Jon’s Corner of the Whirled

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.

While I was in Eugene last weekend, I took my fly rod to The Caddis Fly in Eugene. The rod was a gift from my father several years back. It doesn’t have markings for line weight, so I wasn’t sure what line to purchase. The line on the reel he had given to me with it had started to separate. I’ve been trying to find things to do that aren’t computer related, and fly fishing seems like a good possibility.

At The Caddis Fly, the guys there put a reel on it with 6 weight line. It worked well, so that’s what I bought, along with an Orvis Clearwater III reel and a new leader. My thinking was that the Clearwater isnt’ terribly expensive as well as being easy to find. I plan on getting a spare spool and a sinking tip line in the future.
I was digging through my fly tying supplies and noticed that the Hare’s mask I had was mostly dust, along with the calf tail and squirrel tail. Bugs had gotten to them at some point. I’ll have to purchase more. I haven’t yet found a good fly fishing shop in Portland, but I haven’t looked too hard either.

Lisa, Morgan and our yet-to-be-born-much-less-named baby have been occupying most of my free time.

Lisa purchased new waders, boots and a float tube for me for Christmas. I’ve been wanting to go fly fishing for a while now, but haven’t been motivated. I’m lacking a bunch of gear. I have a rod and reel, but the line is at least 10 years old, nor do I know what weight it is. The reel is a pfluger knock off my dad purchased when he had the rod made back in Albuquerque. I can’t find my fly vest anywhere, and only have one small fly box. I do have all the fly tying materials in the attic, so I’ll have to bring those down. I’m going to have to go shopping to get all the gear I’m going to need: a vest, new line, leader and tippet, fly boxes… I’m sure once I’m in the store there will be a bunch of other stuff I’ll find I need. I also need to get a new Oregon fishing license.

I found a couple of good websites related to Oregon fishing. www.ifish.net has a good discussion board, and www.nwlunker.com has a searchable database of lakes and rivers. Besides the “what” question in “what to buy”, I have to figure out the “when” I’m going to go fishing, and the “where”.

In the past, I have primarily done trout fishing, but reading all the steelhead reports on the website, it sounds like that might be a good target for the end of 2006, beginning of 2007. The rod I have is too light for steelhead, but Lisa’s father gave me a 6 weight rod that might just work, from what I have read.

We went to Florence this last weekend. I don’t like posting about our trips before we leave… too much information on a public forum. We went to do some fishing for Chinook, and spend some time decompressing. We did a bit of both. Lisa’s father and I went salmon fishing on the Siuslaw river on Thursday and Friday afternoon. It is a tidal river (at least in the sections we were fishing). Here is a picture I took from the boat before the battery on the camera went dead:

We were fishing with sand shrimp and salmon roe on a bobber, with weights below. The river was full of fish, and plenty of them were eating the bait. Unfortunately those that we landed were not quite the size we expected:

The whole group of us also went crabbing off of a dock, and brought in a couple of nice crab for dinner. Chicken seemed to be the preferred bait. The local sea lion population left it alone.

A guy salmon fishing off the dock also had the misfortune of hooking a seagull while casting his bait out. The seagull took a dive for it, and hooked itself in the mouth. It took two guys and a pair of pliers to free it.

It finally started raining on Saturday while we were on the dock, which made it an opportune time to leave the dock.

All in all, it was a nice to get away from town for a few days.