Jon’s Corner of the Whirled

I went Saturday and yesterday to Meldrum’s Bar again to do some steelhead fishing. I hadn’t been there in many months, but things haven’t changed since my last posting on the subject. A lot of the same people still fish there, the fishing success is as sporadic as ever, and the geese are still fighting. The Clackamas County Sherrifs showed up for a while to talk, and I actually had a state trooper check my salmon tag. I now feel justified spending the $46 bucks for the license and tag this year.

I was surprised to see all the boats in the Willamette considering how many logs, trees, and UFOs (Unidentifiable Floating Objects) there were going downstream at a good clip. The water was chocolate brown, and as high as to be expected during this time of year. A bit of excitement occurred when a guy out in a boat seemed to have lost his motor. Steam started pouring out of it pretty close to the mouth of the Clackamas, and everyone watched him as he drifted downstream trying to get it running. He drifted out of site, about that time the police were contacted, but eventually he managed to come back upstream on his own.

There were only two fish landed (almost 3, but the guy’s leader broke when he was hauling the fish on shore) in the 14 hours I was there for the two days. Of course, none of the fish were on my line. This is not the sort of fishing you want to take your kids unless they have infinite patience and you don’t mind them learning a bunch of new four letter words. There is also one guy who thought Hamms is good for breakfast (well 6:30 am, I suppose he could be working nights), so eating habits might be better learned elsewhere…

I tried to make observations about all the different plunking rigs I saw there, and I’m going to put a posting together that shows pictures of all the different ones I saw.

Lisa’s father and I have been going to the Siuslaw near Mapleton for three years now. This year’s trip, I finally landed my first Chinook Salmon. It was about 36 inches long, and somewhere between twenty and thirty pounds.

We caught it while trolling downstream of Mapleton. I count myself lucky in a couple of regards. We had beautiful weather while we were there. A slight chill in the air in the morning, but no rain for the two days we were fishing.

It seemed that fishing was terrible from everyone we talked to. It was midweek, and yet there were lots of boats bobber fishing and trolling. We spent the better part of our first day bobber fishing. Dan caught a “blue back” on his second cast of the day, but we had nothing but “bait stealers” after that. They are some sort of chub that inhabits that part of the river and live in abundance. I guess it is because they are well fed. They manage to strip all the bait off a hook in a couple of minutes, which makes it hard for the bigger fish to get a chance to see it.

After not having a lot of luck for hours bobber fishing, we decided to do some trolling. I was using a “rainbow spinner” that had mostly green on the outside of the spinner blade. You can see the beads in it in the photo of the fish above. Dan was using a “Blue Fox” lure. The fish finder wasn’t showing a lot of fish in the river. We were just about to turn back when I managed to hook into the salmon. It jumped around a bit, and took out a lot of line when it saw the boat, but we managed to land it. I was pretty excited.

The second day, we spent the whole day trolling. We had hours of no action. Finally, Dan had a fish on. Unfortunately he had some mechanical difficulties with his reel, combined with my inability to pilot the boat well. We lost tension on the line, and ended up losing the fish. This was much better than anyone else was doing. This seems to be the story for every trip we make to Florence to fish on the Siuslaw. This year, we decided to go a little later. Usually we fish late September, but this year it was mid October. There didn’t seem to be that many fish in the river. During the September trips, we always saw fish rolling, but this year we didn’t. I wonder how the fish populations in the river are doing.

The third day, we went crabbing in Florence. The pier there has been used for years, as evidenced by the marks the ropes left in the wood.

We found lots of crab, but nothing large enough to keep. We did get to experience the view, though, which was certainly worth it.

I have been spending some parts of some of my weekends trying to catch a Steelhead at Meldrum Bar in Gladstone, Oregon. I’ve been using a technique called “Plunking”. The name sounds derogatory, and I believe it is intended to be. Plunking is generally looked down on by “real fishermen” whoever they are. I’ve been using it as a means to get some “me time” without a lot of driving, as well as an opportunity to see a different segment of society that I don’t normally.

Typically, the weather is terrible. It is usually cold, and rainy. I’ve been going some various weekend days since the middle of December. Occasionally it is a nice day on the bar. This photo is an example.

Plunking, involves hammering a pole holder in the ground, setting up a heavy weight rod with heavy weight line, and using a spin-n-glo, or something similar anchored by a heavy weight above the lure. This is cast into the river. The spin-n-glo floats a bit on its own, and the current makes it spin in place. Some place bells on their poles so they know when a fish decides to commit suicide on the gear. On a good day, I’ve seen five fish landed in a ten hour period. A typical day only one or two fish are landed.

The people that regularly commit time to this odd form of fishing are odd themselves. Many of them are retirees, that appreciate the proximity to their homes, as well as the ability to go crawl into their vehicles when the weather turns bad. Did I mention that you can just about drive up to the water?

Most of the people there drive American vehicles and use the “F” word as an “every-other-word” concept in English language construction, both of which I choose not to adopt. Aside from a bit of brusque language, the people are generally friendly. This is a positive, because as I mentioned before, when the weather is nice, it gets very crowded. I’ve seen over 40 poles in the water, with about 6 feet of ground between them. This situation leads to regular tangles, and few fish caught. Fortunately the tempers seem to stay in check. The Gladstone sheriffs make regular drives through the area just to make sure.

The only fighting I’ve seen is from the local fowl population. There are a good collection of geese, and ducks that seem to hang around all the time. They get regular feedings from the kids that show up, which must encourage the birds to remain. Occasionally one of the birds does something antisocial to one of the other birds. This leads to a large amount of carrying on and occasionally some feathers flying. I’m glad this, and the occasional fish death on the bar, is the limit of the violence there.

We recently went on a trip to Diamond Lake to get in some fishing prior to the treatment of the lake. The hope was that fishing would be good since the lake had been drained down to 80% of normal. It wasn’t good at all. Dan was the only one that caught trout. He caught a nice 17″ fish and a couple of smaller ones.

Morgan had a good time catching chub. He didn’t care about trout, to him, catching anything was fun. He caught 26 of them in about an hour.

It sounds like the lake will be better off in about three or four years.

They are building a new dock, and hopefully they will do some work on the cabins. The screen doors wouldn’t stay closed, and considering the number of mosquitos there, it was a real problem. The bathrooms were ok, but the caulking around the shower was just disgusting. There was a black mold or mildew growing underneath it. Ewww.

In any regard, we had a good time. It was nice to get out of town and not think about work for a few days, even if the fishing was terrible.

Orvis included this image in a recent advertisement sent to my house:

The dots in the picture indicate school locations. Sorta makes me wonder what “near” means. What about people in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, North Dakota? None of them look “near” in my mind. I suppose Oregon is “near” because we are only half of Washington away. If you consider travelling at the speed of light, all the schools are near. Perhaps the people at Orvis have developed a Warp drive, which is why they can afford to charge so darn much for everything. $139 for a fishing vest? Give me a break.