Clatsop – Ben Childers caught nine trout and one Jack salmon from the bridge at Seaside, using “mud cats” for bait. The first silver-sides were hooked in this locality the first week in September.
Jackson – C. Costello, J. Hart, H. Hosler, and J. G. Hurt returned to Ashland from a day’s fishing trip on Big Butte Creek with sixty pounds of cut-throat trout and steel-head trout. Salmon eggs were the bait used.
Lake – During the past month, fishing has been excellent in the Chewaucan and Sycan Rivers. In one afternoon’s fishing in the Sycan River, Charles Weyburn, J. L. Taylor, and J. O. Miller of summer Lake caught 217 Dolly Varden trout.
Lane – Mr. A. C. Dixon of Eugene reports that in Mill Creek, which is a branch of the Mohawk, a record has been kept by parties who have been fishing in the stream. in a period of thirty days there were as many as three thousand trout caught, on a stretch of about four miles of the creek.
One more entry will be transcribed from the 1913 October edition of the Oregon Sportsman.
Coming home to the big Nehalem brought back a flood of memories. Poor Spencer had to hear all of them.
“Oh, man. See that little spot over there?” I’d point to a shadowed cove or overhanging tree. “Some years the kings would stack in there so thick…”
I rattled on like that all day–didn’t even try to hold back. It seemed imperative to recount everything–to bring myself back to a time and place, back to the Grand Old River that had taught me how to be a salmon angler. And maybe, I thought, by invoking such numerous and powerful memories, I could coax the fish gods into a benevolent mood.
An early morning departure for chasing one of the great mystics of the fall; Sea Runs, blue backs, or harvest trout began this month. On the possibility of a cloudy morning, I headed off with great expectations of a solid day chasing Sea Runs. Called what you want, this challenging and very unpredictable fishery has begun to infiltrate our coastal waters. Rivers such as the Alsea, Siletz, Siuslaw, and Nestucca are providing early reports of Sea Runs. Although we have had no rain, Sea Run anglers get a bit twisted in the thought process and start to think of cloudy drizzle days on the coast.
Each morning we pulled out of Sekiu Harbor at dawn, purple sky and bourbon fumes trailing in our wake. One of a handful of boats staggering out past the kelp beds, around the break-wall, and accelerating up onto plane.
By sun up, there would be thirty five boats bobbing on steel gray swells, light stacking up in layers over the Olympics to the East, Vancouver Island, dark on the horizon to the North. The kelp bladders lolling on the currents, water fifty-degrees Fahrenheit. Continue reading →
Lou and Jim T. headed off to Crane Prairie early this week and found the fishing to be slow. An early morning arrival on the water (6:30am) provided a very special view of the morning mist evaporating off the lake. The strange thing about this trip; we saw no other boats until about 10:30am. It was as if we did not get the memo that the fishing was going to be slow. We used indicators and casting/stripping for most of the day. Jim brought along a few chironomids to make sure we could cover any type of color, size, or shape. Frankly, it was almost embarrassing to pull out my mixed box of lake fly’s and hold them next to Jim’s box.
We did manage to find one suicidal brook trout which at least made us think more fish were coming. However, it was not to be. It was one of those days were we watched eagles soar, osprey hunting, and enjoyed the great views from the lake.
Jim did offer the suggestion to go to another lake. However, Lou kept on saying “It only takes one Cranebow to make the day!” Well, not this day, but we will return….in October!
Why should anyone fish for trout anyway? Well, first, because we love to fish, that part is simple. But why should I or anyone with like-obsessions about giant anadromous fish care enough to pursue these relatively small fish? Continue reading →
…. on the coast streams, the trout now decline the fly because of the abundant store of salmon eggs, which are spawned by the Chinook and river salmon, now coming in abundantly. Salmon eggs bought in a Portland market and taken down to Seaside rf Tillamook are too stale to tempt the big cut-throats of the Trask or Wilson. One may drop his hook with a bait of these stale eggs among a plainly visible school of big trout and see them sail away in disgust. They are already overfed and over particular. An angle worm is likely to be a more successful bait in such cases, and a little piece of the flesh of the too-abundant sculpin may always be considered a hopeful bait for these sea-run trout. They will take a medium sized spoon or spinner occasionally in the lower waters near the sea, and trolling from a boat these beautiful sunny days of Indian Summer is delightful sport, if less productive in quantity.
The “quinna” or Jack salmon have given but little sport this season, coming in later than usual; and they are now mostly spent, stale, and unfit for food.
The silver salmon are now running abundantly in all the coast rivers and bays, and give fine sport trolling. They are in fine condition too, and at this time, in the beginning of their run, scarcely inferior as table fish, to the best Chinook, and far superior the the Chinooks now to be had in market, which are hardly fit for food.
There have been for three weeks past in our markets unusually fine humpback salmon in large numbers, and as is always the case with these fish in their best condition, entirely innocent of the hump which becomes very pronounced as the fish reaches spawning time, in which condition it is almost worthless for food. Silver, chum (or dog) and humpbacks are better baked than fried in slices. Skillfully cooked thus, the fish being baked whole, there is no reason for contempt of either of these three as a delicious table fish The season for the three varieties named is a very short one, either for the sport of catching them by trolling or for utility as food, and a month in fresh water renders a fish of either of these three families a thing to avoid. Sea trout usually follow up the salmon in large schools and after the next big gain there will be find trout fishing with bait in the lower Columbia and coast streams, put the flies and fly rod may be laid away till next June.
It may be wiser, however, to see that your rod is laid upon some perfectly level shelf, with no weight of any kind piled upon it, and see to it that its joints are not tightly bound by the cords at either end of the case containing it (unless it is in a rigid wooden form in which each part has its own groove) or you will fid it so warped next spring as to be disappointing or useless.
More still to come from this October 1913 edition….
The Clouser Deep Minnow is a GREAT fishing fly. The darn thing, in many colors and sizes, just looks like food to many fish around the world and is among my very favorite flies for salmon fishing here in Oregon. And yes, I do know that the Clouser deep minnow is a fly that is fished around the planet by anglers seeking to catch anything but a salmon, like smallmouth bass, musky, bonefish, tarpon, shad, snook, redfish, toadfish, giant grouper, blue shark, and guppies.
Lately, I have had the opportunity to explore some new fly fishing territory, shift fishing obsessions to new targets, and dabbled with adapting some of my traditional Clousers to new species and fly styles. This has been tons of fun. Rockfish (including Lingcod) love Clousers. Sea Run Cutthroat love Clousers too. Silvers love Clousers.
So, what the hey, why not tie up some Clousers on tubes? Sure, plenty of fly fishers have probably been doing this for ages, but this was new for me. This started when I ventured offshore for the first time this year with Jack and Jon Harrell, in their Pacific City based Dory, the Gold Comet. A decades old fear of being sea-sick had kept me off the ocean, but I finally decided to give it a go. Wow. This was fun on top of fun. No puking whatsoever, and willing bottom fish to the fly were a new treat for me. My slow sinking salmon lines were quickly replaced with my fastest sinkers, I upped my rod weight a little, and started tossing salmon Clousers to the Black Rocks (the fish, that is). They ate them plenty nice.
I noticed, sadly, that my grabs were plenty and my hookups were on the sparse side. Hummmmmm. Maybe the #2 hook I LOVE for Kings in tidewater was a little small for the big mouths of the briny deep. This got me thinking about tying Clousers on 1/0 and 2/0 hooks, which I did on short order. These flies definitely upped my hooking ratio on the bottomfish. But I was still plagued, if this could be considered a negative, by receiving many many more grabs than solid hookups. Now I wondered if this might be on account of short strikes, a function of the fish nipping at the tail end of the fly and just giving the fly a tug with no contact with the hook.
Then too, I was not entirely pleased with some of the larger hooks or with long shank hooks that I tried in order to overcome the short strike phenom> These hooks are too large for my liking when fishing Chinook and silvers in the estuary. The hooks may not actually be too large, but I thought they were, and once I start down the path of confidence reduction in any particular fly, they are likely to be eliminated from my box.
What to do? Some of the ocean Clousers I was fishing were not much larger than my in-river Clousers. Hummmmmmm. Silly head. Tie on tubes and switch out hook sizes depending on where they will be fished. Simple and effective. So I went to the bench and made it happen. Then in short order I put to sea with my friends and behold, the tube Clousers were an instant hit and my hooking ratio stayed high. The bonus was that my fly endured for many, many hookups. Often, the fly would ride up the leader, just as it is supposed to, and evade at least some of the beating it would normally have experienced if it were lodged in the chompers of a sharp toothed bottom-fish.
By the way, these rockfish ranged from as deep as 40-50′ to a shallow as rolling on the surface. This naturally called for different fly lines and some Clousers with large and small dumbell eyes. This was wonderful because it offered a justification to tie lots of flies and buy lots of materials and boxes to store the flies and hooks in and …………
My Sea Run tube clousers, tied very slender with Fish hair were just what the Blueback wanted to eat during several recent evening forays into the estuary. These were tied in white and pink, and in white/pink/blue, all with a little multi color Krystal flash and #8 TMC 811S hooks.
We will cover the next stage in the evolution of the Tube Clouser when we get to the Tuna Tube Clouser, but that is yet to be fully researched, so wish me luck. The Silver Salmon Bucktail Clouser has indeed been tested with wonderful results, and that too will be covered shortly.
A few recap thoughts: Tube cClousers offer the advantages of 10 protecting the fly from excessive chewage by the multitude of fish you will catch on these flies; 2) allow you to adjust the hook size with the same overall fly size remaining constant; and 3) allow placement of the hook near the very tail end of the Clouser, which can be a huge advantage when receiving short strikes.
The time of the fly fisherman for the present year grows short, and after a few sharp frosts there will be no more of it. Then we must resort tot he winter lures – the spoon, the worm, the flesh of sculpin, squawfish and carp; or the nasty salmon egg. Indeed on the lower waters of streams tributary to the sea, fly-fshing is already practically over.
But there remain, so long as the present delightful weather shall last, magnificent fishing on the Rogue, McKenzie, Santiam, Molalla, and Clackamas. The favorite food of the rainbow trout in these streams is now the stonefly, which hatches in late summer and early fall, coming out from the water in the larval stage and hiding among the rocks of the shore, where he shortly emerges from his shell as the mature insect in the form of a gauze-winged, soft bodied fly, which gather in great numbers on the branches of willows along the steams. Flies that light or fall upon the water are eagerly seized by trout, which frequent the shores at this time for the purpose of feeding on the stoneflies.
A party of sportsmen, just returning from the upper McKenzie, report remarkably fine fishing at McKenzie Bridge and Frizzell’s, where a large number of fishermen have enjoyed great sport. Their catches were made mostly by using the stonefly, carefully hooked, with wings spread, and very lightly cast. Rainbows of two pounds and upwards fell to the lot of several of these gentlemen daily, and many smaller fish, so that a four-automobile party had all the fish they cared to use daily for a week.
The Dolly Varden does not rise readily at this season to the fly in the Cascade streams, but skillful fisherman catch occasional monsters with salmon eggs.
Doubtless fishing on the McKenzie at this season will be found to correspond with that on the waters of other large rivers of the Cascade mentioned above. Fly-fishing proper has been better in the earlier months of summer on the Mckenzie. The fish reject the artificial fly now because of the abundance of natural fly food.
Note: There will be more to follow from the October 1913 edition……..
I was minding the booth, walking dealers through the latest and greatest books and DVDs, when I heard someone yelling my name. My giant carrot-topped boss was waving me over, with a devious grin on his face. His wife, Joy, ran up to me, grabbed my arm, and pulled me to the front stage.
“Here’s your guy!” she yelled. Then to me, “Rob, there’s an open seat in the fly tying competition! You have to do it!”
Resistance was futile. None of my weak arguments found purchase. And before I knew it I was pushed into a chair, smack in the middle of an international string of tyers, with fair crowd looking on.
Similar to Iron Chef competitions, contestants had a limited time to create a masterpiece, using selected materials and a couple of “secret” ingredients. For the first round, tyers were given 15 minutes to tie a fly.
As the clock started, I found myself shaking nervously. My bobbin was strung way too tight, and my thread broke repeatedly. I looked to my right and to my left, relieved to see that my neighbors’ hands were also shaking wildly. One poor fellow was so nervous, he resorted to a desperate lashing of odd materials to his hook. I took a deep breath and opened the bag containing the secret material: beautifully dyed ostrich herl! I looked backward at Bill Black, whose Spirit River was sponsoring the event. He had supplied the materials.
“Thanks, Bill!” I said with a smile.
“You like that?” he replied, with a knowing smile and a wink.
I tied a funky little shrimp/crawfish fly, which I was sure would be cast off by the judges. But no dice. The final round came down to myself and a young man from London. This time we had 10 minutes to finish our fly, and my rival struggled for several minutes just threading his bobbin. I cranked out a simple summer steelhead fly, stripping and hackling the tip of a blue-dyed ostrich plume to radical effect.
When it was all over, Bill presented me with the trophy, and Jon Bauer handed me a brand new Rogue reel.
Hareline Aluminum Sea Eyes are huge barbell style eyes that offer profile without weight. We have had excellent success using them on large streamers such as Clousers and Deceiver type flies. Big fish like to eat little fish and often use the large eye on a baitfish for a target. The Aluminum Sea eye allows the tyer/angler to create a great target for attack.
If you head up into the way backwoods of the Cascades and get close to the river and watch and listen to the hoppers springing out of the grass, you’ll hear the big trout smacking their lips. They’re huge, they’re obnoxious, they’re irresistible. And they’re all over our watersheds for the next couple months.
