PENINSULA DAILY NEWS for Friday/Saturday, June 1-2, 2012 PAGE
B9 Outdoors
Salmon, steelies help you move on JUST BECAUSE HALIBUT season ends Sunday doesn’t mean your gear should be stored away in the corners of your garage. There are still fish to catch, especially on the Lee rivers. Horton Many open Saturday for summer-run steelhead and you can still give catching a spring chinook your best shot. Steelhead are ocean-run trout that run in both summer and winter seasons, returning after one to three years at sea. Only hatchery steelhead can be retained. Hatchery steelhead have a clipped adipose or ventral fin with a healed scar in place of the clipped fin. The adipose fin is on top of the fish near the tail. The ventral fin is located near the mid-section of the bottom of the fish. Steelhead fishing is significantly more popular in the winter, but the summer months still provide a nice harvest. “It’s under-fished,” Brian Menkal of Brian’s Sporting Goods and More (360-683-1950) in Sequim said of the summer-run steelhead fishery. “They’re great summer fish. Easier to catch than in the winter, in my opinion.” The summer-run steelhead season gets overlooked on the Peninsula because anglers are distracted by halibut, ocean and river salmon and the various activities available only in the summer. Steelhead are usually fairly good biters, so numerous bait combinations of jigs, floats and bobbers can be utilized. Water is usually clearer in the summer, which makes fish wise to anglers’ intentions. Bob Gooding of Olympic Sporting Goods (360-374-6330) in Forks said one way to combat the clear water is to put a line in a river before the sun comes out. Ward Norden, a fishing tackle wholesaler and former fishery biologist, said reports of steelhead being reeled on the beaches of South Whidbey Island, such as Bush Point, foretell a nice summer steelhead harvest. “Good fishing on these beaches usually indicates healthy runs hitting all the rivers with summer-run steelhead around Puget Sound about a week later,” Norden said. “The fish are probably already in the Sol Duc if fishermen can drag themselves away from the spring chinook.”
Race weekend is here Expo, kids marathon, yoga gets things rolling
thon, pre-race yoga class and a pre-race pasta dinner. Most events will be at the Red Lion Hotel in Port AngePENINSULA DAILY NEWS country as well as Canada to les on Saturday. Packet pick-up is from the North Olympic Peninsula. PORT ANGELES — The noon to 6 p.m., the same time But don’t forget that special weekends just keep on as race expo, both at the online registration for the coming in the area as the Juan de Fuca Festival, Memo- marathon ends at noon today hotel. At the expo, sponsors and at www.nodm.com. rial Day weekend and the Festivities begin Saturday vendors are lined up to bring Port Angeles Salmon Club’s and really get into a full run, race participants items for Halibut Derby all were held ignore the pun, Sunday. purchase, visitor information last weekend. Saturday’s events include and health and fitness inforAnd now this weekend is mation. the ever-popular North Olym- packet pick-up, race expo, talks on insider’s racecourse Some of the vendors pic Discovery Marathon, preview and how to prevent include running apparel; which attracts thousands of running injuries, a kids mara- women’s active wear; Olympic visitors from around the
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National Park visitor and park information, and Elwha dam restoration project; cardiac services; running apparel with fun themes; Seattle Marathon running events; wine tasting and kayak and mountain bike tours; Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce visitor information; and physical therapy. The Insider’s Racecourse Preview is at 2 p.m. in the hotel lounge, and the How to Prevent Running Injuries is at 3:30 p.m. in the hotel lounge. The race expo and the two talks are open to the public as well as to registered runners. TURN
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Who are these pretenders? Where are Mariners’ weak bats? MCCLATCHY NEWS SERVICE
ARLINGTON, Texas — Who were those men who masqueraded as the Seattle Mariners the other night? T h a t team that scored 21 runs and set a ton of team records? C o u l d that really have been Next Game the offensiveToday challenged vs. White Sox Mariners? The Seat- at Chicago tle Mariners Time: 5 p.m. pulled out On TV: ROOT the major league record book and used it to club the Texas Rangers on Wednesday night. In the time it took the Elias Sports Bureau to look up all the things Seattle was doing, the Mariners had scored 17 runs – by the fourth inning – en route to a 21-8 victory over the firstplace Rangers. “A little above normal,” said Justin Smoak, who hit two home runs and had six RBIs. “When everybody’s getting
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Seattle’s Mike Carp, left in front, and Jesus Montero celebrate following their record-setting win against the Texas Rangers. hits and scoring runs, it’s a lot of fun.” The Mariners, some would suggest, wouldn’t know. If that’s true, they learned a lot in that game: ■ Seattle scored eight runs in back-to-back innings for the first time in franchise history – and just the fourth time in the majors since 1900. ■ The Mariners sent 13 hit-
ters to the plate in the second inning, then sent just as many to the plate in the third inning. ■ The score was 16 after three innings, 17-0 after four. ■ The 21 runs was the most scored in the big leagues this season, and tied the Mariners’ highest run total on the road. “You’re seeing their potential,” manager Eric Wedge said of his team.
“They’re putting together games like this back-to-back, and they did it against potentially the best team in baseball.” Against a Texas team leading the American League West with 31 wins, the Mariners are now 5-5 this season – and they’ve won the last two games by a combined 31-11 score. TURN
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Isner goes distance but loses American ‘Marathon Man’ goes 5 hours, 41 minutes for five sets BY HOWARD FENDRICH THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Elusive, delicious Distracting anglers from spring chinook, also called springers, is easier said than done, even though the season has been open for a few months. After a slow start, the harvest has improved recently, but springers are a notoriously difficult fish to catch. “They’re not the greatest biters,” Gooding said. “A good day is when you hook one, a great day is when you catch one, and a super day is when you bring in your limit.” Gooding adds that anglers who have one of these days might think they have springers figured out, but they are often humbled the next time they go out. “I don’t think it’s the fishers as much as it is the fish,” Gooding said. A big part of selecting bait depends on the water conditions, which are often low and clear during the summer. Menkal said there are so many baits to choose from, but small jigs seem to work best. “They spook easily,” Menkal said. “Anything too big or too bright will scare them.”
Marathon
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
John Isner gestures with his racket in his match against Paul-Henri Mathieu of France on Thursday.
PARIS — This, then, is who John Isner is for now: The Marathon Man of Tennis, the guy who plays and plays and plays, for hours on end, until the last set seems interminable. At Wimbledon two years ago, he won 70-68 in the fifth, the longest set and match in tennis history. At Roland Garros on Thursday, as afternoon gave way to evening, the 10th-seeded American lost 7-6 (2), 4-6, 4-6, 6-3, 18-16 to Paul-Henri Mathieu of France in the second round, a 5-hour, 41-minute test of stamina and attention span. This one goes in the books as the second-longest match, by time, in French Open history. “I just didn’t get it done. I felt like I got caught in patterns that weren’t ideal for me,” said a somber Isner, whose exit means there are no U.S. men in the third round for the first time since 2007. “I wasn’t going for my shots at certain points in the match, and that comes from a little bit of a lack of confidence.” If the 6-foot-9 Isner, who led Georgia to an NCAA title, is going to become more than a
French Open novelty act, he needs to win encounters like Thursday’s, and not because of the duration but because it was a first-week Grand Slam match against a player ranked 261st, who got into the field thanks to a wildcard invitation from the tournament. After finally converting his seventh match point — Isner never had one — an emotional Mathieu thanked the partisan crowd in the main stadium for willing him to victory. Their sing-song choruses of “Po-lo! Po-lo!” — the French equivalent of “Paulie” — and roars of approval rang out after pretty much every point he won down the stretch. “I dug deep,” said the 30-yearold Mathieu. He helped provide easily the most intrigue on a day that featured straight-set wins for defending champions Rafael Nadal and Li Na. But it also ended after 9 p.m., forcing organizers to postpone until today the match involving Maria Sharapova that was supposed to follow on Court Philippe Chatrier.