6C — THE OBSERVER a BAKER CITY HERALD
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015
OUTDOORS 8 REC
SALMON FISHING
humps on their backs. When freshand bright, they are good to eat.After a few days in freshwater, the meat turns soft and is less desirable. Ihoped to catch a bright one, but this one was notit. I letitgo after aquick battle. Cousin Neil started with a fly rod and a sparse purple streamer but soon switched to a spinning rod with a leadhead pink jig with a hoochie skirt. It took a few minutes for him to perfect his twitch technique and soon he was tight into his first pink salmon. The total forecastforthis year's Puget Sound's pink salmon runs to 6.78 million. Some of thetop riversare the Puyallup, the Nisqually, Skagit, Snohomish, Nooksack, Stillaguamish and the Green. Speakingofforecasts, you can't trust them. We'd checked the weather reports for aweek before thetrip and our Friday was supposed to be nice. Neverthe-
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Gary Lewis/ForWesCom News Sennce
Neil Lewis holds a pink salmon that fell for a rubber-skirted pink jig. Pink salmon are the easiest salmon to catch. By Gary Lewis ForWesCom News Service
Along the banks of the Skagit River, the regular waterline was visible, a white line along the rocks a footabove the surface. We launched near SedroWoolley and powered downstream towardthe railroad trestle. Last time I fished for bull trout in the Skagit, in Western Washington, the pinks were in the river. That was two years ago. The big run hits the river every other summer inodd-numbered years. They may be fi nicky at times, but pink salmon are the easiest of the Pacific salmon to catch. It's not hard to remember what kinds oflures and baits to employ — pink salmon like ... pink! In fact, if you're trying to catch silver salmon out of a river filled with pinks, you need to switch to black or chartreuse
Gary Lewis/ForWesCom News Sennce
A male pink salmon, or humpy, taken on a pink jig on the Skagit River. or any other color. it or twitch it or cast and There were a few silvers retrieve. There's a speed and in the Skagit, but we were a cadence that will get them targetingpinks and started to strike, but it changes with sparse streamers in every day. pink. The trick is to run the My cousin Neil Lewis fly, jig, spinner or spoon close and I were on the third day of aroad trip from Bend to to thebottom. Dead-drift
the Spokane Valley to the Skagit. Now we were on the river with Travis Huisman and Tracy Whisonant, in Tracy's 16-footsled.W e beached on a sandbar and spread out to work a slow patch of deeper water above the tailout of a run. This river used to be frequented by a writer named Enos Bradner — he was the first fishing writer I read. I know he stood on this sandbar and cast a fly rod. This was in my head when I waded out, threw a 20-foot cross-current cast, mended upstream and let the fly tumble along the bottom. It was 20 minutes before I hooked my first one, a female whose flanks were already oxidized by the September water. Pink salmon average 4 to 6 pounds. Silvery when they first hit the freshwater, they quickly fade to spawning colors, and the males getbig
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less, when you're in Western Washington, the rain is never too long in coming. Rain began to fall about midmorning and didn't let up for a while. Aftera slow startand a bit of exploration, we began to rack up the numbers. Neil, the only first-time pink fisherman inthe group, brought the most fish to hand. We turned them loose to make new pink salmon. It'sgoing totakelotsof rain to bring our rivers up to the waterline again, but as the fall rains come on, the salmon fishing is going to improve. Even in the midst of drought, this is shaping up to bea great yearfor all kinds of salmon in rivers with good flows. October promises good fishing all over the Northwest. If you want to go for pinks in Washington, the run is almost over. Mark your calendar for August 2017. The odds are pretty good.
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OREGONPpfIa~ fppg /jar r/rgpg a/rd'giI /ea Ar-/ r10101 W First St, Island (ity 541-963-7140
Fish & wildlife
Mon — Fri: 4:30 am —9:00 pm
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OREGON DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE
Working to getri of invasivefish • Rotenone used to be done at nine other ponds across northeast Oregon, kill illegal species including: Keyhole, Granite
check the pond and gather up asmany ofthe dead fish as they can in nets, which they will bury at an ODFW Meadows, Goldfish, Yellowsite. By George Plaven jacket and Windy Springs East Oregonian Two pesticide investigators ponds in Umatilla County; Luger and Peach ponds in from the Oregon DepartPENDLETON — Bill Duke doesn't know how Union County; Kinney Lake ment of Agriculture were in Wallowa County; and also on scene to make sure schools of goldfish came to invade Boundary Pond on Balm Reservoir in Baker Drake and Bratcher followed the Umatilla National Forest. County. The ponds will be instructions on the rotenone It's possible they were pets label, sprayed atthe correct restocked with trout and concentration and put up someone released into the ready to fish again by next spring. signs around the pond to wild, or live bait that slipped "That's the whole goal of off a fisherman's hook. alert the public. ''Why you take your goldour program,togetbetter Rotenone is a naturally fish out here, I have no idea," recreationand betteropporoccurring substance found said Duke, district fish biolo- tunities," said Kyle Bratcher, in the seeds and stems of certain plants. It has been gist for the Oregon Departassistant fish biologistfor ment of Fish and Wildlife in ODFW in Enterprise. used successfully before in Pendleton. Bratcher and Kevin Drake, Oregon to remove unwanted What's clear, Duke said, is of Pendleton, wore bright Tui chub at Diamond Lake on the Umpqua National the colorfulintruders don't yellow Tyvek suits and resbelong. ODFW routinely pirators Oct. 7 as they rowed Forest, and goldfish at Mann stocks rainbow trout for anacross Boundary Pond spray- Lake in the Alvord Valley. The chemical is not harmglers in tiny Boundary Pond, ing rotenone over the entire off Summit Road near Mount surface of the water. Within ful to humans and other Emily. minutes, dozens of fish could animals at the low concenBut goldfish and bullhead trationapplied to the ponds, be seen gasping and strugBratcher said. catfish — another illegally gling before going belly-up. "It's not possible to conintroduced species — have Bratcher said all the fish increasedcompetition for should be dead within a day. sume enough water or fish to They will return Friday to food and space, stunting the get a lethal dose iof rotenonel fishery. That's why Fish and Wildlife biologists arrived on an October morning to kill i the unwanted fish using rorar tenone, a plant-based poison that enters in through the fish's gills and cuts off oxygen to the cells. Rotenone kills each and every fish in the water, including any uncaught trout. It's basically like starting the fishery over with a clean slate, Duke said. aYou can't control igoldfishl once they get in here," he I • said."They overpopulate and stunt themselves out." The same treatment will
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for a small animal," Bratcher sald. However, the ponds will remain closed to all recreationforatleastfourw eeks until the rotenone naturally breaks down enough to meet drinking water standard. In all, it will cost Fish and
BAKER C0UNTY
CusTOM ME~Ts For Your Complete Game Processing
Wildlife about $10,000 to treatall10 ponds,Bratcher sald. "It's all coming from license dollars," he said. Releasing live fish is illegal in Oregon without a license. Duke said he realizespeople might have the best of intentions when transporting fish into new bodies of water, but itonlycreates problems moving forward. "Let us be the fish managers," Duke said."Don't be the Johnny Appleseed biologist and spread a whole bunch of fish around."
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