresh Chinook and coho, caught last season. (JAROD HIGGINBOTHAM)
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CONTENTS
ALSO INSIDE
VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 10
ALPINE TROUT WITHOUT (MOST OF) THE UP Eastern Oregon’s Strawberry Lake is a prime summer destination for anglers who like no-limit trout fishing, fat brookies the color of an angry sunset and an easy hike to a high mountain lake. David Johnson has the details, as well as several nearby alpine options to also fish.
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TROUT LAKES OF THE NORTHERN PEND OREILLE VALLEY In a state with thousands upon thousands of waters, those of Northeast Washington offer trout fishing far from the madding crowds, and deeper into summer. Mike Wright heads out on the logging roads and other byways of northern Pend Oreille County to a handful of lakes with nice-sized rainbows and cutts, some surprisingly large broodstockers, camping and more.
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CONVERTING SALMON WOBBLERS INTO KOKANEE DODGERS Between the kokanee lakes and salmon rivers, dodgers and wobblers have dual uses, and can be quickly modified based on the fish you want to pursue. Central Oregon-based koke-and-fallking angler Tom Schnell shares a tutorial on making the most of this tackle.
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TARGET COOL WATERS FOR HOT UPPER COLUMBIA SALMON It’s a long way from the ocean to Northcentral Washington, but the Upper Columbia has become quite the popular summer Chinook and sockeye fishery, and not just in the Brewster Pool. Mark Yuasa spotlights the waters between Wells Dam and the Entiat River, and how to fish ’em.
101 COUNT ON THOSE COHO! Washington and Oregon charter skippers and ocean salmon managers are stoked about the 2022 silver season, thanks to solid forecasts and 268,000 hatchery fish in the quota up and down the coast. MD Johnson chats up the experts for a fishery that kicks into high gear this month. 115 BOUNTIES OF RED AND WHITE ON THE BLUE In a month that we celebrate Independence Day, Westport catches have their own patriotic theme as crimson-meated Chinook join hordes of white-filleted black and yellowtail rockfish and lingcod out on the azure Pacific!
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(STEVE JOHNSON)
131 THE ALBACORE SKIPPER Mark Coleman might be the beating heart of Washington’s albacore fishery these days. But how did a river guy build up a four-boat six-pack tuna fleet, with a commercial boat on the side? Jeff Holmes tells the skipper’s success story.
SUBSCRIBE TODAY! Go to nwsportsmanmag.com for details. NORTHWEST SPORTSMAN is published monthly by Media Index Publishing Group, 941 Powell Ave SW, Suite 120, Renton, WA 98057. Periodical Postage Paid at Seattle, WA and at additional mail offices. (USPS 025-251) POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Northwest Sportsman, 941 Powell Ave SW, Suite 120, Renton, WA 98057. Annual subscriptions are $29.95 (12 issues), 2-year subscription are $49.95 (24 issues). Send check or money order to Media Index Publishing Group, or call (206) 382-9220 with VISA or M/C. Back issues may be ordered at Media Index Publishing Group offices at the cost of $5 plus shipping. Display Advertising. Call Media Index Publishing Group for a current rate card. Discounts for frequency advertising. All submitted materials become the property of Media Index Publishing Group and will not be returned. Copyright © 2022 Media Index Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be copied by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording by any information storage or retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher. Printed in U.S.A.
14 Northwest Sportsman
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NORTHWEST PURSUITS
MORE TO SEE ONLINE
Sound Salmon Checklist: Bait, Leaders, Smartphone As saltwater anglers take to Washington’s inside waters in search of Chinook this summer, with so many marine areas now governed by quotas that go lickety-split, you’ll want to pay close attention to Jason’s guide to working Puget Sound – as well as his overlooked fallback fishery with a big limit and no damned king guideline.
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BUZZ RAMSEY Prep For Buoy 10 2022 With something like 1.5 million Chinook and coho set to swarm into the Columbia River in August and September, Buzz thinks the fishing just might be on the good side – all the more reason to start prepping now for a “fishing adventure you are not likely to soon forget.”
109 FOR THE LOVE OF THE TUG Embracing The Fog Fear of the fog had stymied Sara’s growth as a saltwater angler, keeping her onshore or in the safety of the bay – until one day last July she and her boyfriend decided to go for it and came out the other side of the gray murk changed fishermen. 125 CHEF IN THE WILD A Tale Of Revenge Chef Randy had his mind made up to go catch tuna, but his stomach, the Pacific and the charter boat’s captain had other ideas. Back on the Bayfront, however, he made a culinary discovery that saved the trip. He shares a famous New England recipe with a Northwest twist. 147 ON TARGET Start Saving Now for Hunting Season Gas, Gear, Groceries It’s not just housing prices that are through the roof – inflation’s hitting gas, food and other purchases, and that means you’ll want to start saving your pennies for this hunting season, Dave W. counsels. He also shares new product news of note for handgunners, shotgunners and other outdoorsmen. 157 BECOMING A HUNTER Selecting Glass And Packs “Buy once. Cry once.”That’s Dave A.’s motto, and it applies to his hunting gear choices. In the latest installment of his column guiding new outdoorsmen into the field, he gives advice for picking three critical pieces of gear: binoculars, rangefinders and packs. 163 GUN DOG Summer Training Part II: Tracking In the back half of his two-part summer training series, Scott offers tips from gun dog guru Jess Spradley that will have your four-legged hunting partner tracking bird scent across fields and even over water.
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THE BIG PIC:
Tip Of The Spear With invasive smallmouth numbers up and fall Chinook returns deeply underwater, ODFW and a local tribe are going all in to reduce the Coquille River’s bass population.
DEPARTMENTS 23
THE EDITOR’S NOTE Lower Snake River dams
39
READER PHOTOS Gobs of gobs, kings of spring, reams of razors, and more!
41
PHOTO CONTEST WINNERS Coast, Fishing monthly prizes
43
THE DISHONOR ROLL WDFW investigating 4 dead wolves; Kudos; Jackass of the Month
45
DERBY WATCH Ongoing and upcoming events
47
OUTDOOR CALENDAR Upcoming openers, events, deadlines, more
nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2022
Northwest Sportsman 19
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THEEDITOR’SNOTE
C
omment is being taken on two senior Washington Democrats’ draft report on the costs and benefits of removing four Lower Snake dams to benefit imperiled salmon, steelhead and fisheries, a conversation publicly begun over a year ago by an Idaho Republican. US Senator Patty Murray and Governor Jay Inslee say replacing the services provided by Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite “is possible” and would cost $10.3 billion to $27.2 billion, though the figures don’t reflect how much “several necessary actions” would cost. They say breaching the quartet would “significantly improve passage for salmon, steelhead, and lamprey,” has “the highest likelihood of removing salmon from ESA listing” and would increase harvest by nearly 30 percent for tribal fishermen, while fully restored salmon fisheries in the Columbia Basin would generate $1 billion in additional economic activity for the recreational industry. They also acknowledge “significant work would be needed to bring this outcome about,” including the greenlight from Congress, long-term funding mechanisms, and development of timelines, goals, etc. Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson’s plan, released early last year (Northwest Sportsman, March 2021), had a price tag of $33 billion to breach the dams and replace the transportation and energy infrastructure.
THE MURRAY-INSLEE REPORT had sportfishing interests talking. Pointing to some $19 billion already spent on Columbia Basin salmon recovery but not on what the fish need most – “more free-flowing river miles” – salmon and steelhead icon Buzz Ramsey stated, “Those of us in the sport fishing industry have suffered harm due to decades of fishing restrictions and closed seasons. Recovering salmon to harvestable abundance would revitalize our industry and the many rural jobs related to the Northwest’s signature fish.” “The ‘why’ of the Murray-Inslee report is painfully obvious to us,” said Liz Hamilton, executive director of the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association. “Now, we have leadership willing to ask the questions of how and when. How do we restore salmon and steelhead to an abundance that sustains fishing communities and orca, and how do we modernize the transportation, energy and irrigation systems in the basin to meet our future needs.” The release of the duo’s draft was immediately preceded by statements from Eastern Washington Republican Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Dan Newhouse, who introduced a bill in Congress “to protect the four Lower Snake River dams” based on the Army Corps of Engineers’ Record of Decision issued in fall 2020. “Calling for the removal of the four Lower Snake River dams after three straight years of improved salmon returns is misguided,” said Rodgers in a press release. “What’s alarming is trying to breach them at a time when families in Eastern Washington are paying record-high energy costs just to keep the lights on this summer.” Salmon returns spike and ebb and while 2022 has seen a relatively good run of Inland Northwest-bound spring Chinook, the stock is still nowhere close to the glory years of the early 2000s or even 2015, and another very poor return of Snake steelhead is expected and will see restrictive fishing regs up and down the river. The tribes also had a lot to say: “Honor the treaties. Protect our salmon. Breach the dams,” read the subhead of a press release issued by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
COMMENT IS BEING taken on the Murray-Inslee draft report through 5 p.m., July 11 via lsrdoptions.org and email at info@lsrdoptions.org (put “Draft LSRD Benefit Replacement Study” in the subject line). I hope you weigh in. –Andy Walgamott nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2022
Northwest Sportsman 23
Tip Of The Spear With invasive smallmouth numbers up and fall Chinook returns deeply underwater, ODFW and a local tribe are going all in to reduce Coquille River bass numbers. By Andy Walgamott
T
he Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Coquille Tribe are putting the prongs in “multipronged effort” as they work to reduce smallmouth numbers on a troubled coastal salmon system. Not only are spears, spearguns and bait legal again this summer to harvest bass on the mainstem Coquille and its four forks, but electrofishing crews will be expanding their efforts further upstream this year, and planning has begun for a derby to encourage anglers to remove the invasive nonnatives. Local state fisheries biologist Mike Gray in Charleston says that the bass are a “major factor” in continued low returns of Coquille fall Chinook that are also not bouncing back like on other coastal rivers. “Other basins (without smallmouth) that took a dip in Chinook returns in 2017 and 2018 have rebounded, but the Coquille remains at extremely low levels. I think what we are seeing is that ‘the Blob’ – persistent warm ocean a few years ago – took the survival on many Oregon coastal populations way down, but the Coquille has not been able to recover to the same extent due to the predation,” he says. Efforts are also being made to increase
Chinook smolt production, but in the here and now, Gray reported last month that this year’s fall Chinook forecast for the system is for “less than 200 fish.” That figure is far, far below the critical run threshold level of 2,500 and because of that, ODFW’s overarching management plan calls for no salmon angling on the Coquille whatsoever this year, wild or hatchery. It’s a far cry from just a few years ago too. From the mid-1980s through mid2010s, the basin annually saw an average postfishing escapement of 8,000 wild kings, with bonkers runs in 2003 and 2010 hitting 25,000 and 34,000 fish, respectively. The highest sport harvest of the past 25 years was 6,625 Chinook from the bay, mainstem and forks in 2015 – a great year for many coastal systems – and the average from 1996 to 2018 is 2,656 fish. Both figures make 2022’s expected sub-200 escapement stand out all the more and demands something be done about it right now.
GRAY ACKNOWLEDGES OTHER factors are in play and biologists are also seeing confounding signals this year with dips in Siuslaw and Tillamook fall runs. But he says evidence that bass are having a big impact comes from stomach content sampling
that shows smallies feed on juvenile Chinook, as well as lamprey, another native species. What’s more, there are now tons of bronzebacks in the system. “The numbers and density of bass – particularly young-of-the-year and age 1 – was amazing from last year’s blitz,” Gray states. That’s a reference to the “Smallmouth Blitz” conducted last August on the Coquille by 30 ODFW biologists who were joined by Coquille Indian Tribe staffers and Trout Unlimited volunteers. The weeklong effort was conducted “to assess the smallmouth bass population to determine whether or not removal can be successful at reducing this limiting factor for native fish, and what level of removal would be necessary,” Gray says. Bass are particularly concentrated in what he termed the “confluence zone,” that stretch of water where the South, East, Middle and North Forks of the Coquille come together near the town of Myrtle Point. Above there are the salmon spawning grounds, and that forces Chinook smolts headed to the ocean to pass through a “gauntlet” of bass. Striped bass also occur up to this zone,
The points of Stuart Love’s spear impale a smallmouth bass on Oregon’s Coquille River, where managers this summer are again allowing anglers to use spearguns as well as bait to remove the invasive nonnatives that state and tribal officials believe are a major factor in sharply reduced fall Chinook runs. (ODFW) 24 Northwest Sportsman
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PICTURE
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Northwest Sportsman 25
PICTURE and they’ve been here much longer than smallmouth. Chinook exhibit a range of early life histories, with some rearing longer in freshwater than others. The Coquille’s are a zero-age outmigrator, which means they’re “so much smaller/younger … than coho or steelhead that migrate as age-1plus or older smolts,” says Gray. He speculates that that could make them more vulnerable to predation by bass, which they would be meeting for the first time on their spring swim downstream. Data from the Smallmouth Blitz is being fed into modeling and when it’s ready, it will be used to figure out how to effectively control bass predation, Gray says. “We could (hypothetically) be pulling 5,000 smallmouth out each year and having little to no effect on predation, but we need to be informed as to what is possible,” he says.
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An Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife graph shows how far Chinook runs have fallen on the Coquille River system. The severe dropoff overlaps sharp increases in the smallmouth population but also very poor ocean and freshwater conditions in recent years. This fall “less than 200” wild and hatchery Chinook are expected back, triggering precautions in a coastal management plan that bar a salmon fishing season this year. (ODFW)
MEANWHILE, ROUND TWO of electrofishing work is slated to begin this month. Chinook smolts from the upper watershed will have migrated out of the river by then. ODFW and the tribe also have to avoid the times of year when they might encounter coho,
either smolts or returning adults, which are listed under the Endangered Species Act. The work required sign-off from the National Marine Fisheries Service. Last summer’s electroshocking, done with a single boat lower in the system,
the onset of the warm ocean conditions,” Gray states. Besides the blob, recent years’ river conditions that have been inhospitable for salmon have been great for bass. Droughtlike conditions in spring reduce habitat and cover in the Coquille at what should be a higher-flow time of year, leaving smolts with less room to evade predators, while summer temperatures have made it too warm and then in fall, low flows concentrate Chinook redds in areas of the channel that are then subject to scouring floods as atmospheric rivers crash into the region. “For the Coquille, particularly in recent years, river flows are dropping and temperatures are warming during the salmonid smolt outmigration,” Gray says. “This year seems to be a wetter spring than we have been having recently, except that February-March we saw ‘summer-like’ low flows in local basins. Things went back to being pretty wet in April-May, so hopefully that bodes well for outmigration this year.”
PICTURE
A half-digested Coquille smolt recovered from a smallmouth. River conditions that have been bad for salmonids – low early-season levels that leave less cover for outmigrators, too-warm summer temps and fall flows that concentrate spawning in flood-prone areas – have been great for bass. They are concentrated in the “confluence zone,” through which the basin’s young Chinook, coho and steelhead must pass. (ODFW)
removed north of 5,000 bass, but this year’s expanded plans call for zapping the river from tidewater well upstream to areas where crews will need a raft or pontoon to access. It’s unclear where bucket biologists illegally transported the Midwestern natives from – probably the Umpqua, which is just 60 to 80 road miles away and was unlawfully stocked with smallmouth in the 1970s – or when and where they were first placed. A 2005 report notes 28 Northwest Sportsman
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unconfirmed angler catches in the Middle Fork Coquille and Fat Elk Slough. Nevertheless, in 2011 the species was confirmed in the South Fork. ODFW believes at that point “the fish had been in the river for multiple spawning cycles.” “It has been primarily in the last five to six years that our sampling has shown them fully distributed to most of the suitable habitat in the basin, and in numbers that pretty much seem to fill their niche. This seems to coincide with
WHEN I POSTED the news last month that ODFW was for the third straight summer allowing spears and bait on the Coquille, some online questioned how bass, salmon and steelhead seem to be able to coexist in Oregon’s Umpqua and John Day, as well as the shared Snake, but Gray points out those are very different systems. They are all “much larger than the Coquille, and have snowpack or water releases to hold down temperatures and hold up flows in the spring. The Coquille is a Coast Range basin, and relatively small compared to the ones mentioned. Its flows are not held up by snowpack as the spring develops,” he says. That’s a key for smolt outmigration. “I worked in the John Day District for nine years, and we monitored smallmouth/salmonid interactions while I was there. Since I left there in 1999, there has been a research group working in the John Day doing more intensive research on the salmonid populations, including predation from nonnative fish. One factor we found in the John Day was that for juvenile salmonids to make it from upper basin rearing grounds through the main river to the Columbia River, they were
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PICTURE passing on elevated flows and low river temperatures from spring snowmelt. This was a time when predation rates were low,” Gray says. Another comment online was that ODFW’s efforts are actually all about ensuring federal funding keeps flowing to the agency more so than they are to recover Coquille fall Chinook. “There is no validity to that,” responded Gray. “This is about taking proactive steps.”
THE COQUILLE’S SALMON are not only important to coastal anglers, who harvested 61,089 fall kings out of the system from 1996 through 2018, per ODFW records, but the Coquille Tribe. “Coquille River salmon have nourished my people for countless generations. Our ancestors have relished and revered these amazing fish since time began,” states chairwoman Brenda Meade on the tribe’s
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Whether from the South Fork Coquille, where the species was first confirmed, or the Middle Fork, where anglers reported them beforehand, smallmouth have spread through much of the system. An ODFW map overlaps bass and Chinook range. Stripers, another invasive, can also be found up to Myrtle Point. (ODFW) website, coquilletribe.org. (While the river is pronounced “ko-keel,” the tribe is known as the “ko-kwell.”) But with the big population crash, the tribe fears fall Chinook are now “on the
edge of extinction” and last August the tribal council declared an emergency. The Coquilles too point to smallmouth bass as a key factor, but also broodstock collection shortfalls due to low runs,
nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2022
Northwest Sportsman 31
PICTURE pinniped predation on returning adults, plus environmental factors, “old deteriorated fish hatcheries” that “produce too few smolts,” “rigid state policies” that “prevent effective management” and a river that is a “low priority in the state budget.” That may be changing as last month the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission unanimously approved an amended memorandum of understanding with the tribe that, in part, allows for cooperative natural resource management in five Southwest Oregon counties and nearshore waters. It also allows for ceremonial and subsistence harvest – but not commercial take – under tribal regulations and enforcement in partnership with ODFW and state fish and wildlife troopers. Last summer Meade told KLCC, a public radio station based in Eugene, that smallmouth removal would be an “an ongoing effort for decades to come.”
State and tribal managers plan to electroshock more of the Coquille system starting this month. Last year’s efforts removed over 5,000 bass. Officials acknowledge it’s a long-term effort as they try to recover fall Chinook. (ODFW) “If we can take some of the invasive species outta there to give those salmon a fighting chance, that will be a success, but it’s quite possible that we can never completely eradicate them,” she acknowledged. It’s a truth that fishery managers across the Northwest face as they work to suppress nonnatives – walleye in Lake Pend Oreille,
In days long gone by, ODFW biologists were the ones introducing smallmouth to systems like the John Day, but now they’re removing the species due to competition with native fish. Against a backdrop of equally invasive Japanese knotweed that impacts fish and wildlife habitat, agency biologist Gary Vonderohe holds a bass crews electroshocked out of the Coquille. Those removed last year were given to a raptor recovery center to feed the birds. (ODFW) 32 Northwest Sportsman
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northern pike in Lake Roosevelt, brook trout in Northeast Oregon alpine waters (see page 52) – to benefit native or more desired species. But this spring’s discovery of walleye in three different Southwest Idaho waters also highlights the mountain in front of them – the persistent actions of bad actors who want to have the fish they prefer wherever they want them, and to hell with the biological ramifications, let alone the expense of dealing with cleanup. Besides controlling the bass, ODFW and the tribe are taking other proactive measures to help the Coquille’s salmon run. “We are trying to take actions to reduce the impact of some of those factors, at least the ones we have some control over – release larger/older smolts in early spring flows; continue working on habitat restoration actions that improve in-river conditions,” Gray says. He describes working with the tribe on a conservation hatchery program to collect wild Chinook to spawn and raise and release 50,000 larger smolts each spring. “These releases would be from the upper basin where spawning occurs, but the objective would be to release at a time when they would be flushed from the system on cooler/higher flows, when smallmouth metabolism is low,” Gray says. Because these particular smolts are meant to rebuild the wild run, they won’t have their adipose fin clipped and thus won’t be available for harvest, but he says they will be internally tagged so that the
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PICTURE effort can be monitored. Last fall also saw ODFW and the tribe collect broodstock for the river’s hatchery harvest program, but due to the low return and despite “great effort,” only 50 to 60 percent of the eggtake goal was reached. Some of those young salmon will be used in this new release strategy. “We are looking to take a portion of those juveniles and do a spring yearling release in 2024. The CIT recently acquired property on Lampa Creek in the lower Coquille basin, and we are working with CIT to conduct a ‘pilot’ acclimation/ release of 1,000 of those juveniles in the next few weeks. An additional 1,000 of the 2021 brood will be held to a spring yearling for acclimation/release in 2023. These fish and the remainder of the 2021 brood currently in our hatchery system are (adipose)-marked for future harvest opportunity,” Gray says.
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BACK TO SPEARFISHING. In the Northwest, the sport has primarily been practiced by anglers swimming in pursuit of bottomfish, either along the Oregon Coast or in Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, so there’s a bit of a learning curve around the authorized gear. To that end, ODFW posted four videos on its YouTube channel (youtube.com/user/ieodfw) describing the Coquille bass issue, basic info about the equipment, how-tos, safety concerns, filleting tips and, in the latest installment, how to build your own spear gun. “They really seem to like the rocky structure,” notes Stuart Love, a spearfisherman and local ODFW wildlife biologist, in the first video. “Generally the fish are in fairly shallow water, even in the deeper holes. They don’t seem to be down in the very bottoms. We find most of the fish in about 5 feet of water.” Bait will likely be the more effective and most used tactic on these fish, but Oregon fishery managers are also sending a strong signal by lifting the prohibition against using spears here. They’re otherwise banned in
all freshwaters for all game fish. A fishing license is required and spears and bait are allowed through October 31. Another rare step that illustrates how serious ODFW is about the problem is that the agency posted maps of smallmouth distribution in the Coquille system, plus access points on the mainstem and the South Fork. Hot-spotting like that has almost become taboo in this social media age. And finally, the agency is also mulling incentivizing the removal of the bass. “We are working with volunteers to develop a ‘derby-type’ event to allow anglers to assist with removal of smallmouth over a weekend or derby period,” says Gray. It will need to comply with ODFW’s bass tournament rules, he says, but stay tuned for updates. No doubt that smallmouth are one of the top sport fish in the country, a species known for eager bites and great fights. They absolutely have a spot in the grand pantheon of North American game fish. But in Oregon on the Coquille system, managers want you to stick a fork in them. NS
READER PHOTOS
Jeff Morrow and Mike Bolt rounded out a great Northwest turkey tour weekend with this pair of Washington gobblers. (COAST HUNTING PHOTO CONTEST)
While the editor’s sons reported to their father’s and grandmother’s Work Camps on their school spring breaks, Liam Nelson went to hawg heaven. Fishing with grandfather Dan Gallagher, the lad put this great first triploid in the boat at Lake Rufus Woods. (COAST FISHING PHOTO CONTEST)
Washington’s 2022 youth turkey opener was a good one for Jon Ludwig and Easton Fox. They were hunting near Oroville with, well, since this is the Okanogan, we’ll call him “guide and outfitter” Jay Fox. (COAST HUNTING PHOTO CONTEST)
There just might be a new sheriff in town on the Snake! Wyatt Parrish, 8, caught this 11-plus-pound walleye that taped out at 31 inches. He caught it at Lyons Ferry on a pearl-white Flicker Minnow. (COAST FISHING PHOTO CONTEST)
For your shot at winning great fishing and hunting products from Coast and Northwest Sportsman, 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.
nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2022
Northwest Sportsman 39
READER PHOTOS The turkeys could not have cooperated any better for Austin and Lexi Han. When two toms appeared at the same time near their blind, the kiddos were able to put them down with simultaneous shots. It was also Lexi’s first gobbler! (COAST HUNTING PHOTO CONTEST)
They call him Zube – Tony Zubirira hit the highway west from Pendleton to catch this 20-pound spring Chinook on the Multnomah Channel while fishing a tunastuffed Brad’s Mini Cut Plug in buddy Jeff Flatt’s boat in late April. (COAST FISHING PHOTO CONTEST)
Loren Benson celebrated his 40th in style, putting a couple Drano Lake springers in the fish box during a trip to the Columbia Gorge salmon factory. (COAST FISHING PHOTO CONTEST)
A new personal-best trout was literally the ’bow on a great outdoor outing for Bob Searl, who caught this very nice one on the drive home from his firstever razor clam dig. Buddy John Leppell took him to the Washington Coast on one of the last days of a fantastic season that saw 20-clam limits to wrap things up. (COAST FISHING PHOTO CONTEST)
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PHOTO
CONTEST
WINNERS!
Loren Benson is the winner of our monthly Fishing Photo Contest, thanks to this shot of he and his Drano Lake spring Chinook. It wins him a knife and light from Coast!
Updated website with new products
Eric Smith is our monthly Coast Hunting Photo Contest winner, thanks to this pic of himself (left) and his trophy Central Washington mule deer buck taken on a special permit. It wins him a knife and light from Coast!
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Matching lures: NEW Kokanee Krill, Beaded Spinners, Super Squids, Spin Bugs Only the finest fluorescent (“UV”) materials used. Tandem Gamakatsu hooks. For your shot at winning a Coast knife and light, send your photos and pertinent (who, what, when, where) details 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 our print or Internet publications.
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Northwest Sportsman 41
MIXED BAG
WDFW Investigating 4 Dead Wolves
W
ashington wildlife officials have been extremely tight-lipped about four wolves found dead in far northern Stevens County this past February, only acknowledging the deaths and ongoing investigation in late May and offering no updates since then. The animals were discovered by sheriff’s deputies during a backcountry snowmobile patrol. Three of the wolves wore black coats, one gray, and officers estimated they had been dead two to three weeks. There were no signs of bullet holes or blood, leading to speculation in the wolf advocacy world around poisoning. Eight wolves were poisoned in Northeast Oregon last year – including five in one group in midwinter.
THE WOLF DEATHS had been hinted at vaguely in public earlier in spring by two Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission members, and afterward environmental and animal-rights groups pounced to offer a large reward for information on the case. Ironically, both overeager tactics may end up backfiring. In a careful response to allegations it had been “dodging questions on poaching for months, and sometimes lying outright to the public,” Department of Fish and Wildlife officials noted, “Often, in order to avoid jeopardizing an active investigation, information is not released in order to prevent evidence destruction, protect officer safety, and ensure a case isn't compromised. We want to collect enough information such that a solid case can be referred to a prosecutor. Without sufficient evidence, a conviction cannot be made.” As for the $30,000 immediately offered for case info, it may go uncollected forever.
One of four dead wolves found in the “Wedge” of far northern Stevens County last February. (STEVENS COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE) “I’ve spent almost a decade working on wolves, and I cannot provide a single example of a monetary award leading to the conviction of a wolf poacher,” Julia Smith, WDFW wolf policy advisor, told John Kruse of Northwestern Outdoors Radio. “The cash reward in Oregon has not resulted in any arrests to date.” Rewards are typically offered when investigations turn cold, she said. It all might suggest WDFW does have leads, and if so, their investigation may have been compromised when the serially rash Kettle Range Conservation Group put out a press release about the deaths, sparking news coverage, including on our blog. The illegal killing of a wolf, a state endangered species, is punishable by penalties of $5,000 and/or a year in prison.
WHAT IS CRYSTAL-CLEAR is that where the four bodies were found is the absolute white-hottest point of the wolf front in the Evergreen State. Over the last decade, Wedge Pack wolves have been associated with chronic cattle depredations, the near-
JACKASS OF THE MONTH
O
wning property does not automatically confer the right to take fish and wildlife that live on or cross it. A woman living along a tributary of Western Oregon’s South Yamhill River learned that the hard way. Last fall she was photographed with a wild coho she’d netted out of the stream, and video showed her actively attempting to catch more with the illegal gear. Her land was described as “well above” the South Yamhill’s deadline for salmon, which is only open for lure and fly fishing anyway. Oregon troopers say that in early March the woman pled guilty to various charges and her sentence included: three-year fishing license suspension; $2,100 in fines and restitution and another $100 to the anti-poaching reward fund; forfeiture of the net; and an order to stay the hell away from fisheries and fishing gear for 18 months.
By Andy Walgamott full lethal removal of the pack by WDFW sharpshooters, pack reformations due to the area’s excellent habitat and available prey, more attacks, subsequent removals, wolf advocates’ campaign and threats against the Diamond M Ranch, and a former Washington State University professor’s inflammatory statements about where the operation allegedly turned out its cattle – words that led to all sorts of hell, and all over. Last year the Wedge’s breeding female was poached, but the pack’s numbers at the end of 2021 (nine) suggested its loss wasn’t as catastrophic as initially feared by wolf advocates. WDFW reported the pack was not involved in any confirmed depredations last year either. However, state Rep. Joel Kretz (R-Bodie Mountain) alleged area ranchers aren’t reporting all attacks because they’ve “lost trust in the process.” Meanwhile, there is a mystery around four wolves found dead off a snowy logging road last winter.
(OSP)
KUDOS The Oregon State Police Fish and Wildlife Division’s Roseburg detachment was named 2021’s team of the year, and highlighting their work was the charging of a “prolific poacher” after a long investigation. Troopers were also involved in air, land and water patrols, robo-decoy busts, rescues and more. Members include Sergeant First Class Matt Bowersox, Senior Troopers Kyle Bachmeier, Aaron Baimbridge and Jason Stone, and Trooper Jason Kercher. “When you look at the criteria for this award: professionalism, teamwork, mentorship, leadership, dedication to protecting Oregon’s citizens and natural resources, going above and beyond the call of duty, and thinking outside the box to address issues; the Roseburg team exemplifies all of these traits,” stated OSP. nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2022
Northwest Sportsman 43
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Steven Elliott of Federal Way scored a new fishing rod after catching this tagged rainbow at Rowland Lake in the Columbia Gorge. The fish was one of hundreds that were specially marked by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and stocked at 100-plus lakes across the state. Many of those trout have been caught and redeemed for prizes, but a lot are still on the loose. The contest runs through October 31. Learn more at wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/ contests/trout-derby. (BUZZ RAMSEY)
and Halibut, Biweekly Lingcod Derbies; charterwestport.com/fishing.html July 8-10: Northport Fishing Derby, Upper Columbia River; northportwa.us July 16: First Annual Dawg Derby, North Puget Sound; huskyfootballnil.com July 20-24: Lake Coeur d’Alene Big One Fishing Derby; lcaaidaho.com/derby July 22-23: CRWWA Summer Walleye Classic, John Day and McNary Pools; crwaa.profishingtournaments.com July 23: Kokanee Power of Oregon Green Peter Junior Fishout; kokaneepoweroregon.com/derby Aug. 5-6: Washington Tuna Classic, Pacific off Westport; missionoutdoors.org/wtc Aug. 5-7: Brewster Salmon Derby; brewsterkingsalmonderby.com Aug. 13: Gig Harbor Puget Sound Anglers Salmon Derby; gigharborpsa.org Aug. 13: Kokanee Power of Oregon Odell Lake Derby; info – see above Aug. 13: Lipstick Salmon Slayers Womens Fishing Tournament, Buoy 10 and Pacific off Astoria; lipsticksalmonslayer.com Aug. 19: Buoy 10 Salmon Challenge, Columbia estuary; nsiafishing.org Aug. 19-20: 17th Annual Oregon Tuna Classic, Pacific off Garibaldi; oregontunaclassic.org Sept. 3-5: Gardiner, Reedsport, Winchester Bay STEP Salmon Derby, Umpqua River estuary; 541-662-5505, grwbstep@gmail.com Sept. 24-25: Everett Coho Derby, Puget Sound and rivers; everettcohoderby.com
nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2022
Northwest Sportsman 45
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OUTDOOR
CALENDAR JULY
1
Leftover big game tags go on sale in Oregon; Start of Oregon Youth First Time hunt application period; New Washington fishing regs pamphlet takes effect; Marine Areas 5, 6 and 12 south of Ayock Point hatchery Chinook openers; Steelhead closures begin on Washington-side Columbia Gorge tributary mouths 2 Area 2 Chinook and hatchery coho opener 7-9 Oregon Central Coast spring all-depth halibut backup dates (quota dependent) 9 22nd Annual Merwin Special Kids Day, Merwin Fish Hatchery (North Fork Lewis River) – info: wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/contests/youth 10 ODFW Learn To Hunt Shotgun Skills Workshop ($, register), EE Wilson Wildlife Area – info: myodfw.com/workshops-and-events 14 Area 10 hatchery Chinook opener 14-16 Areas 7 and 9 hatchery Chinook retention days 15 Deadline to purchase Washington raffle hunt tickets; Steelhead closures begin on Oregon-side Columbia Gorge tributary mouths 17 ODFW Learn To Hunt Shotgun Skills Workshop ($, register), Myrtle Point Sportsmens Club – info: see above 20, 27 ODFW Intro To Hunting In Oregon Seminar ($, register), Sportsman’s Warehouse, Portland – info: see above 21-23 Area 9 hatchery Chinook retention days (quota dependent); Oregon Central Coast spring all-depth halibut backup dates (quota dependent)
24 28 30
CAST For Kids event on Yaquina Bay – info: castforkids.org
Area 9 hatchery Chinook retention opens seven days a week (quota dependent) CAST For Kids event on Lake Charles (private lake near Jefferson, Oregon) – info: see above
AUGUST 1
Oregon and Washington fall bear season openers; Columbia River from west Puget Island line upstream to Highway 395 bridge in Pasco Chinook and hatchery coho opener; Steelhead closures begin on select Washington-side Lower Columbia tributary mouths 1-24 Buoy 10 (actual buoy to west Puget Island line) hatchery Chinook and hatchery coho season 4-6 Oregon Central Coast summer all-depth halibut dates 6 2022 Washington State Duck and Goose Calling Championships, Sumner Sportsmen’s Club, Puyallup – info: facebook.com/ WashingtonStateDuckAndGooseCallingChampionship 7 ODFW Learn To Hunt Shotgun Skills Workshop ($, register), Creswell Clay Target Sports – info: see above 18-20 Oregon Central Coast summer all-depth halibut dates 25 Buoy 10 any-Chinook opener 27 Oregon general and controlled deer and elk bow openers 30 Idaho deer and elk bow openers in many units; Idaho fall bear opener
SEPTEMBER 1 3 7 8 8-10 10
Washington cougar and bow deer openers; Fall turkey opener in many Eastern Washington units; Steelhead closures begin on mainstem Columbia from The Dalles Dam to Highway 395 bridge Oregon Central Coast nonselective ocean coho opener through Sept. 30 or until 17,000-fish quota met; CAST For Kids event on Clear Lake (Fairchild AFB) – info: see above Last scheduled day Buoy 10 open for Chinook retention Buoy 10 hatchery coho limit increases to three a day Oregon Central Coast summer all-depth halibut dates CAST For Kids event on Lake Washington – info: see above; ODFW Learn To Hunt Pheasant Workshop ($, register), Sauvie Island Wildlife Area – info: see above; Washington bow elk opener nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2022
Northwest Sportsman 47
Alpine Trout Withou (Most Of) The Up Eastern Oregon’s Strawberry Lake is a prime summer destination for anglers who like no-limit trout fishing, fat brookies the color of an angry sunset and an easy hike to a high mountain lake. By David Johnson
F
ishing for trout in high mountain lakes can provide serious trout anglers with an almost perfect summer getaway: beautiful scenery, a true wilderness camping experience and lots of aggressive wild trout. Almost perfect. There can be drawbacks as well. First, wilderness lakes are usually a miles-long hike in, and a walk with full backpacks can involve thousands of feet of elevation gain. Two days of your fishing vacation can be consumed by the hikes in and out. Second, though many lakes offer trout that are easy to catch, sometimes the fish are stunted 6-inch brook trout – pretty and lively, but small. In a few lakes the fishing can be frustratingly slow – a long way to walk to catch no fish. That’s why a trip to Strawberry Lake, located a few miles south of Prairie City in Eastern Oregon’s Strawberry Mountain Wilderness, should be on the to-do list of every trout angler who likes mountain lakes. From the trailhead campground (located in the Malheur National Forest close to the edge of the wilderness area) to the lake is an easy-to-moderate 1.4-mile hike, giving anglers the option of staying in a campground with running water and walking in to fish each day, or making the short hike into the wilderness area with backpacks and camping at the lake itself. For a high lake, it’s an excellent choice for families as well as for anglers who want to catch solid numbers of wild-bred brook trout. The fishery at Strawberry Lake is dominated by a selfsustaining and healthy population of brook trout up to about 14 inches long. They like to take dry flies. On our last trip there, my brother and I caught 83 fish at Strawberry Lake in two days of fishing and another 40 or so during a one-day side trip to nearby Little Strawberry Lake. All fish came on dry flies.
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FISHING
out
Strawberry Lake’s brook trout are colorful and chunky. Low grassy areas that flood in the early summer, especially near the inlet streams, wash food into the lake, which attracts the hungry fish. (STEVE JOHNSON)
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FISHING If this sounds like your idea of summer fun, here’s what you need to know.
FISHING THE LAKE The trail in from the campground approaches Strawberry Lake from the north, near the lake’s outlet. This end of the lake has the highest
number of spots flat enough to set up camp on, and the area near the outlet also offers good fishing. The fishing is good here because logs and wood debris that have fallen into the lake tend to make their way to the outlet. This woody cover provides nutrients as the wood breaks down. Insects, especially
Steve Johnson, author David Johnson’s brother, casts to rising fish near the inlet on the west side of the lake. It’s a good idea to stand back from shore for your initial casts to pick up any fish hugging the bank in the lake’s clear water. Then move forward to the shoreline to gradually make longer casts to deeper waters. (DAVID JOHNSON) 50 Northwest Sportsman
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carpenter ants, fall off the logs and the fish feast on them. Like many mountain lakes below the tree line, some parts of Strawberry Lake are tough for fly anglers, either because the lakeside is very steep or shoreline trees prevent backcasts. But in several spots along the outlet edge of the lake there is room to cast a fly. Wood cover also exists in a shallow cove in the northwest corner of the lake near the outlet. Especially early in the season, when the water is up, trout will move into this cove, in part because high water provides the fish access to more food along the shoreline. With respect to this lake, “early” means the very end of June and early July. The lake, which is naturally formed and sits at 6,300 feet in elevation, more or less runs south to north. Strawberry is clear and the growing season is relatively short. It has more food than most high mountain lakes, but finding food is a constant priority for fish. As is typical of small mountain lakes, fish cruise within casting distances (or, sometimes, just out of casting distance) of the shore, looking to feed opportunistically on insects. It’s a good idea to make some short casts in each new spot you fish to pick up any trout that are close to the shore, then gradually make longer casts. Flyrod enthusiasts will catch more fish if they bring a rod capable of making long casts. The same is true for anglers using spinning gear: choose terminal tackle (lures, casting bubbles, etc.) with enough heft you can cast for distance when needed. Most of the drainage into the lake comes from snowmelt and rain falling on one side of Strawberry Mountain (just over 9,000 feet tall) that sits to the northwest and from the flank of Rabbit Ears mountain to the south. Two small inlet streams, one from Little Strawberry Lake and the other from springs along
FISHING
In the next basin to the south of Strawberry Lake, the Burns Paiute Tribe has been gillnetting and electroshocking High Lake and Lake Creek to remove brook trout that are colonizing the stream and threatening to hybridize with bull trout and compete with the native species for resources. The effort is having mixed results, with an average of 1,500-plus brookies removed annually but still dominating the creek. (STEVE JOHNSON)
BROOKIES AND NO LIMITS
B
rook trout are not native anywhere in the West, yet from Montana to the Cascades there are dozens and dozens of high lakes with thriving populations of these non-native char. They got here because in the late 1800s and early 20th century, fisheries managers planted them in high lakes, often packing them in on mules. Many of these lakes had no native trout at all: rainbows, cutthroat and even bull trout were blocked from migrating to them by falls or by intermittent stream flows from the lakes’ small outlets. Fisheries managers reasoned that brook trout, which do very well in cold, clear, nutrientpoor waters, would increase fishing opportunities. They were right about that. Not only can brook trout make a living during the short growing season typical for high lakes, but they are far more successful than native trout at spawning in lake beds as opposed to streams. Brook trout also do not need to be big to spawn: They
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can reproduce at 6 inches in length. In some lakes, once they reach that size, they divert almost all of their spare energy into spawning, with little left over for growing larger, which is why some lakes have high populations of stunted fish. As fishery science improved, some drawbacks of introducing brook trout became apparent. Sometimes they do escape the high lakes and begin to populate mountain streams, competing with native fish. In particular, they are problematic for threatened populations of native bull trout, which like brook trout, are a char. Brook trout not only compete for food and spawning-bed resources with bull trout, but they can occasionally hybridize with them. For these reasons, fishery managers in recent years have eliminated catch limits for brook trout in Eastern Oregon waters. You can’t waste them, but you can keep as many as you want to eat without fear of harming the fishery. -DJ
the flank of Rabbit Ears, flow into the upper end of Strawberry, at the opposite end of the lake from the outlet. Another very small creek runs into the lake’s western side. All of the inlet areas are good fishing as long as water is running into the lake. Though for the most part the streams themselves are too small to fish, they do bring food into the lake. Early in the summer, the lower parts of the banks of these inflows will be topped by the lake’s water, and some fish station themselves along the edge of the flooded banks, hoping to ambush food being washed into the lake. The truth is, though, that because the trout here cruise the shoreline actively looking for food, you can catch fish anywhere on most of the lake. Look for places with points of land, areas with drop-offs close to shore, wood in the water and areas where trees lean over the water.
WHAT TO FISH The forage base for Strawberry’s trout is almost entirely insect-based. The trout seem to top out at about 14 or 15 inches and there is little likelihood they will wrap your line around cover. So bring light line whether you are using flies or spinning gear. Fly anglers should carry patterns that tend to work on high lakes: gnat, mosquito, mayfly and ant imitations, along with beadhead nymphs, caddis imitations and Woolly Buggers. Humpies, Stimulators, Wulffs and old-school Coachman might also work. If you’re not catching fish, change flies. The trout here are not sophisticated, but they can become fixated on one type of insect and ignore everything else. Though these brook trout obviously spend some effort on subsurface feeding, I’ve fished mostly dry flies here. Caddis imitations worked well at stream inlets, but fully 90 percent of the fish we have caught here took ant patterns, including parachute versions. It’s simply what they preferred to eat.
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FISHING Bring some flour, salt, pepper, butter and a lemon with you. There’s no limit on brook trout at Strawberry Lake, and the dining room comes with a decent view, which you can admire while you wonder what rich people are doing this summer. (DAVID JOHNSON)
There are worse things to use as spinning gear terminal tackle than a casting float and the same ant pattern a fly angler would use. However, your favorite inline spinner will also draw some strikes. Just because the trout mostly see insects doesn’t mean they don’t dream of eating something bigger. They’re like you: you mostly see tiny paychecks, but you wouldn’t turn down a winning lottery ticket. Bait is also allowed in lake fishing, so spinning gear anglers have a number of options if catching dinner is a priority. Worms and commercial baits work well, as will grasshoppers later in the summer. If you decide to fish bait on a simple split-shot rig, 54 Northwest Sportsman
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I’d advise using a floating bait that suspends off the bottom slightly.
SIDE TRIPS While Strawberry Lake is the largest lake in this basin, two others – Little Strawberry and Slide – are worth visiting on a multiday trip for folks who like to explore and don’t mind more challenging hikes. Little Strawberry is a relatively short but fairly steep hike from Strawberry Lake, and is a classic alpine brook trout lake: a small, extremely clear, dish-shaped glacial carve-out at the base of a steep slope with lots of very hungry 6-inchers. It’s not a trophy destination by any
means, but it’s easy to day-trip up, catch 20 to 30 small brook trout, have lunch and hike back down to Strawberry for more evening fishing. And the scenery is dramatic. The lake is at about 7,100 feet and 8,400-foot Rabbit Ears peak is less than half a mile away. Look up at a 45-degree angle from the lake and you’ll see it, and you might see some wild sheep on the cliffs as well. There are a couple of places to pitch a tent here, and some folks who find Strawberry crowded camp here. Bring bug dope. Slide Lake is a longer and more difficult hike, but likely less crowded than either Strawberry or Little Strawberry. While significantly larger
FISHING than Little Strawberry, it fishes more like Strawberry. The scenery on the tough hike in is astonishing.
FINAL TIP The good people of nearby Prairie City are well aware that they are lucky to be among the tiny sliver of human beings who can get up in the morning, take a short drive to a trailhead, hike for less than an hour and fish a high mountain lake. They can have a picnic, and be home in time to have supper. The trip is easy enough they can take their kids. That means that you will not be alone when you fish Strawberry Lake, especially on the weekends. I would, for example, avoid the Fourth of July weekend, and in general camp during the week if your schedule allows it. But remember, the reason the locals come here is because it’s a really nice place to be for anyone who likes camping, hiking and catching fish. NS
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WHAT TO PACK FOR A HIGH LAKES FISHING ADVENTURE
F
irst things first: Whenever you hike into the mountains to camp and fish, you should bring a spare rod. Even though it’s obvious that a person of your extraordinary physical grace and coordination would never actually break a rod yourself miles and miles from the nearest place to buy another one, your fishing partner may well turn out to be a klutz. Be prepared. Second, in Oregon’s high mountains, temperatures can be in the 30s in the morning and the 80s in the afternoon and be snowing the next morning, even in summer. Bring a coat. If you never put it on, you can use it as a pillow. Third, bring a ThermaCell or bug dope or both. I’ve never had a problem with ticks or mosquitoes at Strawberry Lake, but they are around. There are even more mosquitoes at times at Little Strawberry. Fourth, you’ll be fishing at high
altitude in the summer next to a lake. Bring sunscreen, hat and sunglasses. Fifth, although modest campfires in early summer are usually OK, given recent fire seasons you should bring a decent camp stove and enough fuel to cook all your meals. Sixth, bring a paper map of the wilderness area if you want to explore (that is, don’t count on phone reception). A description of the area hikes can be had by searching OregonHikers.org for “Strawberry Mountain Loop Hike.” Seventh, info on Strawberry Campground can be found at fs.usda.gov/ recmain/malheur/recreation. Finally, I don’t bother with waders here. I just bring a pair of tennis shoes and wade wet if getting in the water seems like a good idea (often you don’t need to). But make sure that your wading shoes are different from your hiking boots, as hiking in wet boots is a pain. -DJ
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HUNTING FISHING
Westslope cutthroat and triploid rainbows are the primary targets in the lakes above the Pend Oreille River as it flows north through Washington’s upper righthand corner. While most waters are supported by fry and fingerling stockings, broodstockers can be found here as well. (MIKE WRIGHT)
Lakes Of The Northern Pend Oreille Valley In a state with thousands upon thousands of waters, those of Northeast Washington offer trout fishing far from the madding crowds, and deeper into summer. By Mike Wright
E
astern Washington and Northern Idaho are blessed with a wide variety of smaller lakes that can provide some excellent fishing during the summer. A number of these stillwaters can be easily accessed by road and do not require a great deal of hiking to reach them. Ordinarily these lakes would have heated up by July and August and the best spots would now be in the
higher elevations and might involve a fair amount of hiking to reach them. However, this spring was far from normal, with record-setting snow, rain and colder temperatures slowing how fast lakes warmed as well as weed growth, thus improving the fishing conditions in most of these lower elevation lakes. This is particularly true of those near Ione and Metaline Falls, on the Pend Oreille River. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has
a rather generous stocking program in these waters and most of the lakes are rather fertile and have some very favorable growth rates.
ONE EXCELLENT EXAMPLE of this would be Big Meadow Lake, just 7 miles west of Ione on Meadow Creek Road. Big Meadow receives an annual spring stocking of approximately 12,000 rainbow fingerlings, which grow rapidly to reach an average length of 10 to 16 inches. nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2022
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Yocum Lake is, like many of the waters highlighted in this article, tucked into forested hills and accessible via private and Forest Service logging roads. In Yocum’s case, two-tracks touch either end, but the southern one doesn’t open till June to prevent road damage. (MIKE WRIGHT)
As the name implies, the lake is located on a rather large meadow on Smackout Pass. It opens for fishing the fourth Saturday of April and closes October 31, which is the case with most lower lakes in the area. There is a Forest Service campground, boat launch, fishing pier and outhouse available at no cost on the west side of the lake. Big Meadow is rather shallow and, like most meadow lakes, can be very weedy. However, due to the unusually cool and rainy spring, weed growth has been inhibited, making it much easier to troll – as long as you don’t go overboard on the sink rate of your fly line or attached weight. There are some deeper holes toward the middle of the lake that make it easier for bait and lure fishermen to try their luck. Depths toward the middle can average from 15 to 23 feet, while the rest of the lake generally runs from 3 60 Northwest Sportsman
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to 9 feet. For the fly fisherman, the use of floating line would probably be the most successful strategy. Damselflies and callibaetis mayflies began to appear in June and extend through July and the first part of August. Marabou Damsels, Sheep Creeks, Pheasant Tails and Hare’s Ears are flies of choice during this period. For the bait fisherman, worms, PowerBait and marshmallows are most commonly used. Hammered spoons, Rooster Tails, Mepps and Panther Martins are probably the most frequently used lures. Do note that there is a special regulation in effect at Big Meadow to protect breeding loons. Lead weights and lead jigs measuring smaller than 1.5 inches along their longest side are unlawful to use here, a restriction that went into effect in May 2011 after passage by the Fish and Wildlife Commission. Big Meadow is one of
12 lakes with this rule, most in the state’s northern tier.
ANOTHER EXCELLENT STILLWATER to fish is Crescent Lake, 9 miles north of Metaline Falls and just a mile south of the Canadian border off Highway 31. The lake is stocked in spring with triploid rainbow fry and 4- to 5-inch westslope cutthroat fingerlings at a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3, depending on year. This 21-acre lake has both a boat launch and a tiny campground (three campsites), as well as easy access off the highway. The average fish at Crescent does not match that of Big Meadow, but trout numbers are good. And where the latter is shallow, the former is deep – 80 feet in the middle. Another lake just a couple miles north of Metaline is Ledbetter Lake, which has been a good spot for rainbows. Unfortunately, the owner of the land surrounding the lake has
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No lake might benefit more from this year’s very wet spring than Cooks – here dappled with raindrops – which tends to shrink considerably during summer. It’s also planted with the biggest trout of any of the lakes covered here, 3-plus-pound broodstockers; 400 were released in May. (MIKE WRIGHT)
blocked access, due to the partying that had been taking place by some of the local teenagers. The lake was stocked with triploid rainbows this spring, so hopefully this situation will soon be remedied. Across the Pend Oreille River and approximately 2 miles downstream from Ione lies Yocum Lake. In the past it was a major pain in the posterior to reach the lake, but some time ago the Stimson Lumber Company put in a road that leads to its south end. However, in order to protect the road during wetter times of the year, the company doesn’t open it until June 1. Alternatively, there is a Forest Service road that touches Yocum’s north end. Like many other lakes in the area, Yocum receives an annual stocking of cutthroat fry, which are stocked in the fall. This provides excellent fishing, especially in the latter part of the season. These trout eagerly take Pheasant Tails, Prince Nymphs, Hare’s Ears, Parachute Adams and Purple Hazes, as well as both damsel dries and nymphs. However, these hatchery fish have very soft mouths, so many will pull loose, causing a great deal of frustration on the part of the angler. For bait and lure fishermen, again, worms, dough bait, hammered 62 Northwest Sportsman
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spoons, Mepps and Panther Martins will all work well.
FURTHER UPSTREAM FROM Yocum, on the west side of the Pend Oreille River, is Parker Lake. This lake along Cusick Creek is stocked annually with approximately 8,000 triploid rainbows, which grow slowly, but you can expect to catch 11- to 13inch carryovers. Parker opens the fourth Saturday in April, and the same fly patterns, bait and lures that are used in the other lakes will also catch fish here. Note that shore access is pretty limited and it’s pretty boggy. And lastly, another excellent lake to fish, especially early in the season, is Cooks. This lake is unique in the fact that it is annually stocked with jumbo rainbows, often referred to as “broodstock.” This is rather unique since these fish are typically stocked in much bigger lakes. The chance of catching 4- or 5-pound rainbows does not go unnoticed by anglers in the area, and for the first two or three weeks of the season Cooks is very popular. However, it is not a long-term love affair. As the jumbos disappear, so too do the fishermen. In addition, the water level drops rapidly to the point where Cooks might be better referred to as a pond.
Odd as it might sound, the lake is open to fishing year-round. Considering low water levels in the latter part of the season, fishing during the winter might be a little suspect. Cooks Lake is a little off the beaten track, but can be reached by taking Forest Service Road 5015 off of Bead Lake Road. The road, at times, can be somewhat less than wonderful, so it pays to be careful.
THE FISHING IN the upper Pend Oreille Valley can be very good, but is often overlooked in favor of waters closer to Newport or the chain of lakes off State Highway 20 between Tiger and Colville. Most of these lakes offer the same amenities (campsites, bathrooms and boat launches), but usually with fewer people. Considering the improving weather conditions, the scenic beauty of the area and the abundance of fish available, July might be an excellent time to visit the upper Pend Oreille Valley. This has been just a small sample of the lakes in the area, so you might want to check WDFW’s Spokane Valley office or the agency webpage for lowland lakes (wdfw .wa.gov/fishing/locations/lowlandlakes) and/or the Colville National Forest (fs.usda.gov/recmain/colville/ recreation) for other destinations. NS
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FISHING
Just as kokanee are a landlocked salmon, salmon wobblers can be converted into kokanee dodgers, and vice versa. (TOM SCHNELL)
Convert Salmon Wobblers Into Kokanee Dodgers How to repurpose your Chinook gear and give new life to old koke tackle. By Tom Schnell
D
odgers have become one of the primary attractors now used for kokanee. They come in many shapes, sizes and color combinations. There are currently a plethora of commercially produced dodgers to choose from and with all the options available, picking the
right ones can be daunting. You can find yourself buying the latest and greatest kokanee dodgers only to end up with a few that you actually use on a consistent basis. Kokanee anglers are known to spend a lot of money on gear, yet they may already be sitting on a treasure trove of great options. With a little help and ingenuity, you can
repurpose some of your salmon gear and give new life to old kokanee tackle. It can save money and be fun and rewarding at the same time.
TO CONVERT SALMON gear into kokanee dodgers, the first step is to look for any salmon wobblers that you may have on hand. If done correctly, they can have a dual purpose – being nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2022
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Converting a salmon wobbler to a kokanee dodger is as easy as removing the back hook and replacing it with a snap swivel. Good tools to have on hand include a heavy-duty wire cutter and a split-ring plier, and with a supply of split rings, snap swivels and salmon hooks, you are good to go. (TOM SCHNELL)
used for both a salmon wobbler and a kokanee dodger with just a few modifications. To modify a salmon wobbler to a kokanee dodger, remove the wobbler’s back hook. If it is attached by a split ring, simply remove the hook from the split ring, leaving the split ring attached to the wobbler. If it is a solid ring, either cut the hook at the eye and remove the hook, or cut the ring and attach a split ring in its place. Depending on the size of the wobbler being turned into a dodger, new split rings will range from size 6 to 8. Check on the poundage rating too, as not all split rings have the same pound test rating. If the dodger will be turned back into a wobbler for salmon, make sure to have a sufficient pound test split ring so as not to have it come loose on a hardfighting salmon. Now all you need to do is to add a snap swivel to the end of the wobbler via the split ring, and voilà, you have a kokanee dodger ready to go. When you want to turn the dodger back into a wobbler, simply remove the snap swivel from the split ring and reattach the salmon hook, and you are right back to having a salmon wobbler. The standard size that I have found that works best for a snap swivel is around a size 5. Experiment with different sizes and makes of snap swivels until you find the one you like the best.
TWO TOOLS THAT I have found very useful when converting salmon wobblers into kokanee dodgers are a heavy-duty wire cutter and a splitring plier. The wire cutter is to help remove hooks attached by a solid ring, or the solid ring itself, while the split-ring plier aids in taking split rings on and off. The split-ring plier also comes in handy when changing hooks and snap swivels on the split rings themselves. Other items to make the wobblerto-dodger conversion and back are a ready supply of split rings in sizes ranging from 6 through 8, snap 66 Northwest Sportsman
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FISHING
Some simple cleaners like Non-Ultra Lemon Joy dish soap, De-Solv-it and paint stripper (above) are all that are needed to prepare your kokanee dodger to be taped. A heat gun or a hair dryer can come in handy, as can basic cutting tools (top right). A good selection of quality tape (left) will help enhance any kokanee dodger or transform an old wobbler into a brand-new creation. There is no right or wrong way of doing it, so have fun and experiment. (TOM SCHNELL)
swivels and salmon hooks. This allows you to convert back and forth easily from a wobbler to a dodger and back again. Having these supplies readily available makes the changeout seamless and very quick. The size, shape and color of your wobbler-to-dodger conversion is limited only by the supply of wobblers you have on hand. If you are like most salmon anglers, you will have more wobblers on hand than you will ever use for kokanee dodgers, so go ahead and experiment with various ones until you have your chosen few that you have confidence in.
ANOTHER OPTION FOR kokanee dodgers is to give a facelift to ones you already have. This can range from adding a little bling to spruce up a dodger, all the way to providing a major facelift. Old, faded dodgers can be made to look brand new with just a little effort. The two main ways of doing so are by either painting them or taping them. Since painting a dodger is an art form of its own and can require costly painting gear, I typically just
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FISHING
This Brad’s Killer Fish salmon dodger had lost most of its paint. The hook was replaced by a snap swivel and it was taped over with Hyper-Vis Tape and made into a kokanee dodger. (TOM SCHNELL)
use commercially made tape like Northwest-produced Hyper-Vis Tape. It is simple and, in some ways, easier than painting dodgers. Taping a kokanee dodger is fairly inexpensive to do. Tape is readily available in most fishing tackle stores and comes in a variety of colors. Take a black light along to see if it is fluorescent and has that UV “glow” to it. Not all tape is made the same, so look for tape that is labeled as “UV” or fluorescent. You also want tape that is waterproof and stays on in the water. Having an adhesive backing that really sticks to the dodger is important. Some tape that looks good on the shelf won’t stand up to the rigors of being underwater for long periods of time. Besides the color selection, one thing that sold me on the Hyper-Vis Tape is the incredibly strong and durable adhesive that is applied to it.
WHEN I’M READY to start upgrading and enhancing my kokanee dodgers, my
first step is to thoroughly clean them with Non-Ultra Lemon Joy soap and hot water. If they have tape already applied to them that needs to come off, I take either a heat gun or hair dryer and use it to help peel the tape off. Once the tape is off, I apply original citrus solution De-Solv-it to take off any tape residue and then rewash the dodger again with NonUltra Lemon Joy and hot water. If the dodger has paint instead of tape, just tape over the paint or use something like Klean Strip Premium Stripper to take the original paint off. Once again, clean the dodger with Non-Ultra Lemon Joy soap and hot water to get any cleaning residue off of it. You want the dodger to be as clean and dry as possible before adding adhesive tape to it. After the dodger is completely clean and dry, it is time to start adding tape to it. The color combinations and designs are endless, so be creative. Sometimes all that is needed is to
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FISHING take a kokanee dodger and add some additional “bling” to it. Add some colored dots or some creative design to it to make it customized. This can be fun and bring out the creative side; there is no wrong way of doing it, so be original! Some items I find helpful when
taping dodgers are: scissors, a variety of tape, cutting templates, a variety of hole punches in various sizes, a paper cutter, a sharp knife for trimming, tweezers for removing the tape and – if you are really serious – a Cricut Maker Machine. With these simple tools many different designs
can be made. You can also buy premade tape designs off of the internet as well. My two main sources are eBay and hypervistape.com. The variety is endless and can take on a life of its own. But in the end I have found that simple colors like silver, gold, pink, orange, chartreuse and UV moon jelly are the primary ones I use. There are times when fluorescent red, purple and even blue come in handy, but I tend to stick with the basic colors for kokanee so as not to overwhelm the amount of tape I need to update and upgrade my kokanee dodgers. You can use this same technique to convert salmon wobblers to taped kokanee dodgers. I had several old salmon wobblers that had lost their shine and paint. I removed the hook, added a snap swivel and had a “brand-new” kokanee dodger. I often transform them back into a salmon wobbler when we start focusing our fishing on fall salmon.
MAKING YOUR OWN kokanee dodgers – whether converting a salmon wobbler to a kokanee dodger or retrofitting an old wobbler/dodger into a “new” one – is both fun and rewarding. It requires only a few basic tools, some minimum supplies and is easy to do. And catching a fish on a dodger pattern and color that you designed can add a sense of satisfaction to fishing for both salmon and kokanee. The best part is there is no right or wrong way of doing it, so be creative and original. Who knows, you may just create your new favorite dodger that is the envy of the boat. It can be very catching. Tight lines and fish on! NS
Between the kokanee lakes and salmon rivers, dodgers and wobblers have dual uses, and can be quickly modified based on the fish you want to pursue, whether that be Central Oregon kokes or Columbia kings. (TOM SCHNELL) 72 Northwest Sportsman
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Editor’s note: Tom Schnell is an avid outdoorsman who lives with his wife Rhonna in Central Oregon. He is a past Ducks Unlimited and Oregon Hunters Association President, along with being a former Kokanee Power of Oregon board member.
nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2022
Northwest Sportsman 73
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COLUMN
Saltwater anglers will take to Washington’s inside waters in search of salmon this month as summer fishing opportunities expand through many marine areas. Given high interest in hatchery Chinook and lower quotas, keeping updated on fishery statuses is a must. (JASON BROOKS)
Sound Salmon Checklist: Bait, Leaders, Smartphone I f you are anywhere near Puget Sound, then July means salmon fishing. It’s one of the few months that can be counted on for NW PURSUITS good weather, calm By Jason Brooks waters and Chinook. And it is the month that everyone who lives or visits here talks about. Like the summers in the greater Puget Sound area, the salmon season is often short but also good enough to keep us coming back each year. And if you’ve fished here of late, then you know what’s becoming the most important piece of fishing gear: a
smartphone, so you can check to see if the marine area you want to fish is (still) open. Many are run under quotas to allow anglers the opportunity to fish for Endangered Species Act-listed hatchery Chinook in Puget Sound and surrounding areas, while other salmon fisheries have set dates.
ONE OF THE more popular places is Marine Area 9, which covers the waters from Edmonds to Port Townsend. Being a major migration route for fish heading to just about every river in Central and South Puget Sound and Hood Canal, the salmon fishing can be good – too good, sometimes – and the season is short. Don’t let someone tell
you that we get a nine-day season on Area 9 because we don’t. This summer’s dates are Thursday, July 14, through Saturday, July 16, all of which will see huge early tide swings, and then possibly July 21 through July 23 if the 4,700 hatchery Chinook quota hasn’t been reached. Fishing then reopens July 28 for hatchery coho, as well as kings if enough are still available. A quick run out to Point Wilson, Possession Bar, Point No Point and other popular locations on opening day will show you why the quota won’t last long. Thousands of boats and hundreds of shore anglers will be casting or trolling lines and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
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COLUMN
The primary target in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, San Juan Islands, Puget Sound and southern Hood Canal is big hatchery Chinook, like this one. And like this image shows, most anglers troll for their kings, either with spoons, plastic squid called hoochies, plugs or herring. (JASON BROOKS) fish checkers will be ready to make sure we don’t catch more than the allotted amount. Same with Area 10, where the Seattle skyline is in the background. This area is much smaller than Area 9 but way more accessible and popular since you can be fishing within minutes of launching. The quota of 3,966 Chinook doesn’t go as fast as its neighbor to the north and it is slated to be open from July 14 to August 31. For anglers who want to fish in the morning shadows of skyscrapers, the bubble fishery of Elliott Bay, where most of the fish are destined for the Duwamish River, is open for four days, August 6-9. One good thing about Area 10 is that resident coho fishing has been open since June 16, which means most anglers will know where to go if the Chinook fishing is slow. This silver fishery has become very popular the past few years, as it is an opportunity to get out and catch some tasty salmon close to home. The San Juan Islands, Area 7, are also popular, and to spread out fishing pressure, this season these waters will be open the same days (July 14-16) for 76 Northwest Sportsman
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hatchery Chinook as Area 9. The quota here is just 1,800 marked kings, 500 more than last summer, but don’t expect season to last long. Still, unlike last year, the islands are scheduled to reopen for marked coho from August 16 through September 30.
THE SOUTH SOUND is where Tacoma and Olympia anglers will likely concentrate their salmon efforts. In Area 11, the Chinook quota is only 2,816 hatchery fish and might not last long, if how fast June’s fishery opened and closed is any indication. There had been a lot of excitement, as last month’s season was starting two weeks earlier than 2021 – which itself was the first time since 2018 the area was open in June – and was set to run the entire month, albeit under a quota of 580 hatchery kings. But it turned into a debacle. State fish checkers said anglers were encountering (catching and releasing) too many wild and juvenile fish (encounter limits for which were 432 and 752, respectively). In a way, if that many fish were being caught, then it should indicate that the fishery was strong. But instead of being excited about the amount
of fish, WDFW essentially decided it was a “bad thing” and closed the season. Keep in mind this announcement was made at the close of business hours on a Friday, just three days into the season, and it shut down the fishery at the end of that day. It meant anglers who didn’t check the agency’s website between that afternoon and when they woke up early Saturday morning to go fishing would have been on the water during a closed season. Again, one of the most important tools a Puget Sound salmon angler can have is a cellphone to check for closure updates. There is some good news for Area 11 and that is the coho fishing. The past few years, coho numbers have been really good. But 2022’s season also runs through October 31 and silvers don’t have to be clipped. Most of these fish are heading back to the net pens near Harstine Island, which is a program run by the Squaxin Island Tribe, as well as the Puyallup, White and Nisqually Rivers. Area 11 has a really good resident coho population, thanks to the net pens, and by mid-August the ocean-going fish will be returning. Area 13 is open for salmon fishing
COLUMN year-round. The main Chinook returns are to Minter Creek, and the Nisqually and Deschutes Rivers, with a few returning to Chambers Creek and other natal streams. The waters are often calm in Puget Sound’s southernmost end, and there is some good shore fishing at various state parks and local public beaches. Focus on learning how to fish the points of the shoreline. Salmon will use these current breaks like the bumpers in a pinball game. Point Fosdick and the eastern end of Fox Island are popular spots as fish come through the Narrows, mostly following along the west side even though they might be heading to rivers on the eastern edge of Puget Sound. The currents rip through the Narrows but once the water and fish make their way past the bridges, the channel opens up and waters calm down, allowing fish to find food sources hiding in the current breaks from these points.
A BEST KEPT secret for Puget Sound anglers is the southern end of Area 12, better known as Hood Canal. Here, Skokomish River-bound fish – 27,912 are predicted to return this year – can be intercepted in the salt. Anglers used to flock to this small river that was choked with Chinook on each tide exchange, so much so that it eventually led to closures from trash and waste, and then the Skokomish Tribe pushed the boundary definition to include the entire river. WDFW disagrees with that and has challenged a federal solicitor’s opinion of an 1800s treaty, but until the courts can weigh in, the hatchery fish are off-limits to nontribal anglers in the river. The fish can still be chased in the salt, but it can be a tricky fishery. Larry Phillips, the former WDFW director of the region that includes these waters and now with the American Sport Fishing Association, used to fish the lower end of Hood Canal a lot. “It’s been a few years but we used to do really well,” stated Phillips. He liked to concentrate his efforts near Bald Point – to the north of the mouth of the Skokomish and right where the canal hooks east – and fish really shallow. The shoreline here is rockier than the south side of the canal, where sand and mud are deposited off of the Olympics. 78 Northwest Sportsman
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Another option is resident coho, which have been providing a good fishery in recent years. The editor’s son Kiran Walgamott holds one of two he caught off Jeff Head last July. (ANDY WALGAMOTT) “We had days with a lot of success, but don’t expect to catch a lot of fish each time out,” said Phillips, who added that it was usually an early morning bite. “Look for jumping fish, which will tell you where they are concentrating and milling around waiting to go up the river.” Though the majority of the run occurs in August, Phillips said the fishing can be good in July, as the fish will stage in the salt before heading to the hatcheries a few miles upriver. Trolling bait, such as whole herring with a bait hood or anchovies, works well, but Phillips admitted he is a “hardware guy” and prefers to troll spoons. One of the top producers on lower Hood
Canal fish is a Coho Killer in a silver finish. The mouth of the Skokomish River is a big shallow mud flat that is exposed at low tide, making it impossible to fish. And during high tide the Chinook race into the river, which means no stopping to bite your lures or bait. But the fish must get here first, so look for areas where the fish will be feeding or holding on their way back to WDFW’s George Adams Hatchery. Salmon fishing south of Hood Canal’s Ayock Point opens July 1 and runs through September 30 with a daily limit of four hatchery Chinook. You can use two rods with the endorsement as well. If you can figure out this fishery, then you can fill a
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There’s a dedicated core of salmon moochers out there who work baitballs with cut-plug herring under a banana weight. When dogfish get too thick, switching to jigs is advisable. (JASON BROOKS) freezer quickly. Again, the height of the run is mid-August through mid-September, but fish will be here from the opener on.
THERE SEEMS TO be two types of Puget Sound anglers, moochers and trollers, and they don’t get along. Well, they do as long as they don’t fish together. Mooching is a nearly stationary way to fish, hovering over schools of salmon or places where the fish tend to feed on stacked-up baitfish. You will find flotillas of boats at Point Defiance, Point Evans, Point Wilson and several other well-known mooching areas, where anglers will be jigging their rods up and down. Notice the three areas mentioned above are all “points.” This is because baitfish will be on either side of the structure during the tide exchange, and so will the Chinook, gorging themselves. Mooching is using a cut-plug herring and a banana-shaped lead weight, dropping it down and then slowly reeling it up through the water column with a jigging action to create the up-and-down movement of a wounded baitfish. But 80 Northwest Sportsman
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dogfish can wreak havoc on bait, so some anglers use the same technique but with jigs such as Point Wilson Darts or Otori Puget Pounders. It is a simple and effective way to catch Puget Sound Chinook. If you prefer to search out the salmon by trolling, be sure to steer clear of the moochers. Not only will you mess up their fishing but you will end up tangling with their lines and nobody will be catching fish while you deal with the mess. One of the benefits of trolling is that you can search for migrating salmon. Years ago, just after I moved to the Puget Sound area, I was trolling along the shoreline with a diver, an inline flasher and a spoon. The rod bent over hard and on the end was a 20-pound Chinook. I could have easily thrown a rock from my 14-foot boat and hit the bank. That is one of the best things about Puget Sound: Just about anyone with any kind of boat can go salmon fishing. You don’t need downriggers, as you can use divers or mooch up some fish, but downriggers do help a lot. If you run them near the bottom, you might pick up a
blackmouth – a Chinook that lives its entire life in Puget Sound – or you might get a migrating ocean fish. You can also find the bait and work your line at that depth. I know I mentioned there are two types of salmon anglers in Puget Sound, the trollers and the moochers, but there is one more, a dying breed of sorts. They are the meat liners. If you see someone using the old-school meat line system, which is a heavy weight on a cable, then pay attention. These are anglers who have more knowledge of the local area than all of the books, podcasts and blogs you can find. Don’t get in their way, as their heavy cables will grab your gear, but watch where they are going and know they are on the fish.
JULY IS ONE of the best months of our short summer, and it could be a short salmon season too. For the Puget Sound angler it is time to catch some Chinook and be sure to watch for last-second closures. Keep the cellphone close and hit the water this month. NS
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HUNTING FISHING
Target Cool Waters For Hot Upper Columbia Salmon With the summer Chinook and sockeye forecasts up somewhat from last year, here’s how to fish from Beverly to Brewster. By Mark Yuasa
N
orthcentral Washington has evolved into one of the more popular summer salmon fishing destinations in the Evergreen State and for several positive reasons. Unlike salmon fisheries west of the Cascade Mountains, the Upper Columbia River has a diverse landscape where triple-digit temperatures aren’t uncommon, along with plenty of sunshine. But what sets it apart from the rest is a summer Chinook and sockeye fishery that takes centerstage beginning July 1. “The preseason summer Chinook and sockeye forecasts are a little better than what actually returned in 2021,” says Chad Jackson, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s regional fish program manager in Ephrata. “Hopefully summer Chinook follow suit with spring Chinook and return much stronger this year.” The 2022 preseason forecast for Upper Columbia summer Chinook is 57,500 adults to the Columbia River mouth, compared to the 2021 return of 56,800 adults (78,800 was last year’s
The Beebe Bridge stretch and other portions of the Upper Columbia can produce beautifully barbecueable Chinook and sockeye in the heat of summer. Taylon Yuasa caught this summer king near Chelan last year. (MARK YUASA)
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FISHING HUNTING a clipped adipose fin. Naturalspawning populations also contribute significantly to the run and the stock is managed as a composite population. Summer Chinook migrating above Priest Rapids Dam aren’t listed under the Endangered Species Act. “The summer Chinook fishery has its ups and downs, and during the first week of the season, anglers’ catch is pretty good,” Jackson says. “When all the willing biters are skimmed off, fishing slows until a new batch of fresh fish come in and it gets good again. Last year anglers harvested around 5,000 summer Chinook and it was a decent season.”
THE SOCKEYE FISHERY in this part of the
The cool mouths of the Entiat and Chelan Rivers are known to hold salmon as the fish travel to their hatcheries and spawning grounds further up the watershed. (MARK YUASA)
forecast). If accurate, this projection would represent the 15th highest return since 1980 and be 83 percent of the average return observed over the past decade. A good number are projected to be large-sized summer Chinook, including 34,200 4-year-old age-class fish; 22,900 5-year-olds; and 400 6-year-olds. “We’ll monitor the returns so we know what we’re playing with, but it would take a big drop in the numbers for us to make any inseason emergency measures,” Jackson says. According to a fact sheet from Washington and Oregon salmon managers, the Upper Columbia summer Chinook run size remained at low levels throughout the 1980s and 86 Northwest Sportsman
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1990s, with average returns of 19,243 and 15,090 fish, respectively. Improved ocean conditions and substantial changes in the hydrosystem enhanced downriver passage, leading the average run size to climb to 59,805 adults during the first decade of the 2000s, which was about three times greater than the average run size of the 1980s and four times greater than the 1990s. The average run in the 2010s was 71,995 adults, which was 120 percent of the previous decade. Supplementation programs and improved natural habitat have played a significant role in the increased abundance trends observed since 1999. Since 2002, hatchery-produced fish have been mass-marked with
Columbia River also draws a lot of attention, and the 2022 preseason forecast is for 198,700 adults (153,309 was 2021’s actual return). The 2021 return was quite close to the preseason forecast of 155,600 adults but only 49 percent of the recent 10-year average. Anglers along the upper river will be focused on a 2022 forecast of 175,700 to the Okanogan River (105,493 in 2021) that is the bread and butter for summer fisheries, especially from Priest Rapids Dam up to Brewster. The return of Okanogan-origin fish is expected to be approximately 70 percent of the recent 10-year average. The total sockeye quota this year on the Columbia above Pasco is a little less than 13,500 fish, which is a little better than 2021 (7,000). “We should get a little longer season, since we have more wiggle room than last year (which ended in mid-July), and much of that depends on angler success and how well the run comes in,” Jackson says.
THE
SURROUNDING LANDSCAPE and wildlife of the Upper Columbia is unlike anywhere else in Washington, as salmon make the marathon 500-plus-mile migration from the entrance to the Pacific Ocean. “I like to target kings around Chelan Falls in early July, but you can catch them above and below
FISHING HUNTING
In the net! The Brewster Pool, where Maralee Moore caught this one, shouldn’t be overlooked, plus it hosts a popular derby in early August. (COAST FISHING PHOTO CONTEST)
the dams in this area, as the fish arrive in waves all the way into early August,” says Aaron Peterson, owner of Peterson’s Northwest Guide Service (petersonsnorthwest .com; 425-220-2928). The most popular and productive places to catch summer Chinook are the tailrace of Wanapum Dam, the “bubbles” around the mouths of the Entiat and Chelan Rivers, Wells Dam tailrace, and the Brewster Pool up to the city of Bridgeport. Each of these three sections of the Upper Columbia provide a totally different vibe, from the swift-moving tailrace below Rocky Reach and Wells Dams (outflows depend on when water is released at each dam) to the rather gentle Beebe Bridge stretch, where cold water flushes in from Lake Chelan. While these fisheries are very 88 Northwest Sportsman
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popular, tasty Chinook and feisty sockeye can be in one location one day, only to move 15 miles upstream the following day. Water levels and flow also affect how the fish bite from day to day. One of the more popular locations along the Upper Columbia is near Beebe Bridge, better known to anglers as Chelan Falls, which is a shallow-water fishery with the bottom being around 25 to 50 feet. It is often covered with milfoil that can foul up gear, so checking it often is one key to catching more fish. After all, these salmon don’t want a salad for breakfast. To fish Chelan Falls, launch at Chelan County’s Beebe Bridge Park boat ramp or just across the river at Chelan Falls Park. Both have excellent camping and/or RV sites, day-use
facilities, picnic shelters and many other amenities. The early morning period, before the sun has even climbed over the arid, shrub-steppe hillsides covered with wildflowers and sagebrush, is without a doubt the best time to be on the water. In most cases the very bright summer sun seems to shut off the bite by 8 a.m. and turns into a heatwave by midmorning, although you can catch salmon all day long. You’ll even find some action for a few hours prior to sunset. The journey to the fishing grounds takes a few minutes and is easy to identify by the mass of boats trolling in a tight, shallow-water area where the Chelan River dumps into the Columbia mainstem. One of the keys to deciding where you’ll fish for summer kings or sockeye is to examine the dam fish counts. This will give you a snapshot of how many fish are in a certain area, where they’re migrating or staging, and if you want to target Chinook or sockeye. You can track fish migration to the upper basin at fpc.org/currentdaily/ HistFishTwo_7day-ytd_Adults.htm.
THE PREFERRED CHOICE of fishing gear for these summer kings is an 8- to 12-ounce sliding cannonball drop sinker to a bead-chain swivel attached to a Pro-Troll ProChip Flasher. On the terminal end is a tandem-hook leader 18 to 30 inches long and a size 3.5 spinner, or a Brad’s Super Bait Original stuffed with NW Bait & Scent or ProCure anchovy or shrimp brine in a mashed-up canned tuna concoction. Other anglers will troll a Mag Lip 4.5, and a whole or cut-plug herring soaked in a colored, store-bought brine or an artificial version like a Brad’s Mini Cut-Plug or Yakima Bait Company SpinFish. Downriggers are an option but in my opinion not necessary and can be burdensome, since milfoil can foul up your wire cables, gear, lure and/or bait. Once you get your lines in the water, try trolling in a zigzag pattern parallel to Chelan Falls Road near
FISHING Powerhouse Park up to the Chelan Falls Boathouse. Always be aware of your surroundings, since it’s likely you’ll be playing bumper boats when the bite is on. Once you arrive just below Beebe Bridge, turn around and troll downriver back toward
WENATCHEE SOCKEYE
T
his year’s Lake Wenatchee sockeye forecast is 19,700 (down from the actual return of 41,219 in 2021 and 56,111 in 2020), which is below the necessary 23,000-escapement goal to possibly open a summer fishery in the lake. While the 2021 return was 151 percent above the escapement, 2022 is predicted to be only 34 percent of the 10-year average. However, keep tabs on the Tumwater Dam fish counts to see if a late July or early August fishery might be in the cards. -MY
Chelan Falls Park. There are deepwater holes in the middle of the river where salmon hunker down before making their next move upstream. When chasing sockeye, try a chrome flasher trailed with a small, size 12 or 14 pink Spin-N-Glo with two red 1/0 hooks tipped with a coonstripe shrimp cured in a prawn or shrimp scent or a Mack’s Sockeye Rig. Like many places where you fish for sockeye, it is a must to shorten the leaders down to 9 or 10 inches and troll as slowly as possible. The Upper Columbia has a sixsalmon daily limit (up to two may be adult hatchery Chinook or two sockeye, or one of each); release coho and wild adult Chinook.
CHELAN FALLS ISN’T the only shining star. About 18 miles upstream is the Brewster Pool, where you’ll find sockeye and Chinook in late summer. In this section of the Upper
Columbia the water temperature warms up rapidly, creating a thermal barrier at the Okanogan River mouth, and fish will stack up and not go anywhere. The peak timing of the Chinook and sockeye runs coincides with the Brewster King Salmon Derby (brewstersalmonderby.com), this year August 5-7. Another good salmon fishing location is around Wells Dam, but use caution, as the dam spews out water, creating turbulent sections, and levels can rise and drop quickly. Most anglers fish from the west side near the outlet and intake for a hatchery, and the eastern shoreline tends to be where the sockeye hang out before moving upstream. Bank anglers fish the Chelan County, or west, side. 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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COLUMN
Prep For Buoy 10 2022 G
iven a preseason forecast of nearly 500,000 fall Chinook and up to a million coho, I’m thinking the salmon BUZZ RAMSEY fishing might be pretty good at the Columbia River mouth over the coming months. And while the Northwest’s most popular sport fishery for salmon, Buoy 10, doesn’t officially start until August 1, July is the time to pick a date and prepare your gear for a fishing adventure you are not likely to soon forget. Just like ocean tides, the regulations for this fishery are different each and every year. What hasn’t changed for the Buoy 10 management zone is that only one of your two-salmon limit can be a Chinook, barbless hooks are required, and kept coho salmon must be of hatchery origin, identified by having a missing adipose fin. What is different this year is that for the first 24 days of August, only finclipped Chinook can be retained. Then from August 25 through September 7 you can keep any Chinook, fin-clipped or not. Beginning September 8 through the end of the month, the coho salmon limit will be three fat, fin-clipped silvers per day, but no Chinook may be retained. Keep in mind that fishing for salmon is not allowed in the Columbia River Control Zone, which extends westward from the Buoy 10 line to Buoy 7 and Buoy 4. This means the first place you can ambush salmon as they enter the Columbia River is east of the number 10 buoy and an imaginary north/south line extending from it.
IT’S IMPORTANT TO understand that ocean tides have everything to do with where salmon can be found in the tidal zone that extends from Buoy 10 to the fishery’s new eastern boundary, a north/south line extending through the west end of Puget
Levi Strayer of Hood River shows off a Chinook he caught at Buoy 10 while fishing last year’s Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association’s annual salmon tournament with author Buzz Ramsey. The date of this year’s event is August 19. (BUZZ RAMSEY) nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2022
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Trolling a spinner tipped with a herring head (above) can work as well as or better than a fresh herring or anchovy rigged to spin, especially in the upper half of the estuary, as can a Brad’s Cut Plug or SpinFish (above right) stuffed with chunks of herring, anchovy or canned tuna (bottom right). (BUZZ RAMSEY) Island, located 15 miles above Tongue Point, the old deadline. You see, it’s the incoming tide that fish use to transport themselves into and up the river. Your job is to intercept this pulse of fish, which will require you to know what the tide is doing at any given time and plan your day accordingly. When ocean tides are soft, meaning less variation from high to low or vice versa, the best fishing will likely be had in the middle and lower estuary. Successive soft tides can fill the middle estuary with
salmon, many of which will not move upriver until the tides begin to build. From low slack tide through the flood, and especially during times when there is a tide exchange (which is the distance from low to high tide) of 8 feet or more, is when the area just east of the actual Buoy 10 produces best for mostly coho. If you arrive at low tide or just after, when there is little or no current, try forward trolling. Once the tide starts to flood, you should begin back-trolling against the current. The idea is to hold your position (facing west) as fish
SAFETY FIRST AT B10
T
rue, the water can be calm and easy to navigate at Buoy 10, but be aware that fog, rough water, fast-moving tides, wind and ship traffic can up the odds of a mishap. For example, sea-going freighters move a lot quicker than you might realize and they have the absolute right-of-way, so keep your eyes peeled and move out of the shipping channel well in advance of their arrival. And while Desdemona Sands can be crossed in a few places, depending on the stage of the tide and how much water your boat drafts, you will need to know where it is safe to do so in advance of just trying your luck. To avoid a possible grounding, what many Oregon boaters do when wanting to fish salmon in the North Channel is to navigate around the western tip of Desdemona Sands rather than try a crossing of the big sand island. I would also highly recommend that you insist that everyone on board your vessel wear an inflatable life jacket while navigating Buoy 10. As you might know, these inflatable jackets are comfortable to wear, even with a salmon on the end of your line, and can be quickly inflated should a mishap occur. –BR
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move into the Columbia with the flooding ocean water. Most fish, especially coho, will be found within 20 feet of the surface. Note that low tide near the number 10 buoy may not match the time listed in your tide book and could, in fact, occur an hour or two after the time listed. It just takes that long for the flooding ocean water to slow and eventually stop the massive flow of the Columbia. This is particularly true when big tides are in play. What many anglers do, especially when wind and weather make the water rough, is to wait a few hours after low tide before trying their luck near the actual Buoy 10.
WHILE BIG TIDES will likely make for the best coho action near the western boundary, especially during the first half or more of the flood, it will also push a lot of big-boy Chinook near or above the Astoria-Megler Bridge. One strategy that has worked for me is to troll/back-troll just east of Buoy 10 during the first half of the incoming tide and then run upriver to try for Chinook during the latter portion of the flood. It’s during the last half of the flood and first half of the outgoing tide that the area near or above the Astoria-Megler Bridge produces best. And while you might catch a mixed bag of Chinook and coho, this area might represent your best chance
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COLUMN at catching a Chinook. The idea is to troll upstream with the flooding water during the last few hours of the incoming tide. When the tide turns you will likely find the best success by trolling downstream (west) with the ebbing water. Salmon hold in the north and south channel adjacent to Desdemona Sands before committing to their upriver journey. Desdemona Sands is the large sand island located in the middle of the river that separates the “south” shipping channel from the “north” false channel and extends all the way to Rice Island. The western tip of Desdemona is located midriver 2 miles west of Hammond and is identifiable by a three-pillar piling with a checkerboard navigation marker on top. One proven method when fishing the north channel is to troll with the flow of the tide near and parallel to the sands in 20 to 30 feet of water with a whole or cut-plug herring rigged 4 to 6 feet behind a Fish Flash attractor. Rotating flashers like the popular Pro-Troll attract salmon at Buoy 10 too, and while they can work anytime, they may produce best when tides are soft as opposed to when they are hard running.
To get their gear down, most anglers employ cannonball-style sinkers rigged off an 18-inch weight-dropper line. While some will use weights as large as 20 ounces, I normally rig 16-ounce sinkers on my front rods and 12 on those positioned out the stern of my boat. Since Chinook like to hug bottom, especially when the tide is running hard, it’s important to keep your gear working there if you want a big boy. If you’re targeting coho, try running your gear closer to the surface or move into shallower water, say, 12 to 20 feet deep.
HERRING IS THE most popular bait choice, but anchovies and spinners produce salmon too. The consensus among most guides and veteran anglers is that bait is by far the most productive when fishing the lower estuary. And while bait produces in the upper estuary too, there are times when spinners can outproduce bait, which may have to do with the warmer water found near the bridge. You should also know that I’ve had good luck trolling the SpinFish lure when stuffed with anchovy or tuna. Since I’m running the trolling motor while fishing, my rod is positioned near the motor and out the stern of the boat. I’ve
Trolling near or above the Astoria-Megler Bridge a few hours before high tide and through the first half of the outgoing tide is where many anglers find success for a big-boy Chinook. (BUZZ RAMSEY) 96 Northwest Sportsman
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had really good luck using 4 to 6 ounces of weight on my line and letting it out 50 to 100 feet behind the boat. This trailinglure strategy has produced very well for me over the years. You should also know that just like when targeting coho near the western fishing boundary, back-trolling into the flooding water can work in other areas too, like off Baker Bay, all the way to and above the Astoria-Megler Bridge. Keep in mind, this method is the most productive during large tide exchanges that can transport large numbers of fish to or past the bridge.
WHEN IT COMES to trolling the south, dredged shipping channel, where the water is mostly deeper, keep in mind that not all fish are found near bottom. According to retired fish biologist Jim Martin, a regular at Buoy 10, a good rule of thumb when searching for the fish-producing depth (no matter where you’re fishing inside the mouth of the Columbia) is to work your gear near bottom in areas where the water is 30 feet deep or less and 10 to 20 feet from the surface where the water is deeper. Keep in mind that you can fish for salmon from shore along the North Jetty
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Taleena Marsh shows off a coho she caught ‘last season while fishing alongside the author’s son Wade Ramsey near the Hammond launch. (BUZZ RAMSEY)
when the ocean or Buoy 10 is open for salmon. In addition, the ocean is now open west of the Columbia River Control Zone with a two-salmon limit, one of which can be a Chinook (fin-clipped or not). As with Buoy 10, all coho salmon caught from the ocean must be of hatchery origin and identifiable by having no adipose fin. In case you don’t know, the adipose is the small fin located on the back of the fish between the dorsal and tail fin. You should also be aware that there is a sportfishing closure within and in front of the entrance to Youngs Bay that extends north from the east end of Oregon’s Warrenton seawall to the green buoy line, including Buoys 29, 31, 33 and 35A, all the way up/east to the Astoria-Megler Bridge abutment and then south following the bridge to the Oregon shore. See your Oregon or Washington sportfishing rule book for clarity. NS Editor’s note: Buzz Ramsey is regarded as a sport fishing authority, outdoor writer and proficient lure and fishing rod designer.
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Count On Those Coho! Charter skippers, ocean salmon managers stoked about 2022 silver season. By MD Johnson
I
t’s funny, at least it is to me, how I’ve changed as a hunter and fisherman over the past half century. I … Wait! Did I say half century? Ugh! Anyway, I can recall vividly the anticipation associated with the first crappie fishing trip of the year to Pymatuning on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border. November 15, and the opening day of Ohio’s small game season. Duck season. Deer season. Turkey season. Then in 1993 – and again in 2015 – I moved to Southwest Washington. And while the anticipation didn’t waver, the subject matter did. Now it really became all about duck season. And smelt dipping. Razor clams and sturgeon. I was like the proverbial kid at Christmas, only this was much better than Christmas, which, as you know, only comes once a year, while the above and more – smelt, sturgeon, 107-day duck season, Eastside turkeys, chanterelle mushrooms, steamers, oyster – hell, they run 365 days a year if you work it right. Well, guess what, y’all? I’ve changed. Again. Oh, the thought of getting out after the aforementioned species still makes me all, well, giggly, but now, and thanks in large part to my wife, Julie, and her teaching, it’s salmon. Not kings or sockeye, but silvers. And those at the mouth of the Columbia; specifically, the North Jetty. Oh, yeah! Give me an 8-foot-6 medium-heavy
With solid coho forecasts for the Columbia and coastal rivers well to the north and south of Buoy 10, salmon fishing out on the briny blue should be strong this summer. A total of 168,000 hatchery silvers are available from Oregon’s Cape Falcon north to Washington’s Neah Bay, and another 100,000 clipped coho can be kept from Garibaldi south to Port Orford. Blaine Murphy caught this one while fishing with Jarod Higginbotham. (JAROD HIGGINBOTHAM)
nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2022
Northwest Sportsman 101
FISHING baitcaster, a similar-sized spinning rod, a mooching rig, bobber, pink Mepps Flying C, and a Syclops 1-ounce spoon – rainbow trout pattern please – and I’m using the restroom in high cotton. Southern transplants, y’all know what I mean there. (Editor’s note: For Northwest natives, this translates to “living the good life.”) What’s all this mean? It means this year’s forecast of 1.3 million coho entering the Columbia River system – which drive fishing up and down the Northwest Coast – cause for great jubilation and silliness on my part. Now, I understand how this works. In 2021, the run forecast was somewhere in the neighborhood of 950,000, and what did fisheries managers come up with after all was said and done? Ah, roughly 350,000 silvers. It’s a tough job, this fish-guessing thing, so I’m trying really, really hard not to get overly excited about the prospect of all those Columbia fish plus coho heading to Washington and Oregon Coast streams this year. Alas, though, I’m failing. Or have failed. I’m excited. You should be too, I reckon, as should other folks like the handful Northwest Sportsman spoke with who, like me, are hoping and praying all these fish – or at least a majority – materialize on the Northwest Coast from now deep into September.
The Captain Randy Ratliff The Marina Westport, Washington The Biz Rampage/Westport Sportfishing Experience Operating out of Westport for 17 years Contact westportsportfishing.com; 360-268-1080 It’s a tremendously busy time of year, especially if you’re a charter boat captain gearing up for the start of July’s ocean salmon fishery. So I wasn’t surprised that on my first attempt, I caught Captain Randy Randy Ratliff with Ratliff 102 Northwest Sportsman
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his hands full working on props. The next day, though he was still fixing things other people had broken, he had a minute or two to talk salmon.
Northwest Sportsman Looking at a good salmon season, Captain? Randy Ratliff Yeah, actually I am. The Chinook fishing for the commercial guys has been fantastic. There’s a lot of feed in the water. There’s all kinds of life offshore – porpoises and whales. It’s looking really good right now. NWS Anything different for you this year?
RR Nope, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. We’ll run the baits the same way as last year, either mooching or trolling, depending on what seems more productive at the time. Westport’s typically a mooching harbor, but more and more trolling (is being done) when the fishing gets difficult and the fish aren’t schooled up as much. Trolling sometimes produces better numbers, but it’s definitely a day-to-day or hour-to-hour situation.
NWS For folks new to this ocean fishery, your best advice before coming onboard? RR Fish with me! But really, people want to know how to be prepared, and I tell them dress in layers, bring snacks and easy-to-eat food on the boat, and bring an ice chest to leave in your car for your fish. It really varies from person to person, but dressing in layers and being prepared for any type of weather is one of the most important concerns. NWS Your ocean fishery begins with kings and segues into silvers when and when? RR We start fishing for salmon on July 2. Basically, we’re fishing kings right out of the gate, and as we get into July and then into August, there will be fewer and fewer kings and more coho.
The Captain Butch Smith The Marina Ilwaco, Washington The Biz Coho Charters
Experience Family-owned and -operated since 1956 Contact cohocharters.com; 360-642-3333 This is the second year running I’ve talked to Captain Butch Smith about his having a crystal ball, along with the ability to answer all my “Look into the future, sir, and tell me what you see” questions. And he’s done both in such a way as to make me Butch Smith think, “You know, I wanna fish with that guy.” Like Ratliff and all charter captains at this midJune time of year as they stare down the barrel of yet another looming ocean salmon season, Smith is a busy, busy man, but not so busy that he couldn’t take a couple minutes from his office near the mouth of the Columbia River to gaze into said crystal ball. NWS Anticipate a better-than-average salmon season, Captain?
Butch Smith I believe this is the real deal. Our ocean conditions have been getting better the past couple years. Based on NOAA’s water temperature chart, there’s all “greens” and “yellows” when just a couple years ago, it was all reds or mostly reds. Author’s note: On said chart (ospo .noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst/contour), greens and yellows are normal, i.e. good surface temperatures, while reds indicate above normal or not-so-good temperatures. The (commercial) trollers did very well on Chinook this spring, so I’m thinking this is the real deal. I think we’ll have lots of coho, and Chinook as well. But I think it’s going to be a great year. I really do.
NWS Planning anything different this year, Captain? New boat? New tactics? BS You know, other than some new electronics (sonar-equipped fish finders), the same tried-and-true ways that have always produced, will produce. Early in the season, get out there in 200 feet of water south of the
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NWS Hate to ask, Captain, but any Covid-related oddness this year?
BS Not like it has been, but we are aware of the situation. Now, we have a lot more hand sanitizer and wipes and bleach onboard. Sometimes [laughs] I feel like a food server where we’re wiping everything down when a person leaves and before a new person comes in. Masks are up to the clients. If they want to wear them, god bless America – we have no issues with that, obviously. Out of our office last year, we didn’t have a single Covid case attributed to a fishing trip, and we want to remain perfect on that. So we’ll maintain our protocols, but as far as the hardcore requirement for masks, it’s up to the individual.
NWS One word of advice, Captain, for folks booking with you and new to this fishery? BS I want you to dress warm. We have folks coming from inland, and it’s summer there, but on the coast it’s overcast and maybe 60 degrees with a northwest wind blowing. It’s really miserable when you’re used to warm weather and you come to fish in a place where it’s 30 degrees colder. So make sure you dress for late fall. Wear a hoodie. Bring a coat. Good rubber-soled shoes.
The Agency Rep I Kyle Adicks Homeport Olympia, Washington Title Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Intergovernmental Salmon Manager It’s a busy time of year not only for charter boat captains up and down the coast, but for fisheries professionals who monitor salmon stocks and assist in the establishment of the seasons. Enter Kyle Adicks. “On a day to day basis, I supervise Kyle Adicks our headquarters salmon fishery management staff. The 104 Northwest Sportsman
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Olympia staff is pretty focused on Puget Sound fisheries, but we have oversight over coastal, ocean and Columbia River fisheries. The ‘intergovernmental part’ (means) I do a lot of work with the Treaty Tribes, particularly on Puget Sound and the coast, on salmon fishery management.” He also sits on the Pacific Fisheries Management Council, where he represents the agency on matters pertaining to salmon management. He plays a role on one of the Southern Panel of the Pacific Salmon Commission, where he works with the Canadian government on crossboundary fisheries management issues. “It’s a big fancy title,” Adicks says, “but it’s a lot of salmon management-related things in a lot of different forums, both within the state and within the West Coast US and Canada.”
NWS In a recent WDFW press release, you were quoted as saying there is a “strong coho forecast for the Columbia River and coastal Washington” for 2022. Based on what? Kyle Adicks Each of our forecasts are different, but they’re based on our estimates of coho smolt outmigrants that would return this year. Coho typically return as 3-year-old adults, so the fish returning this year, their parents would have spawned in 2019. They would have hatched in 2020, and then overwintered for a year in freshwater. They would have gone out to sea in the spring of 2021. For many streams, we have estimates of how many smolts went out. We have some idea of what marine survival should be based on conditions out there, so the forecasts are based on that combination of smolts leaving the system and an assumption (as to) marine survival. Marine survival is the one thing that can be variable over time, but we’ve seen better signs out there.
NWS So as I’m hearing from others, are ocean conditions better now than, say, two years ago? KA Last year was one of the better years
in the 25 or so (that scientists have been compiling a chart pertaining to oceanic conditions and how they might affect returning fish populations). Author’s note: The complete NOAA chart can be viewed at fisheries.noaa.gov/ content/ocean-conditions-indicators-trends. It was definitely an improved year, especially compared to those in the mid-2010s, where we had horrible conditions out there and some horrible coho returns as a result.
NWS For me, 2015 was a banner coho year, despite terrible ocean conditions and a forecast low return. B-a-n-n-e-r! This year could be better? KA When you’ve been in this business for awhile [laughs], the years begin to blend together. In 2015, we saw good coho fishing, but around the Northwest the coho returns to freshwater were horrible. The adults that did return were smaller than normal. Truthfully, 2015 was somewhat of a low point for coho, if you look at the long-term abundance graphs. But fishing can be good for reasons we don’t understand, even when it’s not a great return (year). But we have a really big forecast for the Columbia. We have the first really good forecast for coastal Washington streams this year, so there’s no reason to think – unless we get another big surprise with marine survival – there won’t be a lot of coho coming down the coast into the Columbia. And no reason to think fishing for them won’t be really good.
The Agency Rep II Eric Schindler Homeport Newport, Oregon Title Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Ocean Sampling Project Lead Where Adicks’ office is an hour-plus commute from the ocean, in literally a hop, skip and a jump Eric Schindler can be past the Yaquina Bay Bridge and out through the jetties. From Newport, he manages angler sampling up and down the Oregon Eric Schindler
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FISHING Coast, and he’s been known to partake in the fishing himself, both for salmon and tuna.
NWS What are your general expectations for this season along the Oregon Coast? Eric Schindler I am expecting another very good year for coho salmon fishing this year along the Oregon Coast. We are looking at abundance forecasts for hatchery and wild coho that are very similar to the 2021 postseason totals, and last year was an awesome fishing year. Chinook salmon looks to be slightly improved for the ocean fishery over what we saw last year, but still not expecting a particularly good Chinook catch this year.
NWS Does the peak of coho season vary much north to south?
ES My general expectation is that the fishing gets good by about midJuly in most locations. The timing on when coho are most available at ports does vary a bit from north to south,
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with better hatchery coho numbers available to the south somewhat earlier in the season. That said, weather windows when people can get out and fish are usually the most important factor. Author’s note: Schindler pointed out that coho actually opened in late June off Oregon, and while angling “will likely be better in July, the fishing in late June should still be very good.”
NWS So many great fishing ports on the Oregon Coast, but which ones always seem to stand out for quantity and quality of coho? ES Best numbers of hatchery coho are usually going to be found out of ports from the Columbia River (Astoria, Warrenton, Hammond, and Ilwaco and Chinook, Washington) down to Winchester Bay, including Garibaldi, Pacific City, Depoe Bay, Newport and Florence. That said, some years the coho catches at the ports further south can be very good, especially
earlier in the season.
NWS Dory guys gonna get their share? ES No reason to think that they wouldn’t.
NWS Best tips for Oregon Coast coho? ES Fish early in the day for usually the best bite. Look for surface water temperatures between 52 and 56 degrees Fahrenheit, and focus on rip edges and where birds are observed feeding. Don’t fish too deep, as most of the time the coho are hanging out in the top 30 feet of the water column. If you aren’t getting bites and others around you are catching coho, try varying your trolling speed and directions. Usually, anglers need to go faster than they expect for coho. Use a single barbless hook. It will make releasing any unclipped coho much easier on you and the fish. NS Editor’s note: To be clear, barbless hooks are required for ocean salmon.
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COLUMN
Embracing The Fog O
ver the past few runs of life, my freshwaters have seen better days, causing FOR THE LOVE me to step away from OF THE TUG the banks I love. It By Sara Ichtertz hasn’t been easy for me; however, it has allowed me to look at the mighty Pacific with optimistic eyes. There is so much to learn and so much potential for family fishing fun out there. In the beginning of my saltwater adventures, I put 100 percent of my faith into a guide or two whom I trust, allowing me to simply be along for the ride. There are so many angles to finding fish over the bar that I had never put a ton of thought into. But now, having our own boat made me realize this. Instead of being scared, I
would rather be ready. I would say we have learned quite a bit and experienced some pretty incredible things on the ocean, but there was still one pretty major factor that kept us from heading out. Fog! Waking early in total excitement, I would peek outside to see that the harbor was, ugh, socked in by a thick pocket of fog. The fearful side of me would see that fog and pretty much throw in the towel before we even reached the slip. Of course we could crab within the bay, make memories and such, but the thrill in the takedown and the desire to get our tug on left us wishing the fog did not exist. That wish just wasn’t realistic, but fishing over the bar when the ocean conditions were good, the bar was good and the bite was rumored to be good left us only one option: Head out into the fog.
BEN (MY LOVE) knows his GPS well and together we decided it was time for us to step outside our comfort zone and see what we could do, even though we couldn’t see much of anything. Despite my initially fearful gut, I am so glad we decided to embrace the gray that fine yet foggy July morning, rather than miss out on our chance to fish a calm ocean. In life I have always considered myself to have a pretty good sense of direction. Fishing, exploring and foraging in the Umpqua National Forest, I believed in my own two feet and never found myself scared as to where I was. Fishing the ocean with great visibility allowed me to always be able to see land, giving me a guarantee as to which direction was east and which was west. Therefore I knew which was north and south as well. That in itself would
If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that heading out through the fog this July morning off the Oregon Coast ultimately paid off for Nate Ichtertz, who caught his first saltwater salmon. (SARA ICHTERTZ)
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Being able to see land while at sea gave author Sara Ichtertz the bearing she needed to feel comfortable, but fear of the fog had also stymied her growth as an angler until she and boyfriend Ben Potter decided to go for it – with the smart aid of GPS. She holds one of eight coho brought to the boat that day, most of which were wild and thus released. (SARA ICHTERTZ) put my fearful mind to rest, allowing me to focus on the water and rods in front of me. Embracing the new isn’t always easy for me, especially if I have to put my trust in someone else. This day allowed me to grow in so many ways, as I put all of my faith into Benjamin and his ability to read his global positioning system. I mean, I know it was good for me to grow, but it was really good for him as well. Using your GPS for fun is great, but using it because you need it, that is where he grew as a captain.
CROSSING THE BAR went ever so smoothly and in no time, even though the fog was a bit eerie, we had reached the fishing grounds. Our trolling motor was trolling right along, and I got our rods to fishing. At first I was still quite concerned with the fog and the possibility of other boats, leaving me a little edgy. Still, such is my love of the tug that it never ceases to amaze me what situations I am willing to put myself in 110 Northwest Sportsman
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simply to see if we can find a biter or two. This trip was perfect in the fact that it was just me and my guys: son Nate, who is so very eager when it comes to the boat and the ocean, and my captain, who would rather be on the ocean than anywhere else. I loved sharing how we run these rods with Nate. It’s important for him to know how we rig our barbless mooching riggings, how we rig the hoochies, how we cut the herring and how we get our flashers to flash. I also explained to him the depth we want to fish, and how our weight, the amount of line we let out and our speed will create this salmonslaying zone that we are looking for. In talking about the ways of ocean trolling and getting the rods ginning right along, I was no longer scared; I was excited. Ben’s confidence allowed me to focus less on the fog and more on the hunting of the fish, and honestly in the combination of the two, there it was – our first sign of life!
THE SPASTIC, SOMEWHAT erratic pecking at the rod was indeed a fish, and in watching the demeanor of the bite, I knew we had ourselves a coho before the fish even fully committed. I don’t care what anybody says, coho are action-packed fun. I love how explosive they are fighting on the top of the water. Their death rolls and acrobatics are somewhat steelhead-like, and I find them as entertaining as they are beautiful. Landing our first fish had us feeling good. As she was a wild coho, I kept her in the ocean and did a clean release, which was something I was nervous to embrace but deep down knew I could handle. Those salty salmon very much swim in schools – shocking, I know! Ben got us back on course, we put the rods back out and we were still in them. After that first biter, we managed to find nine salmon within a short amount of time. All of them were coho, despite us running a rod I had hoped would call a Chinook to it. We did have two doubles, which were actionpacked fun. Out of the eight salmon we actually landed, two were hatchery fish, so dinner was indeed provided. Marking where the fish bit on the GPS allowed us – fog and all – to run our gear through the spot once more as we tried to stay with the school. I for certain wouldn’t have been able to do any of that, as I am electronically lame. With no sign of the shore, our location was all in the hands of our captain and his ability to read the charts in front of him. Without his understanding, that day would have never happened. I was so impressed, so proud, and so thankful we had faced the fog. HAD WE CONTINUED to let the fog in the bay at sunrise stop us from getting out there, we would have missed out on this magical day. We would have missed out on the season, in all reality. You will never master a fishery if you don’t give it your all. Growth is something we should continue to embrace throughout life; sometimes it takes more than just you to grow in the ways that are intended for you. Had we not gone out that foggy morning, Ben wouldn’t have gained that feeling of total confidence in his gear and
COLUMN The crew basks in sunlight and success. “(It’s) the adventure I crave,” Ichtertz writes. “It’s the thrill of the unknown. It’s the time on the water. It’s the time with my family.” (SARA ICHTERTZ)
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his ability to read it. Nate came away with a better understanding of our approach to salmon fishing in the ocean. He landed his first salty salmon; I love that it was with his family, in our boat. And all three of us walked away with the feeling of success in our own ways and because of that, no matter the outcome, we are better for it. The funny thing is that once the bite turned off, we looked around and you know what? The fog had pretty much lifted, we had had an excellent adventure and the way home was clear and bright. It’s true my heart will always be on the river, but I have too much respect for her to fish her when she is down. At the same time, my love for the tug outweighs my stubborn desire to always be on the river, and so I realize it’s the adventure I crave. It’s the thrill of the unknown. It’s the time on the water. It’s the time with my family. This growth I am finding in other fisheries helps in the ways that I know are intended for me, and for that I am grateful. My heart is on the river and I couldn’t change it, even if I tried. NS
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Bounties Of Red And White Out On The Blue Summer’s made for full coolers of salmon and rockfish on the Pacific out of Westport. By Jeff Holmes
A
fter several years of salmon slumber due to mostly unprecedentedly bad ocean conditions coupled with blah outmigration, salmon fishing in Westport is back on the upswing. Once hyperbolically branded the Salmon Capital of the World, Westport is rounding back into form with excellent Chinook and coho fishing predicted this summer. The same oceanic and atmospheric conditions inspiring a Pacific Northwest salmon revival – a cold, enlivened ocean and storm after storm after storm – have led to fantastic summertime bottomfishing conditions out of Westport as well. The rockfish and lingcod grounds received very little pressure this spring due to the scarcity of days that boats could safely get out of port and over the bar. On those days when charter and private boats could make the trip, fishing was lights out. This lack of pressure on bottomfish and early salmon results up the coast in Alaska and on Vancouver Island point toward an awesome July in Westport, Washington’s most accessible ocean port, which is just a couple hours from Seattle and an easy drive from anywhere in the state. Families and solo anglers alike looking for bounties of red and white fish flesh can find what they’re looking for this summer
Afternoons at the dock are likely to look a lot like this again this summer, as anglers, both chartered and aboard private boats, ambush Columbia River Chinook migrating through the deep waters off of Westport. (ANGLERS EDGE SPORTFISHING) nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2022
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This month will yield bags of rockfish and lingcod fillets, salmon fillets, albacore loins and Dungeness crab for anglers jumping aboard charter boats in the Westport Boat Basin. (ANGLERS EDGE SPORTFISHING)
in Westport, home to a very large and very excellent charter fleet with lucrative options in terms of crafts and fishing options. Whether it’s the classic big-boat experience – such as that offered by Deep Sea Charters, Ocean Sportfishing, Tornado Westport, Captain and Crew Charters, and more – or the sporty six-pack experience, popularized by All Rivers and Saltwater Charters and others, July is primetime for salmon, rockfish, and lingcod, and is also the beginning of albacore tuna fishing.
A NEW KID on the block in the charter game is Anglers Edge Sportfishing, but its salty crew has long dedicated itself to the ocean. Owned by Bill Cheser and operated by Captain Mitch Coleman, Anglers Edge has put a hurting on the Chinook over the past few years, even in lean salmon times. They are very much looking forward to improved 116 Northwest Sportsman
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forecasts and improved ocean and environmental conditions that seem to signal not just a current but a future uptick in Chinook fishing. The outlook for July 2022 is strong, and they offer a unique combo trip that results in big chrome Chinook slabs and limits of the tastiest retainable rockfish off our coast: yellowtail. “In July, before we go hot and heavy chasing albacore, we offer our ‘red and white’ combo trips for Chinook and yellowtail or black rockfish,” says Cheser. “These are long trips that typically leave the dock around 5:30 a.m. and return around 3:30 p.m. What we target first depends on where we will be salmon fishing that day, but we will at times start out with getting our rockfish limits and then will spend the remainder of the day hunting Chinook. If we are fishing salmon south of the bar, we will target yellowtail rockfish that
are very abundant in a few areas and are usually quick pickings so that we can really focus in on salmon for the remainder of the day. Finding those yellowtails, which can occur throughout the water column, can be tough, but we have finding them dialed in thanks to our Raymarine Axiom Pro electronics system. Mitch is excellent at finding yellowtails and making short work of them.” In recent years, 75 percent of the total Westport rockfish catch is comprised of black rockfish, which are amazing table fare as well, but yellowtails are even more special to eat, with sweet, firm, snow-white flesh that lends itself to whole-roasted Asian approaches, as well as standard fish and chips. “There’s plenty of coho around, but in the early season they are not as numerous and still have some growing to do. Meanwhile
FISHING we have really big Chinook in the area in July, so we really spend time targeting quality kings in July, and Mitch does an excellent job of putting people on Chinook.” Coleman fishes deep, out where the migratory kings headed toward the Columbia River stream past Westport. The result is a larger-thanaverage class of Chinook hitting the
deck. With the emphasis on kings, most of Anglers Edge’s red and white trips focus on kings and yellowtails. But as they get later in the summer and the coho get bigger, if they’re not fishing for tuna, Cheser reports, “There is little better than stacking rockfish like cordwood and then transitioning into the coho rodeo on a hot mooching bite.”
Fishing this July for lingcod should be excellent, with little pressure applied to these toothy ambush predators this spring due to unusually stormy conditions. To many palates, this is the tastiest fish that swims off our shores and definitely a candidate for the best fish and chip fillets. (ANGLERS EDGE SPORTFISHING) 118 Northwest Sportsman
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A LONGTIME FORMER deckhand and a commercial fisherman, Coleman, and his deckhand Kyle Hoxie, operate a lean, mean fishing machine whether it’s for albacore or black rockfish. They have their lingcod and rockfish combo trips totally dialed in and will run them until the end of July. “Our typical bottomfish program consists of getting live bait (sand dabs, aka flounder) and hunting lingcod, followed by hitting the inshore rocks for black rockfish, which typically are easy biters,” says Coleman. “However, during the spring time we battle large amounts of crab spawn and shrimp species, as well as fin bait like herring, that can complicate how easily it can be to get these schooling fish to commit. In summer, however, they bite like crazy.” “Although the shrimp fly is an old standby and an effective profile, my new favored way of targeting both rockfish and lings at once is a 6-inch Big Hammer swimbait fished below a dropper loop and shrimp fly or soft plastic, all on light tackle spinning gear,” says Coleman. “By fishing a medium-sized swimbait in the rocks while hovering a very-low-profile lure a few feet above it, it narrows my search for biting rockfish, which tend to be the harder of the two to acquire. These rockfish will either snap at the swimbait if they’re feeling extra aggressive or will nip the smaller lure above.” “If we don’t get a good response on the bass, I can assure qualitygrade lings will attack that swimbait. The inshore and offshore ling fishing has been red-hot since the opening in March, with an outstanding amount of incidental lingcod taking shrimp flies while we pick away at our rockfish limit. This spring was a rough and spotty season with ocean conditions being rather nasty. I believe that has presented a lot less pressure on our fish,” says Coleman.
“STARTING JUNE 25 in Area 1 and July 2 in Area 2 we will start hunting
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FISHING Chinook, and as the months progress, bigger coho will start to show and will be a great add to the mix,” says Cheser. “We typically run two Scotty high-speed electric downriggers, which allow us to target the fish wherever they are in the water
column. We fish off the downriggers with 10-foot-6 custom-built rods built by Prolite Rod Technology, along with two 9-foot-6 Prolite customs off the stern on Delta divers.” “One of our go-to setups is a Gold Star Ace High Fly. We also run a
variety of different spoons from Gold Star/Silver Horde in a multitude of their awesome color variations, and then sprinkle in running a whole herring behind a triangle/rotator flasher. When the coho get thick and on the chew, it’s the perfect time to
FAMILY DREAM COMING TRUE
I
n December 2019 Bill Cheser saw retirement on the horizon after 38 years of Federal Civil Service at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, including his current role as Nuclear Operations Manager at the giant facility. He and wife Saddie started looking to upgrade from the boat they had been fishing the salt out of for 20 years, and along with son Conner and his wife, the family considered running a charter outfit out of Westport. Conner and Bill had talked about taking out clients almost since the time Conner could hold a rod, so that winter when they found a Defiance Guadalupe 290 on Craigslist, the gears started turning. “We knew from the jump that we wanted Anglers Edge to be a family operation,” said Bill Cheser. “With
retirement still being a couple years out and my son being in the middle of his career at PSNS, our initial intention was not to run full time, but only on weekends and when our work schedule allowed.” That changed when Bill and family met Mark Coleman, the owner and operator of All Rivers & Saltwater Charters, and when Bill expressed his family’s intent to buy a charter license. “When Mark sold us the boat, he encouraged us to run it as much as possible and mentioned that he may have someone who would be interested in running the boat when we couldn’t,” said Cheser. “This is how we met Mitch Coleman. When we asked him how much he was willing to run the boat, his answer was simple: ‘As much as you can book it.’ Being the new kids
This grade of Columbia River-bound Chinook, held by deckhand Kyle Hoxie, should hit the decks again this year beginning in July off of Westport. Captain Mitch Coleman is an expert at intercepting these bruisers and ranks targeting big chinook right up there with the thrill he gets from albacore tuna fishing. (ANGLERS EDGE SPORTFISHING) 120 Northwest Sportsman
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Bill Cheser and grandson William “Hammy” Cheser hoist plus-size black rockfish aboard their Defiance Guadalupe, F/V Bone. For Bill and his family, operating Anglers Edge Sportfishing is a lifelong dream come true. (ANGLERS EDGE SPORTFISHING) on the block and an unknown entity in a busy port full of awesome charter boats, there was some skepticism as to how much business we would get starting out. But as the season approached, Mark and Merry Coleman began calling with more and more overflow bookings from ARSC, and Mitch started putting big catches on the deck right out of the gate. We got very busy, very fast.” “But before we even hit that water, as we planned and prepped for that first season, it became immediately apparent we had an absolute stud in Mitch. His entire approach to everything from day one has been all-out 100-percent flat-out effort and passion. Fishing is not a job for him. It is not just a passion either. He puts his whole entire being into his craft and that is what sets him apart in this industry. We are very proud to have him skippering our boat, and we are thankful to the entire Coleman family for what they’ve done to help the Cheser family realize our dream.” –JH
YOUR MUST-STOP BEFORE HUNTING & FISHING ON PRINCE OF WALES ISLAND, ALASKA KNOWLEDGEABLE STAFF WILL LET YOU KNOW WHERE, WHEN AND HOW!
FISHING
Yellowtail rockfish should not be confused with the pelagic yellowtail, which are incidentally caught on Westport tuna trips later in the year, but both are two of the tastiest fish in the Pacific. Yellowtail rockfish are almost certainly the tastiest retainable rockfish available off of Westport and are a common target on Anglers Edge Sportfishing’s red and white combo salmon and bottomfish trips. Fishing for yellowtail rockfish is often fast and furious. (ANGLERS EDGE SPORTFISHING)
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break out the mooching gear for some fun nonstop action.” “But it’s the Columbia River Chinook that are the backbone of our ocean king fishery, and this year’s forecast is calling for numbers to be similar to last year’s run, which made for some really good days targeting kings,” says Cheser. “The big news is the coho forecast for the coast and Columbia, where those runs are expected to double the 10-year average. The daily limit this year is two salmon. Coho must be marked (hatchery) and no more than one Chinook (marked or unmarked).” “Chinook in the 20-pound range are common,” he adds, “with fish in the 30-pound range being less common but not unheard of. Early coho are typically around 6 pounds and that average goes up as season goes on. August coho are commonly over 10 pounds, and these fish have a reputation for a quality fight and putting on an air show by the boat.” NS
COLUMN
A Tale Of Revenge “However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends! hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt.” –Herman Melville, Moby Dick
T
he whole situation in front of me would have been a lot more awesome had I not been so CHEF IN seasick. I was hardly THE WILD able to stand, could not By Randy King conceive of the idea of food being “good” for me and fishing was out of the question. But there I was, four hours out from Newport and looking at blue whales breaching the surface. The trip had started off well enough. We had planned an 18-hour tuna fishing expedition with a local charter and had been looking forward to the adventure for nearly six months. My father, my buddy Ryan and I had talked this up for a long while. The recipes floated back and forth
as we planned what we’d make with our tuna haul. Ceviche was a universal, grilled on the barbecue, sushi – all the things food-related were talked about. It was the type of text message stream that happens when you have two former chefs chatting. It devolves into food fanaticism. We had rented a house for our respective families to share and arrived at the charter’s prescribed 2 a.m. departure time. Below deck was sleeping quarters and coffee was in the pot. I could hear idle conversations on the radio about how choppy the sea was that day. I could sense the deckhand’s nerves getting a little spooked – not worried, but just on edge. He also smelled of the bottle, and I thought everything was just fine.
AS WE STARTED motoring out of the harbor the captain came onto the ship’s intercom. In typical seafarer bluntness he stated, “I ain’t going to lie; it’s rough out there. Much rougher and we would not go out. But the weather report says we have a good shot at this. But if we have to turn around, we have to turn around. This tuna ain’t worth your life.” I was on a swaggering seafarer adventure. Rough seas be damned! Time began to pass; it was six hours to the tuna. One hour, then another, until about three hours had gone by. To the tuna! Then the first big wave hit the boat and I felt my stomach drop to the floor. It was an odd sensation. At this point in my life, I had never been seasick before. It was an illness I had seen, but never experienced. So when my flesh started to feel cold and the feeling of “I just rode too many roller coasters” started forming in my stomach, I became a little nervous. People around me were losing whatever breakfast that they had eaten. My joyride to the tuna was turning into a torture. Then the wave The Pacific seethes off of Newport. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
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COLUMN
CHOWDER HELPER
C
howder has a long history across the world. In the US, we have several regionalized styles – the most famous being New England clam chowder. And it is that style that is served in every diner and greasy spoon on the Northwest Coast. I love this style. Naturally, when given the opportunity, I eat at Mo’s, the iconic seafood and chowder restaurant on the Oregon Coast.
It’s a tradition at this point. Dungeness crab has a long West Coast history of just making things better. From helping halibut not be bland to the ubiquitous crab cake at restaurants, Dungies have been making food better for time immemorial. They were a standard part of Native American diets and became a recorded/regulated commercial fishery back in 1836.
They have a natural cycle of ups and downs, but when managed, they are a great sustainable seafood option.
CRAB CHOWDER 1 tablespoon butter 4 bacon strips, raw, sliced into thin strips 1 medium onion, diced 2 medium russet potatoes (about 3/8-inch cubes) 1 celery rib, diced 1 carrot, diced 4 cloves of garlic, minced 1 can corn, drained 1/3 cup all-purpose flour 3 1/2 cups milk (or more) 1 cup heavy whipping cream 1 tablespoon “Creole” seasoning 6 ounces Dungeness crabmeat, picked and cooked (feel free to add other seafood too – clams, salmon, rockfish, etc.) Salt and pepper
OPTIONAL Sourdough bread “cannonballs”
Dungeness crab chowder with bacon, carrots and corn. (RANDY KING) 126 Northwest Sportsman
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In an 8-quart stock pot, add the butter and bacon. Cook on medium until bacon is crispy and rendered. Next add the onion and “sweat” them – cooking until translucent, about 3 minutes. Then add the potatoes, celery, carrot, garlic and corn. Cook mixture until hot. Next slowly add the flour into the pot, stirring the vegetable mix often. When the flour is coating the veggies and incorporated, add the cold milk, cream and creole seasoning. Bring to a simmer and adjust with salt and pepper. Check the thickness at this point. The soup should be a mild corn chowder at this point. Not bad, but a little lacking. If you are adding other meats, like salmon or such, this is when you would add them as small, diced hunks of fish. Let simmer until just cooked, about another 4 minutes. Add the crab meat at the last moment before serving. This will make sure the crab flavor stays as fresh and bright as possible. Stir the crab meat in. Simmer for a minute and then serve. For more wild game recipes, see chefrandyking.com. -DJ
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COLUMN of nausea came. I bolted for the head, and out came my stomach contents. Over the PA I heard the captain announce that whales only 100 yards off the starboard side of the boat were breaching. They looked like a National Geographic commercial: Giant bodies erupted from the water right in front of us. I was awestruck; this desert rat had never seen anything like this before. But then I vomited again and firmly locked the memory of the only time I’d seen a whale breach with that of chocolate Pop Tart and coffee being returned to sender. “Sorry, folks,” came the captain over the speakers. “We have to turn around. The whole tuna fleet is coming back in, it is just too rough, and by the look of you all, I don’t think we are in fishing shape anyway…”
I WASN’T UPSET by this news. But I knew
A male Dungeness from Yaquina Bay awaits a date with boiling water. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
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we were close to the tuna grounds, so to suffer this indignity was heartbreaking. By the time we returned to port I had spent six hours on the water and not even wet a line. With shaky legs, we all left the boat. All guests were told that an afternoon rockfish/crab combo was still an option if we wanted. Otherwise, refunds would be issued. We had about an hour to decide. Back on dry land, I downed a bottle of water, took some Dramamine and slapped myself a few times, trying to “walk off” the seasickness. It worked! Soon I was right as rain, starving – and seeking revenge. The smell of lunchtime chowders and sourdough wafted from Newport’s bayfront restaurants. One – I can’t remember which – was selling “crab chowder” made with local Dungeness meat. I was in. The chowder was New England-style in many ways. It had a thick, white and creamy base with bacon, onion, celery and carrots for vegetables. But this one boasted corn too, and I thought that was a good sweetness contrast. The crab was an “add on” to the chowder and came as a lump pile in the middle of a bread bowl full of chowder. It was perfect for the hangover feeling I was having. If I could not get tuna this day, it was going to have to be crabs … and rockfish. I watched as the deckhand baited the crab pot with yesterday’s tuna and dreamed of reeling in an albacore. Instead, I caught a limit of crabs. Not bad, not bad. NS
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FISHING
The Albacore Skipper Mark Coleman might be the beating heart of Washington’s tuna fishery these days. Here’s how a river guy built up a four-boat six-pack tuna fleet and even runs a commercial boat. By Jeff Holmes
W
hen it comes to salmon runs, fisheries managers start offering predictions based on complicated models many months before a single salmon swims into freshwater and also long before most of the salmon comprising our runs swim in the saltwater off our coasts. Biologists are also able to offer predictions in advance of rockfish, lingcod and halibut seasons based on groundfish assessments. But when it comes to the speediest, strongest, most numerous, and arguably tastiest of Northwest saltwater gamefish, no one has a clue what albacore tuna fisheries will look like until intrepid anglers begin prospecting for these 50-mile-per-hour meat bullets in June. All Rivers and Saltwater Charters’ Mark Coleman (allriversguideservice.com) is one such intrepid angler and is often the first to return to the Westport harbor with dead albacore each June or July. He’s all in on tuna and accepts that his business comes with no prognostications from fisheries managers. “That’s one thing about our albacore fishery is that there are no season predictions,” says Coleman. “The only thing you can do to get an idea for it is watch satellite images
Pacific Northwest albacore average 15 to 20 pounds, with some specimens a little smaller and some much larger, topping 40 pounds at times. Captain Mark Coleman (right) is among the charter skippers who target these fish in summer, when they come closest to the coast and the weather is more cooperative. (ALLRIVERSGUIDESERVICE.COM)
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FISHING
Fisheries managers can offer no predictions on upcoming albacore seasons. Skippers have to gamble, but there’s a good chance Coleman in his 42-foot Defiance, the F/V Integrity, will bring the first tuna back to Westport again this year. Their arrival varies, but the skipper says on average the fish are off of our coast by the Fourth of July most years. (ALLRIVERSGUIDESERVICE.COM) Tuna fishing requires teamwork, communication and being willing to bark out and take directions such as “Coming left coming left!” and “Going over you going over you!” to avoid epic tangles and breaking off fish. Coleman’s captains and deckhands are masterful at undoing tangles and the author has seen six tangled lines one time result in six landed tuna. Tuna fishing is a workout, But the ARSC team is excellent at orchestrating the whole affair and training people into being effective tuna fishermen. (ALLRIVERSGUIDESERVICE.COM)
of the sea-surface temps from about April on and wait for the right water temp and chlorophyll content to reach and connect to our coast. Once you have those conditions, there’s still no guarantee the fish will be there yet, so scouting trips are required. They’re not cheap, so make sure you know your water conditions before you go. In the last 10-plus years I’ve located them on our first scouting trip about 60 percent of the time. The earliest date I’ve caught tuna is June 16 (2016), and the latest, an outlier, was July 19 (2019). I always say that, on average, we have albacore swimming off our coast by the 4th of July.”
ALBACORE TUNA HAVE
called the Washington Coast home for an undetermined amount of time, but commercial fishermen have targeted them since at least 1937. While they
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are a fixture in fisheries and on the plates of many anglers and their lucky friends, they are part-time residents that look and behave like aliens among the gentle, relatively slow fish that call our waters home. They slash into our waters every summer and leave when seas cool and fall storms disrupt their all-youcan-eat buffet. They are tougher and faster than any of our resident fish – cruising and eating at greater than 20 mph and sprinting to 50 mph. Every year, albacore swim across the entire Pacific Ocean, with many reaching the coasts of Asia. Despite their short summer vacation in our waters near the blue water off the continental shelf, they are near religion to a wide swath of Pacific Northwest anglers. It’s a well-known fact that landing a first tuna often marks a change in thinking about what is possible when it comes
to the strength and beauty of a fish. For Coleman, tuna have become a healthy and lucrative addiction, but growing up he was a salmon and steelhead angler and a diver with no special interest in albacore except for the exciting stories shared by mentor anglers. “Tuna were always just tuna to me growing up in the Pacific Northwest,” says Coleman. “You saw it just about everywhere you looked on trips to the coast, featured on charter office billboards and on the shelves at stores. Much of my neighborhood either fished for it or bought it every year, and funny-looking meat-filled glass jars were in many homes where I grew up. In our family we never possessed the appropriate vessel to target such far-ranging species as albacore, but we always had the stories of family and friends making the runs to the tuna grounds and experiencing a
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FISHING One of Coleman’s captains,Nick Clayton, a fly fishing specialist and an all-around fish slayer, holds an albacore landed on a dedicated fly fishing trip. Later this summer Northwest Sportsman will feature albacore on the fly with Captain Clayton. (ALLRIVERSGUIDESERVICE.COM)
frenzy of action, or perhaps simply being attacked by tuna while salmon fishing. Some even fished for one species in the morning and when they had their fill, they fished for the other in the afternoon.” “It was stories like these that lit a slow-burning fire in my mind, one that was difficult to bring to flame at the time, but one that would remain, for me, as the highest of fishing potential in the Pacific Northwest. So life went on and I continued to pursue my passion for diving and became certified at age 13. Fishing was there too, and with a rod in one hand, speargun in the other, I was a happy teenager. Between fishing lakes, rivers, inshore saltwater and diving, I was pretty content through my teens and into my early 20s, all the while compiling years of offshore tuna fishing stories from others that kept my interest burning.” 134 Northwest Sportsman
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“MY FIRST TUNA experience was in San Diego, California, on an overnight trip,” says Coleman. “I was with friends and my soon-to-be wife, Merry, which was her first tuna trip too. We caught albacore and bluefin tuna to the extent of 50 to 60 fish for the trip. Raw tuna hearts were eaten by many. From that moment on, I knew tuna fishing would be in my future, and local trips out of Westport as well as tuna trips south of the border ensued.” Eating still-beating hearts from these warm-blooded fish has caused many an offshore puke session, but even for those of us who lose our lunches, more tuna must still be had, and such was the case for Coleman. Already a busy salmon and steelhead guide in Washington and in Bristol Bay, Coleman began plotting and working hard to achieve his dream of captaining a charter boat for tuna, which is difficult to do.
“That trip set the hook for me without question,” says Coleman. “I started to focus my brain on how to go from rowing a drift boat and running a jet sled on inland waters to clutching a pair of controls and running as far west from America as I could every day. That trip in San Diego marked the next step for me and for my business. I had built a strong clientele who wanted more, I wanted more, and I wanted tuna.” “I came to find out, however, that it’s not all that easy to do in Washington state, albeit for good reason. Not only do you need a large, safe, expensive boat, but you also need a rather expensive permit to charter for albacore. It’s called a Washington Salmon Charter Permit. Some might think, wait, salmon permit? But yes. Many years ago the powers that be were part of a 31-nation treaty who were asked to take a step toward protecting the future of salmon and lobbied to have albacore added to the treaty. By the mid-2000s I was really starting to figure out why a special permit was required. I realized it was a smart move since limited entry has really kept the quality of the charters at a high level, instead of a free-for-all open-entry fishery.” “I was faced with a major decision, and an expensive one too. I hemmed and hawed, did the math, talked to my clientele, hemmed and hawed a little more, and pulled the trigger on a permit and on my first Defiance Guadalupe 290. The rest is history, and here we are almost 15 years and many thousands of dead tuna later.”
COLEMAN OWNS AND operates four Defiance tuna boats out of Westport, as well as a tuna fishing operation in Costa Rica. His expanding tuna fleet is the product of hard work, great equipment, and a fish that defies description in terms of its power, life history and table quality. “Going from one boat to four and acquiring permits was a challenge and it took an insane amount of hard work, timing and a little luck,”
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FISHING Tuna fishing is a bloody affair, far bloodier than big game hunting or any type of Northwest fishing. These warmblooded meat rockets pump a lot of blood onto decks once they are bled and brain spiked. (ALLRIVERSGUIDESERVICE.COM)
says Coleman. “And it didn’t happen overnight. We bought one boat at a time over seven seasons in Westport, being opportunistic along the way. Having the right equipment also played into everything. I’m talking about the right boat, Defiance Boats, and the right electronics, Raymarine. Without question, I know through and through those choices were a big part of my success.” “Another huge part of that success is due to the fish themselves. I love how perfect tuna are in terms of their body, speed and function, and they’re mean as hell, so pretty much any prey dies if they get close to it. I also like the fact that they roam the vast part of an entire ocean, sometimes traveling from one side to the other once or twice a year.” Many of Coleman’s clients, 136 Northwest Sportsman
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including the author, feel the same way about albacore as a target species. But for those who can’t book a trip or don’t want to be sore and splattered in blood, you can still get ultrafresh tuna loins. Coleman’s team now sells fresh, ice-cold albacore in the Westport Boat Basin at great prices. Several years ago he bought a commercial tuna boat, tricked it out, named it after his mom, and started fishing. “I expanded into the commercial albacore market back in 2018 to diversify some from strictly charters,” says Coleman. “Before that, I would run our charter boats commercially on and off throughout the season to probe the potential market, fill gaps in the charter schedule, and have some fun. Now we sell our fish to the world market and from the docks in Westport … We now also have our
own canned tuna product. Taking people fishing is my passion, but I really enjoy selling our fish direct to retail customers, too.”
IF YOU HAVEN’T had albacore, you’re missing out. It’s as versatile and meaty a fish as we have access to in the Northwest and, even for many nonsushi eaters, it’s just as good raw or nearly raw as it is canned. That said, if you ever have a tuna sandwich or any standard canned tuna recipe using freshly canned albacore, it’s tough to go back to store-bought tuna. “I really like to make poke and ceviche with it, as well as sear it on the grill,” says Coleman. “We pressure-can a lot of it each year too. We have 10 or so recipes on our website with a variety of our favorite ways to prepare albacore. Check it out!” However you decide to procure your tuna is your business. But without a doubt the best times I’ve had on the ocean in pursuit of albacore have been on Coleman’s boats. He runs a sporty, friendly, teamwork-focused program that has always left me sore from fighting fish and loaded down heavy with albacore for the drive home. I’ve also stood next to a guy who landed a bluefin 2 pounds short of the state record, and I’ve seen yellowtail caught and gotten to take some home. An offshore trip with Coleman – or any of the reputable Westport tuna charters – is a great choice and something to keep in mind this July, August and September. The season even stretches into October some years. If you consider yourself a true hardcore Northwest angler and have not pursued tuna, this summer is a great time to lose your tuna virginity, which can or doesn’t have to include eating a still-heating heart. Whether or not you puke, you will never forget the taste of warm, salty tuna heart, nor the thrill of bringing one to gaff as it rips off line and fights in powerful circles in the brilliantly clear blue waters where they live off our coasts. NS
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think we can all agree that it’s been a crazy couple of years. By the looks of it, everyone is eager to get back to doing the things they love. Hunters, if you’re looking to book that next big trip, an unmatched assortment of non-resident opportunities, along with a host of friendly and professional outfitters and guides, await you in Alberta. Unique in its geography and biodiversity, our midwest province is home to 10 different big game species and tremendous bird hunting as well. Whether you’re a bow or gun hunter looking for an antlered harvest, a predator hunter, or just looking to fill your freezer, consider making Alberta your next destination. Accessible and affordable, if you live in the Pacific Northwest, Alberta is only a short trip north across the border. With three international airports, visiting hunters commonly fly into Edmonton (YEG), Calgary (YYC), or
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Interested in Alberta, but not sure where to start? The Alberta Professional Outfitters Society (APOS) has two tools available on our website at apos.ab.ca. Using our interactive map under Find an Outfitter, you can narrow down your search by specifying your needs and preferences. Alternatively, you can submit a hunt inquiry through FollowTheLead, which will automatically circulate your customized inquiry to members who offer that species.
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HUNT
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ALBERTA
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COLUMN
Hunters heading to and from Northcentral Washington – this shot was taken near Wenatchee – and elsewhere in the Northwest will likely see high gas prices this fall, not to mention continued inflation hitting gear, food and other purchases. The pandemic, product and fuel shortages, war and continued consumer spending in the face of it all are eyed as causes. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
Start Saving Now for Hunting Season Gas, Gear, Groceries R
ising prices for fuel, food and equipment are likely to hammer hunters this fall, and right now is when we ON TARGET all need to be tucking By Dave Workman away $20 here and $50 there in order to make the most of what promises to be a rough ride in October and November, and I’m not talking about four-wheeling up some crummy road.
I’ve even been putting aside loose change for several weeks. As I write this, I just spent more than $75 to fill up my pickup, and the tank wasn’t even half empty! Eighteen months ago, I’d have plenty of cash left over from that $75. Next time I see Joe Biden, I’m going to tell him he not only vastly overstates the power of a 9mm bullet, but he also needs to open up drilling and domestic oil exploration. Instead of buying a six-pack or a
designer morning coffee, pay yourself by putting that money in your gun safe. Let it accumulate. It may not produce a fortune, but by September’s grouse openers across the Northwest and certainly by October’s general rifle buck season, you should have enough in the poke to ease your pain at the pump. And hunt with a friend to split the costs! Here are a couple of other tips: Instead of buying bags of ice, make your own at home with ice trays, stick the ice in zip-lock
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COLUMN plastic bags and put them in the freezer. Hit a garage sale between now and Labor Day and buy some used plates and cups that can be washed and reused instead of buying paper plates and other things we take for granted in camp. Costs for these disposable things add up, and eliminating them leaves cash in your pocket. If you find an extra cooler that is still serviceable at a garage sale, take it home, wash it out with hot soapy water and save yourself the cost of a new one. Ditto a good cast iron skillet, used camp stove and any other equipment you may need to replace. We’re living in a strange new world for lots of people, and it’s time to be resourceful if you intend to hunt hard and fill the freezer this fall. Oh, and don’t forget to confirm you are registered to vote at your current address, and come November, do not
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Colt King Cobra Target 22 LR. (COLT)
skip voting. This fall’s midterm election is an opportunity to change directions in this country and in the Northwest. That is, unless you enjoy $6 gas, expensive groceries and runaway inflation. Whatever else hunters are, we are consumers. As Pericles once observed, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you. In Washington, modern firearms seasons begin in mid-September with the High Buck Hunt, and this year’s general rifle opener for blacktails, mule deer and whitetails is October 15. In Oregon, October 1 marks the start of any legal weapon seasons for Westside blacktail and many Eastern Oregon
controlled hunts. In Idaho, it’s October 10. Regulations pamphlets are available online and in print, and it’s a good idea to get two copies of the latter; one to study and one to keep in your rig. (Right, I’m always losing the regs pamphlet just when I need to check something.)
COLUMN
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NEW GUNS AND GEAR If you have enough pennies leftover after saving up for hunting season, you just might be interested in some new
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handguns, shotshells and a GPS on the market. To wit: If you have not yet heard, Colt has introduced a .22-caliber double-action
revolver on the King Cobra frame, calling it the King Cobra Target 22 LR, and it is a beauty. This USA-made revolver holds 10 rounds, comes with either a 4.25- or 6-inch one-piece vent rib barrel and shroud, and an American-forged stainless steel frame. The bore features 1-in-16-inch rifling on a right-hand twist. It has an adjustable rear sight and changeable fiber optic front sight, and Colt fits this wheelgun with Hogue overmolded rubber grips. The MSRP is $999. I haven’t yet gotten my greasy paws on one for evaluation, but Colt’s return to the revolver market a few years ago has given me the opportunity to shoot the Cobra and King Cobra models in .38 Special and .357 Magnum, and they were exceptionally well-built and reliable. See colt.com The folks at Sig Sauer also recently unveiled a new handgun, the P320XTen, a striker-fired 10mm powerhouse built on the new XSeries grip module, which features an extended
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beavertail, deep trigger undercut and “aggressive” stippling for a firm hold – no small consideration in the wet Pacific Northwest. Sig designed this pistol with a 5-inch bull barrel, flat XSeries trigger, a stainless steel optics-ready slide with a Nitron finish and cocking serrations fore and aft. The pistol comes with two 15-round magazines (except they’ll probably be 10-rounders, thanks to the Washington Legislature’s magazine capacity limit adopted earlier this year). The P320-XTen has an overall length of 8.5 inches, a 6.8-inch sight radius, maximum width of 1.3 inches and weight (empty) of 33 ounces. This pistol is now available at gun shops. See sigsauer.com. If you own a .22 Magnum handgun or rifle, Federal recently announced a new .22 WMR load they’re calling the “Punch 22” personal defense load. Its official unveiling was at the National Rifle Association meetings and exhibits in Houston in May. I did a little homework and quickly
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determined this stuff will make superb game loads. According to Federal, the .22 WMR Punch clocks up to 1,000 feet per second of muzzle velocity out of a 2-inch barrel, and can hit 1,800 fps muzzle velocity when fired from a rifle. So if you’re shooting, say, a Ruger Single Six with a 6½-inch barrel, this sizzler could scream out of the muzzle somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,200 fps. There is not a grouse, rabbit, raccoon, coyote or bobcat that can walk away from being hit with the 45-grain nickel-plated leadcore hollowpoint bullet that tops this round. Federal loads the .22 WMR Punch in a nickel-plated case, so you don’t have to worry about leaving it in a cartridge belt for several weeks this fall. Unlike brass cases, the nickel plating will keep these cartridges from being covered with green gunk. See federalpremium.com. Also from Federal is the new line of Federal Premium HeviBismuth shotshells. Bismuth is very close ballistically to lead shot (I’ve used it on grouse and pheasants and it slammed them), and it is available in three 20-gauge and six 12-gauge loads. These shells feature Federal’s FliteControl Flex wad for improved downrange performance. According to Federal, “Hevi-Bismuth boasts a heavy-hitting payload of 9.6g/cc density pellets and is 22 percent denser than steel.” Translation: Doom on ducks, geese and upland game and birds in areas where nontoxic shot is required. Ever been lost in the woods? Me, neither, but I’ve been sorely confused for a couple of hours here and there. Enter the new BackTrack Mini GPS from Bushnell. With one of these in your pocket, you’re not likely to be wandering around in circles ever again. Bushnell says in its literature the BackTrack Mini GPS is “a purpose-built and portable navigation tool that’s ideal for hunters and long-range shooters.” There is no need for a cellular network or downloaded map data, according to Bushnell, and this thing will operate for 34 hours on a rechargeable battery. It also features a built-in compass and it displays temperature, time, elevation and barometric pressure. The display screen is 2.25 inches wide and it features user-friendly four-button operation. It’s called the BackTrack because the user can retrace his or her movements right back to camp. You can save and share waypoints via Bluetooth with Bushnell Connect. MSRP is $99.99. See bushnell.com Let’s see a show of hands. Who owns a Springfield XD OSP or Tisas Duty PX-9 pistol? XS Sights has new night sight replacement sets for both guns, and users can choose between the Big Dot in Optic Yellow or Optic Orange or the traditional three-dot R3D sight with an orange or green front sight. The DXT2 Big Dot sight features a self-illuminating tritium center surrounded by XS Sights’ proprietary Glow Dot technology. The rear sight is a V-notch type with a vertical tritium stripe. The RD3 features a traditional three-dot tritium notch and post sight picture. The front sight glows brighter than the rear and is available with either a green or orange Glow Dot. See xssights.com. NS
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COLUMN
Selecting Glass And Packs T
hree of the most important things that you will need as a hunter are a good set of binoculars, BECOMING rangefinder and a A HUNTER solid backpack. These By Dave Anderson items are worth their weight in gold and just like anything else, you get what you pay for.
BINOCULARS ARE SOMETHING that you will absolutely spend more time behind when you are in the high country or out in the plains or desert. Over time I have upgraded binoculars every few years. Keeping in mind your budget, I would recommend spending, at minimum, anywhere from $500 to $1,000. This will allow you to purchase a set of binoculars that will last you several years or potentially for life. As far as size selection, 10x42 binoculars are about the most versatile size. They can be used in thick timber and even out in the wide open. But if you are primarily going to hunt a lot of vast open landscapes, it may be best to go with a pair of 10x50 binos. There are several brands to look for and test, but some suggestions at the lower end of that price range would be Leupold Pro Guide and the Vortex Viper. I have a set of Leupold Santiam binoculars in 10x42. These run about $1,200 and are comparable to the Vortex Razor binoculars as far as price point. In my opinion, you can never spend too much on optics. Optics are at the top of the list of things that help you to become a successful hunter. If you have a chance, most sporting goods stores will allow you to test optics outside with an associate. This is a great
Binoculars are a key part of author Dave Anderson’s hunting gear and they should be high quality, even if expensive. He goes by the motto, “Buy once. Cry once.” (DAVE ANDERSON) nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2022
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COLUMN These days rangefinders can do more than just tell you how far off a buck is. The author’s unit can provide where to aim for the distance and angle to the target. (CHAD ZOLLER)
way to test different options side by side. You can tell a big difference between a pair that costs $200 and another with a $3,000 price tag. At those higher price points, you will notice binoculars provide better illumination at dusk and sunrise, which are two of the most crucial times you want your gear to perform well. In addition, the better the glass, the easier it is on your eyes, especially if you are like me and spend more time behind your optics than not.
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I have the Leupold Rx-1600i TBR and it does everything that I need for a rifle. It has a built-in inclinometer with TBR. TBR stands for “true ballistic range” and this feature helps to determine the angle, so it can calculate an accurate ballistic range to your target point. Once the ballistic range is calculated, it will display as a holdover aim point, an MOA adjustment, a milliradian adjustment, or the equivalent horizontal distance. It’s simple to use and comes in at about $350. Having a good rangefinder can make or break a hunt. I use this rangefinder in combination with my Leupold Custom Dial System to help ensure that as long as I do my job breathing and squeezing, I will hit my mark.
I recently went out to the range using this rangefinder and my Leupold VX5HD 3-15x44 scope on top of the Weatherby Carbon Mark Pro in .300 Weatherby. I was consistently shooting steel out to 1,000 yards. I’m not saying that I am going to shoot at a big game animal at this range, but my confidence at longer distances is far better than it previously was. For archery, I have a Leupold RXFulldraw 4 that has some huge advantages. It has a ½-yard angle compensated accuracy and a flight path feature. It comes in at around $400. There are a lot of other companies out there that manufacture great rangefinders as well. Most sporting goods stores will
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COLUMN
“It’s like the truck bed for the human body,” Anderson says of hunting packs. They should not only be able to carry everything to field dress a downed big game animal but also pack out a significant portion of it in the first load. (DAVE ANDERSON) offer a few different options. I am just most familiar with Leupold and have always loved their products.
LASTLY, LET’S TALK hunting packs. Having a good pack can make or break a hunt, in my opinion. It’s like the truck bed for the human body. There are huge differences and options available when it comes to what’s on the market. One of the biggest factors you will need to consider when selecting a 160 Northwest Sportsman
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pack is if you are looking for a daypack or a multi-night pack for extended days in the backcountry. A daypack will not allow you to bring a tent, sleeping bag, extra gear and food for a five- to seven-day backcountry hunt. I have been running the Mystery Ranch Pintler pack as my daypack. With the same frame I can switch out the bag to the larger Metcalf bag for overnight and extended stays on the mountain. One of the biggest advantages in this pack is the ability to
use their “Overload” system to haul meat in between the bag and the frame. I have packed out several elk and deer using this pack system. I believe you should always have everything in your pack that will allow you to break down any type of big game animal and take out as much as you can on that first trip. It makes no sense to me to shoot something and have to go back miles and miles to get the tools and gear to then take care of an animal. Inside of my pack, I carry black garbage bags (rolled up to cut down on space). I use these as a “tarp” to set meat down on. In addition, I also make sure to have game bags, parachute cord, knives, a small Wyoming saw and rubber gloves. I definitely carry much less in my pack nowadays compared to when I was in my 20s. I feel that as I’ve gotten older and more experienced, I have learned what is and isn’t as important to include in my hunting packs. As far as fit goes, you want to be sure that your pack fits tight to your body. You want to make sure you have a solid waist band/belt to ensure that your load is tight and not wobbling around on you when you are packing out. Fortunately, I have never been injured or rubbed raw by a pack. I was lucky and learned at a young age how important a good quality pack is. There are some other fantastic pack brands out there besides Mystery Ranch, such as Exo Mtn Gear, Stone Glacier, Kifaru and Kuiu. Most of these brands you will not see in a sporting goods store. They have some great measurement specifics for fit online, but you may be lucky enough to have some friends who own some of these packs and thus be able to try them out yourself and see what fits you best.
IN THE END, I highly recommend you do your homework and research all the different options available with these three crucial pieces of hunting gear. One of my favorite quotes always applies when looking at purchasing new gear, and that is, “Buy once. Cry once.” I wish I would have learned this years ago. Having quality gear and the proper tools will not only make you more comfortable but will also bring better success while on the mountain and in the backcountry. NS
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COLUMN
Summer Training Part II: Tracking W
atching a dog e f fe c t i v e l y track, be it a furry animal on land, an upland bird in heavy cover, or a crippled duck across water, GUN DOGGIN’ 101 is one of the great By Scott Haugen rewards of hunting with a good dog. While much of a dog’s ability to track comes down to genetics, a great deal can also be taught.
ONCE AGAIN I turned to good friend Jess Spradley, one of the West’s top versatile gun dog trainers, for advice. In addition to breeding an elite line of pudelpointers, Spradley trains multiple breeds year-round from his home in Lakeview, Oregon. “The goal of tracking is conservation; that is, not losing a wounded bird,” begins Spradley. “I’ve started many pups tracking at 2 months old, getting them to use their nose on command. At first I place a little piece of hot dog in the yard for them to find. Right away I give the command ‘find it,’ so they know this isn’t a game. Their reward is eating it once they find it, and I always set them up for success. Place it in a spot where they can smell it, even see it once they’ve moved close to it.” As soon as he can, Spradley progresses to using a dead bird to track. Some pups pick up on a bird smell quickly; others take a bit more time than with hot dog training. “Using a bird carcass – one I’ve taken the breast meat, legs and thighs from last season – stored in the freezer, I’ll pull it out to train with,” Spradley offers. “As with the hot dog, I set up for success. With a bird, I’ll pull some feathers and make a small pile where the track will start. Then I’ll drag the bird along the ground so the
Using a check cord while teaching bird tracking helps keep your gun dog focused and moving forward, as trainer Jess Spradley demonstrates. (SCOTT HAUGEN)
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Freezing bird carcasses cleaned of all meat, or drying and wrapping bird skins around a bumper, are good ways to teach bird tracking to pups like this. (SCOTT HAUGEN) dog can smell it. I put the pup on a check cord or short leash so I can control their movement, as I want them focusing on progressing forward. If they get distracted, I’ll tighten the lead and get them back on track, allowing them to move at their own pace. The thing to avoid is slowing them down by overcorrecting.” In addition to dragging the bird on the ground, you can rub the skin around to disperse more scent, or pull more feathers. “I’ll put a few feathers on the ground every 15 feet or so, to keep the pup interested,” Spradley points out. “You can also use white pieces of tissue paper for sight recognition. The pup will go to the tissue, then pick up the smell. Soon they’ll associate the feathers with the smell. Keep them moving forward to the bird, which is placed 50 to 60 feet away. Place the bird and feathers without the pup watching 164 Northwest Sportsman
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you. If it’s a small pup, start with the bird placed 15 feet away. Keep it short and positive, ending in success.” Remember, each dog is different. You want to place the hot dog, bird or rabbit skin far enough away so the pup can’t see it and has to cover ground and work to find it. “Having grass on the ground to hold scent is best,” says Spradley. “Don’t train on concrete, gravel or dirt. Mornings are ideal, as the humidity is higher and tracking conditions better. Don’t train on hot days or in high winds, either. Cool mornings following a rain or gentle mist are great, as are foggy days with dew on the ground.”
As they achieve success, make more turns and increase the angle of severity. If the pup gets off track, use the check cord to get them back on it.” Some dogs like to track on the run or at a gentle lope, others with their nose up, and others with their nose down. “With dogs that track with their head up, it looks like they’re not doing the right thing, but they’re actually catching the wind as it rises from the ground, so let ’em work,” Spradley advises. “As they progress, increase distance and turns and introduce obstacles like logs and creeks. This is the time to start simulating what you’ll encounter in the field.”
ONCE THE DOG has straight-line tracking
IF YOU’RE A waterfowl hunter, first master
down, Spradley starts making turns. “Drag the carcass in gentle turns so the dogs can follow it, but have to work at it.
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COLUMN how to track on water, and yes, they can smell the scent left on the water’s surface. “Once a dog has it, they’ll not forget how to track,” concludes Spradley. “Still, it is a learned skill, so come back to it. With a pup I’ll track at least once a day, often in the morning and evening, and I won’t overload them with other training. With adult dogs I might track train once every couple of weeks, depending on how the sessions go.” Progress at your dog’s level of achievement and strive for good practice sessions with consistent word repetition. I don’t use electric collars when tracking because I don’t know what the scent is doing as the dog moves away from me and I don’t want to falsely correct them. Keep tracking training fun and brief, and soon your pup will be impressing you with its skills. NS
Yes, dogs can track on water. Here, the author’s 9-year-old pudelpointer Echo did just that on a long-range duck retrieve last season. (SCOTT HAUGEN)
Editor’s note: Learn more about Jess Spradley’s breeding and training programs at cabincreekgundogs.com and follow his helpful tips on Facebook.
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