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Northwest Sportsman 7
Sportsman Northwest
Your LOCAL Hunting & Fishing Resource
Volume 11 • Issue 2
Your Complete Hunting, Boating, Fishing and Repair Destination Since 1948.
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70th
ANNIVERSARY
PUBLISHER James R. Baker EDITOR Andy Walgamott THIS ISSUE’S CONTRIBUTORS Jason Brooks, Chris Cocoles, Scott Haugen, Doug Huddle, Sara Ichtertz, MD Johnson, Randy King, Buzz Ramsey, Mark Veary, Terry Wiest, Dave Workman, Mark Yuasa EDITORIAL FIELD SUPPORT Jason Brooks GENERAL MANAGER John Rusnak SALES MANAGER Katie Higgins ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Mamie Griffin, Mike Smith, Paul Yarnold DESIGNERS Kayla Mehring, Jake Weipert
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ALUMAWELD STRYKER
ON THE COVER Shannon Lemieux of Junction City, Oregon, holds a 47-inch, 48-pound fall Chinook caught last November on the Chetco River with guide Andy Martin of Wild Rivers Fishing. The salmon hit a Hawg Nose FlatFish with a sardine wrap. (WILDRIVERSFISHING.COM)
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CONTENTS
VOLUME 11 • ISSUE 2
FEATURES
107 OREGON COAST FALL CHINOOK
November finds Sara Ichtertz both looking ahead – to her favorite fishing season of all, winter steelhead – and back – to a trip to the North Coast for late-season kings with guide David Johnson, fellow fishy gal Cynthia Davis, and the completion of her 2017 writing project Angles of Ladies Angling.
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DUWAMISHGREEN SALMON It’s unwild, unscenic and all but unloved – the highly altered Duwamish flows through the most industrialized part of the Northwest, but salmon amazingly still run up it, keeping the river relevant. In this issue’s Big Pic, Editor Andy Walgamott shares how a change of office location led him to discover and begin to appreciate this King County stream that’s seen staggering changes since the 1800s.
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OREGON GUIDE HELPS FELLOW VETERANS RECOVER Brett Miller’s life changed forever while serving in Iraq in 2005 when a bomb exploded by his Humvee, wounding him so badly he spent three years in a hospital and several more wandering the country in search of meaning. But Miller’s found new purpose in life, and through his Sisters-based Warfighter Outfitters he takes fellow warriors hunting and fishing for free. With Veterans Day this month, Chris Cocoles profiles this very interesting Northwest sportsman.
87
WASHINGTON RAZOR CLAMS Washington’s fall and early winter razor clam season got off to a great start last month, and Mark Yuasa has tips to help make the most of upcoming openers for these tasty coastal shellfish.
151 LAYOUT WATERFOWL HUNTING There are easier ways to bag birds, but layout boats help hunters access different waters and pursue different species. Lower Columbia duck and goose hound MD Johnson details the ins and outs of this old style of hunting that can still be productive for quackers on big Northwest waters.
(SARA ICHTERTZ)
SUBSCRIBE TODAY! Go to nwsportsmanmag.com for details. NORTHWEST SPORTSMAN is published monthly by Media Index Publishing Group, 14240 Interurban Avenue South, Suite 190, Tukwila, WA 98168. Periodical Postage Paid at Seattle, WA and at additional mail offices. (USPS 025-251) POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Northwest Sportsman, 14240 Interurban Ave South, Suite 190, Tukwila, WA 98168. Annual subscriptions are $29.95 (12 issues), 2-year subscription are $39.95 (24 issues). Send check or money order to Media Index Publishing Group, or call (206) 382-9220 with VISA or M/C. Back issues may be ordered at Media Index Publishing Group offices at the cost of $5 plus shipping. Display Advertising. Call Media Index Publishing Group for a current rate card. Discounts for frequency advertising. All submitted materials become the property of Media Index Publishing Group and will not be returned. Copyright © 2018 Media Index Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be copied by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording by any information storage or retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher. Printed in U.S.A.
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NOVEMBER 2018 | nwsportsmanmag.com
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BUZZ RAMSEY:
Plugging For Chetco River Chinook
“If you crave big fall Chinook, fish that might tip your scale to 50 pounds or more, now would be the time to visit the Chetco,” reports Buzz Ramsey, who shares tips from local guide Andy Martin for catching these giant Southern Oregon salmon.
(WILDRIVERSFISHING.COM)
COLUMNS 79
KAYAK GUYS: Super Fun In A Superfund Site The waters of Portland Harbor attract both sturgeon and kayak-borne sturgeon fishermen in fall and winter, including local Jurassic dinosaur tamer Mark Veary. He details the ins and outs of fishing for diamondsides hiding in this busy port.
117 WESTSIDER: Midfall Prime For Summer, Winter, Tribal Steelhead Truth be known, there’s not a month Terry Wiest’s not thinking about steelhead, and November’s no exception. Between road-trip summers and super-early winters sneaking into Forks and Quinault rivers, he’s rarin’ to get after his favorite species and has the details on where and how to fish for ’em. Plus we’ve got the latest steelhead smolt release numbers for return this season! 123 NORTH SOUND: Say Yes To November Ops October may be the best month, what with all its meaty fisheries and hunts, but November’s no slouch. Doug Huddle has the details on North Sound crabbing, salmon fishing, late deer and even smelt dipping! 129 SOUTH SOUND: Battlers, Bulls And Bucks Beckon Between the waters and big game woods there’s plenty to chase afield this month, reports outdoorsman Jason Brooks. First up, chums, those toothsome salmon that crowd into myriad small and big streams, but don’t overlook the four-day late rifle blacktail and Westside elk hunts either, he tips. 135 ON TARGET: Keep Your Powder Dry For Late Hunts Washington black powder hunters take the field for the second time this season, and Dave Workman has some advice for front-stuffer toters braving November’s often-moist conditions, plus details on Ruger’s new Compact 10/22. 143 CHEF IN THE WILD: When Not To Kill A Big Buck Last month’s Idaho deer opener found Randy King high in the mountains where out of the fast-falling snow a big buck appeared, forcing him to make a very tough decision. Let’s just say it led him to put a little something extra into this issue’s recipe – venison penne with vodka “pink” sauce. 163 GUN DOG: Pup’s First Duck Season As fall, foul weather and waterfowl all begin to really arrive in the Northwest this month, you need to make sure your new gun dog stays safe and comfortable in the marsh. Scott Haugen has three key considerations. 12 Northwest Sportsman
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(CITY OF BOTHELL)
THE EDITOR’S NOTE On hallways, rooms and salmon: Home is how to talk about Chinook, coho habitat
DEPARTMENTS
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FISHING AND HUNTING NEWS Fish commissions urged not to rollback Columbia salmon reforms; Cathlamet unexpectedly tops in 2018 Pikeminnow Reward fishery; Fight against bucket biologists going high tech; Coquille habitat work benefits fish, farmers; WDFW hunt regs contest theme announced
53
READER PHOTOS FROM THE FIELD Salmon, trout, spinyrays and more!
59
PHOTO CONTEST WINNERS Browning, Yo-Zuri monthly prizes
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THE DISHONOR ROLL Puget Sound seafood dealer jailed, fined; Meet WDFW’s new K9, Freya; Video evidence leads to returned bighorn; Wardens pull all-nighter to save bull elk; Jackass of the Month
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DERBY WATCH Everett Coho Derby results; Northwest Salmon Derby Series grand prize boat winner; Upcoming events
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OUTDOOR CALENDAR Upcoming openers, events, deadlines
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BIG FISH Northwest’s oldest fish records
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RIG OF THE MONTH From the Vault: Multispecies toenail clipper lure
THEEDITOR’SNOTE
The Sammamish River/ Slough on a foggy day near Woodinville, Washington. (FENIXFYRE, WIKIMEDIA)
I
t was a tale of two rivers growing up. OK, three, since we lived for awhile by the Sultan, a tributary of Western Washington’s Skykomish. Born in mountain snowfields and cutting through precipitous canyons, they’ve always symbolized true rivers to me. The other was the Sammamish, which in one section near Woodinville runs as straight as any of my fishing rods. Guess which is the least natural and fish-friendly river? Yes, I’ve caught stuff in “the slough.” Pikeminnows during my teens with Dad while trying to catch rumored large rainbows. Big, bacon-biting crawdads under a railroad bridge. A huge horkin’ smallie and cutthroat below Lake Sammamish in my 20s. But shallow, weedy and heated by the summer sun, it’s not good habitat, especially that curveless north-south-bearing 1-mile stretch beside the turf and Christmas tree farms.
IT CAN BE hard to explain to folks what’s wrong with that in terms of fish habitat, but I found a great quote in a story about the recent closure of U.S. 97 over a Central Washington pass to put in new fish passage structures where a creek was straightened for the highway. “The streams that we’re trying to restore are like a house that’s made just of hallways,” Scott Nicolai, a Yakama habitat biologist, told reporter Eilis O’Neil. “Imagine walking into a house and there are no bedrooms, no kitchens, no bathrooms. And that is what a lot of our streams look like today. They’re very straight – only one wet spot along the bottom of the floodplain.” At one time the Sammamish was a winding 30-mile-long wetland complex, but between the lowering of Lake Washington and a Corps of Engineers straightening project, it shrank to just 13. It worked well for farming as well as funneling off floodwaters – the hallway effect – but didn’t leave much room for salmon and steelhead. An announcer in an old-time film clip dramatizing the famous boat races on the slough inadvertently made a great point about its diminished value as habitat: “It has about enough water in spots to accommodate a dozen minnows comfortably.” BUT MORE SPACE for fish is coming online, thanks to an 1,100-footlong Bothell side channel providing quarters, galley, game room and outhouses for young wild salmonids. It’s not clear how highly the basin’s fall kings rate in terms of orca forage, but with how key river systems just to the north and south are for the struggling southern residents, it was probably money fortuitously spent. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all in favor of a big increase in hatchery Chinook production where it makes the most sense. Projects like this and others will take time to produce real results for salmon and orcas. But as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act this fall, here’s to overlooked waters (see Big Pic) and remodeling streams to make them more complete homes for fish in the meanwhile. –Andy Walgamott nwsportsmanmag.com | NOVEMBER 2018
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SOCIAL
SCENE
Comment from the www
By Andy Walgamott
GAME’S UP FOR IDAHO COMMISSIONER If you thought Northwest sportsmen were a monolithic block, comments on our story about Idaho Fish and Game Commissioner Blake Fischer last month showed otherwise. Blake resigned after pressure from Governor Butch Otter after a photo of himself with a “family of baboons” he killed in Africa supercharged the perpetual outrage machine. “I’m not understanding how this is any different than a local hunter posing with an elk or a deer they’ve harvested?” posted Rob Edwards, while Jeff Anderson added, “Why give in to bullying?” “I killed a bee this morning – anyone want to get upset over that?” said hive-poking Jarrod Hambergh. Others weren’t so sure. “Don’t kill it if you don’t eat it,” wrote Franklin Johanson. Travis Baker said, “I don’t eat coyotes and shot quite a few of those this year.” And while Evan Weeden noted, “As long as it’s legally killed, it’s A-OK with me,” Tim Munjar pointed out, “Just because it’s legal …”
OREGON ROADKILL RULES OUT Two and a half years after Washington residents began cooking up roadkill tacos, Oregonians will be able to starting Jan. 1, and last month the Fish and Wildlife Commission set the, er, rules of the road for salvaging deer and elk off the state’s highways and byways. “It’s about time,” said Randy Seiber in response to our post, and Don Arnett echoed, “Good idea.” Brandon Williams was puzzled by one aspect, though: “Turn in the head? Pfffffffffffttttt. Okay.” Brent Clement found it reasonable, saying, “It’s just one more way they’re trying to keep people from intentionally hitting, or shooting then claiming roadkill.” Tony Limon, however, wasn’t buying that argument: “I don’t know anyone that is going to trade a $1,000 front clip for any size rack, that’s crazy talk.”
WASHINGTON SPINYRAYS VS. SALMON When we reported that the orca recovery crosshairs were beginning to focus in part on Columbia River bass, walleye and other popular but nonnative gamefish that eat young Chinook, it set off a range of reactions. “What happens when bass and other scapegoats are gone and there’s still not enough salmon or steelhead?” wondered Issac William Irby I. “There won’t be any fishing, that’s what.” Others were ready to take action: “Smallmouth bass are delicious. I do my part to control them, but good luck, they’re not going anywhere,” said Jakob Dilley, and Dennis Gift added, “If a bounty was put on smallmouth, I would never have to work another day.” Meanwhile, Marsha Schaefer cut right to the crux of the ultimate solution: “What salmon need is a human pandemic.”
MOST LIKED READER PIC WE HUNG UP ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE DURING THIS ISSUE’S PRODUCTION CYCLE This montage of the Smith family silver slayers – Chad, Sara and their son Logan – got plenty of thumbs up in late summer. (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST)
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Northwest Sportsman 19
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Unwild, Unscenic, All But Unloved The highly altered Duwamish flows through the most industrialized part of the Northwest, but salmon amazingly still run up it, keeping the river relevant. By Andy Walgamott
I
t took me awhile to warm to the Duwamish. Several years of sharing a bank with it, in fact, and I may never be a fan of the diminished river that flows through Auburn, Kent, Tukwila and Seattle like I am of other waters. Perhaps if I’d grown up in this gritty, highly industrialized part of Pugetropolis it would be easier. But the Skykomish, Sultan, Wallace, as well as the Sauk, forks of the Stilly, Icicle, the upper Snoqualmie trio and other streams on either side of Washington’s Central Cascades were where I tramped and wade-fished in my younger days, and they became what I know of as “rivers.” Nothing wishy-washy about them. Brawny, emerald-hued streams, bottomed by salt-and-pepper-speckled granite, lorded over by bald eagles. Gravel bars and plentiful skipping rocks, ever-shifting side channels, the roar of rapids, big downed trees that were no match for the power of relentless currents, logjams, deep eddies, Carrock-sized boulders. They’re the kind of Western waters that get admitted into the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act as birthright.
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PICTURE
Steam rises off the Seattle area’s Duwamish on a fall morning. Highly altered since the late 1800s to make way for farming and development, it’s a very unwild and unscenic river, but one that is important in its own right. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
nwsportsmanmag.com | NOVEMBER 2018
Northwest Sportsman 23
PICTURE
The Duwamish? A guide marker for winter morning and evening flights of crows. Deceptively brown as it slithers over its silt bed. Carrier of flotsam, and overgrown by brambles and other invasives. Damned to indecision, reversing itself twice a day in late summer and fall, and carrying the occasional dead body first towards saltwater, then sending it back upstream as if realizing it would be immoral to dump it in the Superfund zone when the tide changes but not having any better ideas either. Apparently it’s possible to be an elitist snob about rivers, because that’s what I was, someone who looked down his nose at a stream running a course that geology, a volcano and more than a little help from mankind have dealt it. But I’m working on it, and salmon and salmon fishing have been that path.
I WOULD HAVE remained ignorant of
Along with fall Chinook, the river gets runs of coho, chums and pink salmon, and it once was among the region’s top steelhead waters. (ANDY WALGAMOTT) 24 Northwest Sportsman
NOVEMBER 2018 | nwsportsmanmag.com
the Duwamish – other than it being somewhere underneath one of the many bridges between home and the Columbia – had we not moved the headquarters of Northwest Sportsman magazine and our other titles from Seattle’s stadium district to an office park a Russell Wilson hail Mary away from the river in late 2013. By then, that year’s pinks, coho and Chinook had long become nutrients, and the chums and hatchery steelhead were already in its upper end, so it was too late for any before-work, lunch-hour or afterwork casts. I ignored 2014’s silver run, as I’m admittedly a rather late devotee of freshwater coho (saltwater is something else), so it really wasn’t until August 2015 that I began sniffing around the river with an eye for access points to odd-year humpies. Fishermen’s paths through the brambles took me down to a foreign water, one with a different smell, a dirty hem line that marked high tide on leaves trailing into the river, and the slickest looking mud you’ll ever see disappearing into unknown depths. Danish bogman country. Gingerly, I gave it a go and before long I thought I had found my footing, per se, figuring out how to catch pinks,
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PICTURE so I brought my young sons down for a slayfest. The fish would soon show me that in fact I did not know very much at all.
AFTERWARDS I BEGAN to discover that the river carries an amazing story. At one time the valley its lower end sidles through was actually a saltwater channel, a sheltered marine passage between what would become the cities of Seattle and Tacoma, according to the Burke Museum. In those days, returning salmon would have swam past what you might call “SeaTac Island” to enter the Duwamish. Eventually that channel was filled in by multiple mudflows that came off of Mt. Rainier and gradually pushed the mouth of the river north. In its Waterlines exhibit, the Burke says that 2,000 years ago, the estuary was right here in Tukwila, somewhere by the Fun Center, the Sounders’ practice facilities, Southcenter
The Duwamish once had five major tributaries – the White, Green, Black, Sammamish and Cedar – but only the Green still feeds it, though periodically a rush of water surges down the withered Black, seen here behind blackberry leaves and brightened by the reflection of early fall sunlight. (ANDY WALGAMOTT) Mall, the casinos, the golf course. But then a huge earthquake 11 centuries ago lifted the land on the south side of the ominous Seattle Fault by 20 feet, moving the river’s mouth to where it is on Elliott Bay today. At that time, the Duwamish was a far
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mightier river, collecting the runoff from a nearly 1,700-square-mile watershed. It stretched from Everett, Mukilteo and Mill Creek in the north, to Redmond and then Stampede and Naches Passes on the Cascade Crest in the east, to the massive Emmons Glacier on the northeast side of
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Northwest Sportsman 27
PICTURE
Mt. Rainier in the south. It was fed by the Sammamish and Cedar Rivers, which drained into Lake Washington and out as the Black River. And the Black met the combined ows of the Green and White Rivers at Fort Dent to form the Duwamish. The system was “highly productiveâ€? for salmon, according to the Burke, and Native American villages and longhouses once stood near the mouth and along Elliott Bay. The area where Longfellow Creek ows o of West Seattle might have even been the site of a tribal smelt ďŹ shery, the museum suggests.
DUWAMISH COHO AREN’T the easiest ďŹ sh
The river is tidally affected all the way upstream to Kent. Low late summer ows and 6-foot tide swing expose old tires and a culvert draining a nearby parking lot as it eases through Tukwila. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
to catch, at least in my experience the past three falls. It seems like I’ve primarily been engaged in moving product o of the rack at Outdoor Emporium and putting it up on the wrack that is all the submerged obstructions in the river. Needless to say, I’ve had plenty of time to ponder why coho jump. Just because?
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PICTURE The sheer thrill? To shake sea lice loose? We’ll never know for sure, but my leading theory is that it’s because they come up on unexpected underwater obstacles, like the branches I’ve decorated like Christmas trees with lost spinners and jigs. One coho after another does seem to leap in the exact same spots, I’ve noticed. As I was making a steeply slanted bank more hospitable to stand and cast from I came across alternating layers of brown-orange and dark gray soils. I’m no geologist but it suggested flood deposits from different sources. The farmers who began working the Green and Puyallup Valleys in the late 1800s had differing ideas about where the silty White should drain. Growers on the King County side would dynamite a logjam to get the river to flow west instead of north, and then farmers on the Pierce County side would blow up a bluff to force it north instead of west. It went on for decades, with rifle-armed patrols watching warily what the other side was up to. Then in 1906, “it all became moot,” reports Washington’s HistoryLink .org. One of Mother Nature’s infamous November atmospheric rivers sent such a flood downstream that it permanently shifted the White into the Puyallup River and its waters now meet Puget Sound at Commencement Bay instead of Elliott Bay. Not long after losing that major tributary, the Duwamish was abandoned by the bulk of three more – all of the Sammamish and
Longfellow Creek, a rill draining into the very lowest portions of the Duwamish, was where biologists first realized something in street stormwater runoff was particularly deadly to coho. The latest research suggests vehicle tire particles may be to blame. Anglers and the general public can help scientists by mapping (search for Coho Urban Runoff Mortality Syndrome in Puget Sound) where they find dead ones. (ANDY WALGAMOTT) Cedar and nearly the entire Black – when the ship canal was opened and Lake Washington dipped 9 feet. The watershed shrank to only 492 square miles. The Black is now just a trickle but it periodically and temporarily rises with murky water when water is let out of a nearby riparian area. Meanwhile, downstream, the estuary
Boeing 737 airframes on special railcars roll past the Duwamish. The docks at the river’s mouth make it a key point for exporting goods out of the Northwest and bringing products into the region. Tens of millions are being spent to clean up pollution and restore habitat in the drainage. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
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of the Duwamish was being filled in to make a deeper, better harbor for shipping interests. Development backed up the valley, like the river itself rises at high tide. Riprap and flood protection levees straight-jacketed its course. Whistle-stops and burgs became towns, towns became cities – a fake city even sprang up during World War II when the roof of Boeing’s B-17 factory on the lower river was camouflaged. The bombers that rolled out of the plant were instrumental in winning the war, but what also poured out of the facility in the form of PCBs and other effluents was devastating to the home front and the river there was declared a Superfund site. Cleanup wrapped up in 2015, with a mile’s worth declared “award-winning new habitat areas” by the EPA. Even as work continues on other polluted sites in the lower river, anglers are advised in nine languages not to eat
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resident fish or shellfish. Coworkers express amazement when I say I’m fishing for the table, but sea-going salmon are safe to eat. Yet even as contaminants are removed from the lower Duwamish, storms flush street runoff into the river and it’s now believed that something in our vehicles’ tires is especially toxic to coho.
THIS FALL MARKS the 50th anniversary of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and in our September issue I ran a photo essay on Northwest streams protected by the Congressional legislation signed by President Johnson in 1968. There’s the muscular Rogue and Sauk, the deeply remote Imnaha and Owyhee, and the fishy Chetco and Klickitat. The Duwamish couldn’t be more different. To fish it is to hear the roar, hammering and squeal of the cogs of the industrial world’s engines in motion, to smell the welds that holds it together, to see the railcars filled with oil that lubes and fuels it all. It will never join that prestigious club, but it has helped me see that messy, overlooked, down-on-theirluck rivers are important too. I’ve gone from watching out my office window for fall and winter floodwaters creeping into the parking lot to fretting about its summer water temperatures, and drawing up plans for fish habitat projects (Big Pic, June 2018). And it’s got something else going for it. Earlier this fall, guided by the advice of a fellow angler I met on the banks last year, I caught my first two Chinook out of the river. Duwamish kings were identified as among the most important stocks for our starving southern resident killer whales, as key as the salmon produced by the pristine and well-protected Elwha and Skagit Rivers. Yes, there are wild and scenic elements – Flaming Geyser State Park and the Green River gorge – but the portion that I’ve gotten to know is anything but. Yet in doing so I’ve come to appreciate that there are more kinds of rivers. I think that as long as there are salmon, and that salmon fishermen of all kinds are able to fish its runs, it will help keep the pressure on to continue to clean up and restore the Duwamish. I think we owe that to a river we have so altered. NS 32 Northwest Sportsman
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MIXED BAG
On The Recovery Trail Disabled Oregon vet finds purpose taking fellow warriors hunting and fishing. By Chris Cocoles
T
he veteran that Brett Miller had taken on one of the fishing trips he leads for wounded warriors wasn’t exactly opening up about anything – not his experiences in combat or if he was even enjoying himself that day. Miller, himself a disabled veteran
and founder of a Sisters, Oregonbased nonprofit, Warfighter Outfitters, understands that some of those recovering from a traumatic injury might not be willing to bare their soul right away, but this guy seemed content to not say anything. He’d been in trouble upon his return to civilian life and was in what’s known as Veteran’s Court when Miller signed over custody of
the man and brought him along to fish in Central Oregon, which he did without incident, but also without engaging in any conversation of any kind. “He just kept to himself and fished and was catching fish. A couple months went by and I asked him if he wanted to come to a fly fishing tournament with us.” Miller says. “We drove the whole way to New Mexico from
For many wounded and/or disabled veterans, escaping to the outdoors has proven cathartic. Warfighter Outfitters, an Oregon-based nonprofit headed up by Brett Miller (center, cowboy hat), takes them on fishing and hunting trips free of charge. (WARFIGHTER OUTFITTERS)
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MIXED BAG
Miller (center) accepted the Wounded Warrior Project’s George C. Lang Award for Courage in June 2017 in New York. He’s come a long ways since he essentially disappeared for over two years driving around the country seeking purpose in his life. (WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT) Oregon – like 12 hours. Nothing. Didn’t say a word, not a peep. He was just a mannequin, a crash-test dummy.” Miller’s team finished second and took home a trophy, yet the man remained as stoic as ever, barely speaking on the entire drive to the Pacific Northwest. So whatever therapeutic value Miller’s efforts rubbed off on the man, he didn’t seem comfortable sharing them. A year went by before Miller heard from him again. “All of a sudden on social media, he hits me up and says thanks. ‘I bought a boat and now I’m taking guys fishing on it,’” Miller says. “You never know the impact of what one day or one trip will have.” It’s that kind of feel-good story that has given hope to Miller, who was lucky to survive a 2005 attack in Iraq that left him permanently disabled and questioning 36 Northwest Sportsman
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what value his life would have. It turns out there was quite a lot. Like so many of his comrades, he just had to find it again.
THREE OF MILLER’S PASSIONS LEFT him fulfilled for most of his life. He was an accomplished firefighter, having logged 17 years of service around his Oregon home since his teen years. His other love back home was the outdoors, and his hometown of Sisters, a tiny community about 30 minutes northwest of Bend, was surrounded by some of the Pacific Northwest’s most spectacular hunting and fishing grounds. But Miller was also dedicated to the military, having joined the Army National Guard in 1998 and getting the call to go to combat in Iraq in 2004. The life he once knew would soon change forever in one sudden burst.
“There was a bomb that went off 6 feet from my (Humvee) door, and it made me blind in one eye, deaf in one ear and half-paralyzed on my left side,” Miller says. “I had a pretty bad traumatic brain injury with a brain bleed. That was the end of my military and firefighting career.” His wounds were so severe he spent three years at a California hospital and two more in outpatient treatment before he could be released. Miller spent countless hours in a bedridden haze. His physical injuries were obviously major, but it became more of a psychological chess match than anything else, not unlike so many others who’ve fought for the Stars and Stripes. “I think the physical standpoint is easier to deal with, because you know what’s wrong and there’s a way to fix it,” he says. “But the mental (side), a traumatic brain injury and the psychological impact, is a lot harder. You don’t have a litmus test to tell if you’re getting better or not.” As he had all the post traumatic stress symptoms, Miller was and is against including the word disorder in what’s commonly referred to as PTSD among wounded or disabled veterans. He calls his condition a “very normal reaction to a very abnormal situation.” With so much idle time in a hospital bed, it’s easy to think the worst. Everything Miller’s body allowed him to do in the past was no longer feasible. The long road to recovery was full of curves, switchbacks and potholes. “I kind of took it for granted that I was going to be a drifter and nomad. It was a career of 17 years of fighting fire, that’s gone and I can’t do that anymore,” he says. “It’s the only thing I knew how to do and liked to do. And I can’t do military anymore; that’s done and over. I thought I was going to be a mindless soul floating around life.” And like many disabled veterans, that’s exactly what Miller seemed to endure when he was finally released from the hospital. Miller says many in his shoes will go on “hiatus into the wilderness and try to find themselves.” He was no different. An avid motorcyclist, Miller bought a toy hauler for his truck, loaded his bikes in and drove Forrest Gump-style back and forth from
MIXED BAG
Warfighter Outfitters sets up everything from fishing trips ... the Pacific to the Atlantic three different times over two years. After spending so much time in hospitals, he was through taking orders from anyone else. His new journey was one of self-discovery, reflection and pondering the future. “I lived in RV parks, I’d hang out in shady hole-in-the-wall bars and have greasyspoon meals and I would just go explore. Just completely away from the public,” says Miller, who essentially became incognito, rarely if ever keeping contact with friends or family back home. He’d befriend a fellow RV park patron, ... To waterfowl and big game hunting outings. (WARFIGHTER OUTFITTERS)
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but most were retired and spent their time playing bridge or canasta. Card games weren’t going to cut it for Miller. He knew that hunting, fishing and the outdoors remained a passion and that they offered him a chance to find some peace. “I went on a couple (fishing and hunting) trips (with veterans) and saw the therapeutic and physical value of it and thought, ‘I want to do that.’”
WHEN VETERANS COME HOME from combat, their physical and emotional scars are best shared with those who can relate best: other veterans. For Miller, his time tramping
the American highways was needed but not how he wanted to ultimately function. His love for escaping whatever demons might have been lurking with a hunting rifle and fly rod turned out to be the remedy he’d been looking for. “And like most of these guys, you’re basically starting life over and have to clean the slate. So I thought, if there’s one thing I wanted to do with my second life, I’d probably want to be a guide/outfitter,” Miller says. Of course, such an ambitious goal can be expensive, but with a few other veterans who also wanted to pursue the dream, Miller sold his Harley around 2013 or so, and eventually Warfighter Outfitters was born and began to thrive, thanks to the hard work of those who came aboard as well as generous donors. Disabled veterans from all over the country – Miller’s group has also hosted participants from as far away as Australia and the United Kingdom – have gone on excursions free of charge. There are plenty of viable options around the organization’s Oregon base for predator hunts, jet boat fishing trips for steelhead on the Deschutes River, and Miller says a few lucky wounded warriors will win a tag draw for bighorn sheep on the Deschutes and a special trip to Idaho’s Hells Canyon to hunt elk. He reports that in 2016, Warfighter
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“I have wives, mothers and other family members calling or dropping me an email saying, ‘Hey, you took my son or husband out last week, and he will not shut up about how much of a good time he’s had,’” Miller says. “I definitely know it’s affirmation that we’re doing the right thing.” (WARFIGHTER OUTFITTERS) took 2,000-plus veterans afield in several Western states. “We have about $400,000 worth of equipment and we’re operating some of the most expensive trips for civilians that are completely free for veterans.” In June 2017, Miller traveled to New York
to accept the top honor from the Wounded Warrior Project, the George C. Lang Award for Courage, for his contributions toward helping his fellow soldiers who were injured on the battlefield. These days, nothing gets Miller more excited than the camaraderie he feels
when everyone gets together. “It gets to the point where every day, I can almost clock it depending on the conversation; people will really start talking about the nitty gritty and the things that are bugging them and how to deal with family or relationships,” Miller says. “But on that drive to the event, by the time we hit the boat ramp, all these strangers you’d swear are now complete best friends and have been all their lives.” It might not be the end-all “cure” for those troubled by their battlefield injuries, but it’s a positive step in the right direction. Miller can cite multiple cases of success from the downtrodden and depressed who have hitched a ride to a river or a duck blind. Miller’s former commanding officer turned to the bottle after his return and nearly lost everything. But after bonding on a trip with Miller, the officer finally sought the help he was looking for and is now thriving in Montana as an outdoors writer and marathon runner. Whenever a wife, girlfriend, parent or
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friend calls or emails Miller thanking him for giving a disabled or wounded veteran a reason to be happy and optimistic, Miller feels like he’s helping others figure out a purpose in life he once couldn’t seem to find. “I definitely know it’s affirmation that we’re doing the right thing,” he says. “You really don’t know how bad you’ve got it until someone else in the boat or truck has got it 10 times worse. It gives you a little more clarity and perspective. Maybe things aren’t so bad. ‘This guy’s missing both legs and he’s wading in a middle of a river swinging a fly for steelhead.’ And then that person who sees that and experiences it, he then becomes more of a caregiver mode of ‘I want to help.’” “The biggest thing I’ve found is I’ve learned more about my own recovery helping others than I have being part of a recovery process.” NS Editor’s note: For more info and to donate, go to warfighteroutfitters .org and like at facebook.com/warfighteroutfitters.
With bighorn sheep hunts one of the priciest in North America, running into the tens of thousands of dollars, an Oregon company is offering to take any veteran drawn for a Deschutes tag out for free. (WARFIGHTER OUTFITTERS)
GUIDED BIGHORN TRIP OFFERED
Warfighter Outfitters is calling on all veterans, disabled or otherwise, to apply for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hunt bighorn sheep in Oregon’s Deschutes units The Sisters-based company is offering to take any veteran who draws this rare tag for free and will provide a boat down the river, pack out, equipment, and rifle as needed. Veterans can apply for tags as soon as January 1. The hunts to apply for are: 543B1 E Deschutes R No. 1 543B2 E Deschutes R No. 2 543B3 E Deschutes R No. 3 543C1 W Deschutes R No. 1 543C2 W Deschutes R No. 2 543C3 W Deschutes R No. 3 If you draw a tag, contact Warfighter’s Brett Miller at (541) 7190071 or info@warfighteroutfitters.org. “We’re running veterans up and down the Deschutes on a daily basis, so we’ve pretty much named most of the sheep on the river,” said Miller, a retired Army sergeant who founded his nonprofit in 2013. “All we need is someone to draw a tag, and we can seal the deal with them in an hour.” For more information, to sign up for a trip or donate to the cause, visit warfighteroutfitters.org. –Aaron Sewall 42 Northwest Sportsman
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NEWS
Fish Commissions Urged Not To Rollback Columbia Salmon Reforms
A
head of a five-year review and public comment on Columbia salmon and steelhead reforms, fishing advocates were sending out red alerts the tide might be turning in the lower river. “There’s absolutely no reason to change right now, it makes no sense,” says former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber in one of several short videos posted last month on Keep Gillnets off the Columbia’s Facebook and YouTube pages. He was instrumental in the 2012 compromise that prioritized developing new alternative nontribal commercial gear in the mainstem, moving netting to off-channel areas near the mouth, and increasing allocation for sportfishers, moves also aimed to help more wild salmon and steelhead – some of which are listed under
In a screen grab from a video, former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber urges viewers to maintain the Columbia River salmon reforms. (GILLNETSKILL.COM) the Endangered Species Act – get through to upstream spawning grounds. The reforms have proven contentious, with a major 2017 disagreement between the states over ESA-listed Snake River fall Chinook impact allocations, with Washington wanting to move to the planned 80-20 nontribal sport-commercial split but Oregon sticking to 70-30.
In another video, Larry Cassidy, a longtime former Washington Game Commission member and respected conservationist, called the reforms a “smart move,” said they’re working well and there’s “no reason” not to continue them. The importance of Columbia Chinook was recently highlighted by a joint statefederal review that found springers, tules and upriver brights among key feedstocks for struggling southern resident killer whales. The Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association urged its members to check out Gillnetskill.com and asked them to contact Oregon’s and Washington’s governors, Kate Brown and Jay Inslee. The Evergreen State’s Fish and Wildlife Commission reviewed the policies last month and was scheduled to hold a meeting early this month with its Oregon counterparts on the issue.
Cathlamet Tops In Pikeminnow Reward Fishery
T
urns out, it was a good year for Cathlamet’s M.D. Johnson and his granddaughter to dabble in pikeminnow fishing. They tried their hand catching the Columbia River species for cash, making $85 in fairly short order. “A little off pace for the coveted $100 large,” the Northwest Sportsman writer emailed in July, “but who knows. I might hit a hot streak.” True, that’s a far cry from how good the top rods did on the Lower Columbia, but as it turns out, the waters down here were 2018’s unexpected hot spot. “It is the first time in the Pikeminnow Program’s 28-year history that the Cathlamet station has been the number one location,” noted Eric Winther, who heads up the state-federal effort aimed at reducing predation on salmonid smolts. The season wrapped up at the end of September with 25,135 pikeminnow turned in at the Wahkiakum County seat –
The Pikeminnow Sport Reward Program aims to reduce predation by the native species on salmon and steelhead smolts migrating through the Columbia hydropower system. (PIKEMINNOW.ORG) a whopping 8,000 more than any previous year back through at least 2000, and nearly as many as 2017 and 2016 combined. Cathlamet accounted for 14 percent of this year’s overall catch, which was 180,309, a bit above average since the program began in 1990. The Snake River’s Boyer Park station produced the second most, 22,950, down somewhat from the previous season, but notably, catch at the third-place location,
The Dalles, was less than half of 2017’s, with just 22,461. Winther says that pikeminnow anglers do best in low-water years, but fishing at The Dalles got off to a very slow start after the season opened in May due to spring runoff that tamped down catch rates at traditionally the best station and led to its regulars fishing elsewhere. “Despite less favorable river conditions, fishing success was slightly better this year
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NEWS
Fight Against Bucket Biologists Going High Tech
P
otential good news from the fight against bucket biologists. Montana fishery biologists using something called “forensic geochemistry” figured out the source and timeframe that walleye were moved into Swan Lake, in the state’s northwestern corner. And genetic material from northern pike in Northeast Washington is pointing to a different population source than the widely assumed one. Whether or not the new tools help lead to arrests is a good question, but they will at least serve as a warning shot across the bow of those who would illicitly move fish around.
SO WHAT MADE the Lower Columbia so
IN THE CASE of the Montana walleye, managers have concluded that at least two fish were driven over the continental divide on a 200-mile journey that occurred four springs ago, according to an early fall report in the Columbia Basin Bulletin. “Our findings now allow investigators to look at fishing license sales, webcams, and boat registrations around the Lake Helena area for the time period when the walleye were illegally introduced,” Samuel Bourett, an FWP researcher, told the emailed newsletter. In early 2016, several months after two walleye were gillnetted at Swan, Bourett’s agency and conservation groups offered a $30,000 reward for information on the illicit stocking of the lake, which provides critical habitat for Endangered Species Act-listed bull and cutthroat trout. They also began examining the otoliths of the fish, looking for chemical signatures that could pinpoint where they came from. In 2017 they built a database with walleye from 13 popular Montana waters. Out of that they determined the origin of the Swan Lake release. “Core to edge geochemical profiles of [two types of strontium] and (strontium/ calcium) ratios in the walleye otoliths revealed that these fish had been introduced to Swan Lake within the past growing season, and their geochemical signature matched that of walleye sampled from Lake Helena, Montana, located 309 46 Northwest Sportsman
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– 7.5 catch per unit effort vs. 7.4 in 2017 – although overall effort was down about 2,000 angler days,” he says. “Basically, even though there were some challenging river conditions early in the season, there were also some opportunities, especially in the lower river below Ridgefield and near the Cathlamet station. All in all, a good solid year, slightly above average.”
Davey McKern holds one of the first pike caught in Lake Roosevelt. Managers worry about the species getting into the anadromous zone below Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph Dams. (DAVEY MCKERN) road kilometres away,” write Bourett and Niall Clancy in a paper recently published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. “I think there is merit in doing more of this work,” noted Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Danny Garrett, who himself netted six walleye out of Lake Washington in 2015. Illegally stocking fish is generally punishable by fines, loss of license privileges and in some states, cleanup costs.
MONTANA BIOLOGISTS AREN’T the only ones tracking down where invasive fish are coming from. Dr. Kellie Carim of the U.S. Forest Service’s National Genomics Center for Wildlife and Fish Conservation is doing so for pike too. Northerns present a nightmare threat for Northwest salmon and steelhead managers as the species creeps its way down the Pend Oreille River and into Lake Roosevelt. They’re now at the mouth of the
good for anglers? “My theory on the increased Cathlamet pikeminnow catch is this: We had a long, hot, dry summer, as you know,”Winther says. “Tributaries in the Lower Columbia were lower and warmer than usual and oxygen levels were also likely lower than normal. This made many of the tribs somewhat inhospitable for both northern pikeminnow and for the many critters that they eat (crayfish, etc.). Since a lot of our catch from that location was smaller northern pikeminnow, I think that maybe there were a bunch of those tributary pikeminnow that dropped down into the mainstem.” He notes that August and September are usually the best months on the lower river and that top anglers typically target specific hot spots during peak weeks. “We also had a lot of effort at Cathlamet in 2018 and many of our regular anglers had their best ever harvest totals this year. In the end, I think that maybe 2018 river conditions just brought a lot of our top 20 anglers to the lower river at the same time of year as when a lot more of these tributary pikeminnow had dropped into the Columbia. Then high catch rates begot more effort which resulted in even higher catch rates and more effort,” Winther theorizes. Ridgefield led the way in terms of average catch with 15.9, followed by Lyons Ferry, 10.9, Rainier and Boyer Park tied at 10.1, Beacon Rock, 9.6, and Cathlamet, 9.0. Registered anglers are paid from $5 to $8 per qualifying pikeminnow, with $500 for tagged ones. This season’s top moneymaker earned $70,949 by turning in 8,686. The second highest banked $49,529 for 5,898. Managers remind participants that they need to turn in their vouchers by Nov. 15 to receive payment for their catches. Incidental catches included 15,094 smallmouth, 10,527 perch, 5,510 catfish and bullheads, and 1,297 walleye. For more, see pikeminnow.org.
NEWS Spokane River, according to a recent story – and anecdotal reports from anglers put them further down, in Lake Rufus Woods. With funding from a USDA Tribal College Initiative Grant, Carim has come to a rather interesting conclusion about where many of those pike actually originated. “The history we’ve told ourselves, the simplest explanation, is that the fish are flowing downstream from Western Montana,” she says. That is, from Noxon Reservoir, down the Clark Fork River into Idaho and through Lake Pend Oreille before arriving in Washington. “However, what the genetic analysis says is that those in Lake Roosevelt and the Pend Oreille River are closely related to those in the Couer d’Alene drainage,” Carim says. Rather than taking an aquatic highway, they most likely took a paved one, in a It was previously believed Northeast Washington’s northerns came down the Clark Fork system from Montana, but genetic work by Dr. Kellie Carim, here holding a bull trout, points to bucket biologists moving invasive pike overland from the Couer d’Alene Chain Lakes. (BEAU LARKIN)
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livewell up US 95 to I-90 to either Idaho 41 or US 2 to Washington 20 and the river. From there, their population built and the theory has been that in high-water years they were entrained out of the Pend Oreille into the Columbia River in British Columbia and then down Lake Roosevelt. Carim, whose work aims to identify where the pike are coming from to stop the flow into Eastern Washington, adds that DNA from other Upper Columbia and Pend Oreille fish aren’t in the database, meaning there are more potential sources out there too. “We definitely need to collect more samples. Some fish aren’t ‘assigning’ very well,” she says. Meanwhile, state and tribal managers have been teaming up to take a hammer to the species, netting some 18,000 out of the Pend Oreille and 1,800 from FDR, with anglers turning in the heads of more than 1,000 from the latter for cash too. Even with bucket bios likely to continue their illegal pike and walleye stockings, science and technology are increasing the odds that someone will get caught.
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NEWS Âś)LHOG 7R )HDVW¡ 3LFV 5HFLSH 6XEMHFW 2I +XQW 5HJV &RQWHVW Get your phones, digicams and 35mmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ready, Washington hunters. â&#x20AC;&#x153;From Field to Feastâ&#x20AC;? is the subject of the Department of Fish and Wildlifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 2019 annual hunting regs cover contest. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a three-part photo assignment, and as you might expect it involves an image of your kill in the ďŹ eld and a pic of its meat on a plate. The third element is the recipe you used to create the dish. Whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sea salt-and-rosemary-rubbed backstrap, venison penne with a vodka â&#x20AC;&#x153;pinkâ&#x20AC;? sauce (check out this issueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chef in the Wild column!) or the ridiculously delicious garlic buck heart John made at Deer Camp last fall, sharing the bounty is what itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all about. Send high-resolution images, short paragraphs with details about each photo and the recipe to photocontest@ dfw.wa.gov. Entry deadline is March 1, 2019. Deer backstrap (upper left, lower right), beef and pork decorate a holiday meat platter. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
Coquille Habitat Work %HQHĂ&#x20AC;WV )LVK )DUPHUV With a win-win habitat project mostly wrapped up, Oregonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Coquille Valley Wildlife Area reopened last month in time for fall and winter waterfowling.
An aerial image shows new channels for ďŹ sh habitat created on the Winter Lake Tract, part of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Coquille Valley Wildlife Area. (CBI CONTRACTING VIA NMFS) Restoration of the Winter Lake Tract will provide young Endangered Species Act-listed coho with 8 miles of winding tidal channels and will also help local cattle ranchers stay in business. The project essentially replaced failing
tide gates with new state-of-the-art ones so that salmon can take advantage of habitat during the wet season and livestock can graze it during the dry. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The tide gates, working with reconnected channels and new habitat will provide the best of both worlds,â&#x20AC;? the National Marine Fisheries Service said in a news story. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important because according to NMFS, 95 percent of the Coquilleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best salmon habitat has been lost. Their partners in the $2.7 million restoration project included the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Beaver Slough Drainage District, Nature Conservancy, and China Creek Gun Club. The feds forecast increased economic activity in the area because of the work. To get to the wildlife area, take North Bank Lane oďŹ&#x20AC; of Highway 42 between Coquille and Coos Bay. A free access permit is required and can be picked up at the kiosk in the parking lot.
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READER PHOTOS
Never give up! Boise’s Leon Ransom Jr. was down to his last day at Buoy 10 and fishing on a new reel after a king torched his old one when this 27-pounder bit a Super Bait behind a Big Al’s flasher. “This fish did not go down easy,” he reports. “It was a fierce battle.” (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST)
Dheyaa Hammadi shows off a nice Hanford Reach fall Chinook caught early last month. He was running a Seahawks pattern Brad’s Super Bait Cut Plug loaded up with tuna. (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST)
Before it closed for several weeks to help meet increased Chinook eggtake goals for orca recovery, July cover boy Jake Mandella (right) and buddy Grady picked up a quartet of kings on the Samish River. (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST)
Rick Itami was a bit pessimistic about fishing for Hanford Reach fall Chinook, given the lower run, but once there he found willing biters, including a 12-pound hen that will provide eggs for his steelheading adventures this winter and a 10-pound buck. (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST)
For your shot at winning great fishing and hunting products from Yo-Zuri and Browning, send your full-resolution, original images with all the pertinent details – who’s in the pic and their hometown; when and where they were; what they caught their fish on/weapon they used to bag the game; and any other details you’d like to reveal (the more, the merrier!) – to awalgamott@media-inc.com or Northwest Sportsman, 14240 Interurban Ave S, Suite 190, Tukwila, WA 98168. By sending us photos, you affirm you have the right to distribute them for use in our print and Internet publications. nwsportsmanmag.com | NOVEMBER 2018
Northwest Sportsman 53
READER PHOTOS
Xander Yarnold zeroed in on the rainbows last month at the Olympic Peninsula’s Leland Lake. He was using PowerBait while fishing with his grandpa, Jim Gilbertson, and brought a book to read as they worked on their limits. (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST)
Columbia summer steelhead have been in short supply in recent years, but Brady Broders still managed to find a hatchery keeper on the big river. (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST)
Have binky, will travel gravel roads for grouse. Reader Aaron Schmidt’s granddaughter Emery Kleynhans poses with a passel of Pacific County ruffies following a very successful early fall outing. (BROWNING PHOTO CONTEST)
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Julia and Isaac Murauskas know that they can bank on Banks Lake. They caught some nice yellow perch and walleye while trolling Barker Flats with a nightcrawler on a red Slow Death Hook with three green beads and a green Smile Blade behind a 3-ounce bottom walker. (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST)
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READER PHOTOS
Swiftsure Bank, off the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula, yielded this stout Chinook for Chad Huffman in August. (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST) Tony Haslip and friend Chris Clearman got into a nice grade of fall Chinook on a Washington Coast river that rhymes with mint juleps, limiting out while fishing eggs under a float. (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST)
A late-season all-depths weekend produced this 60-inch, 100-pound halibut for Andrew Perkins. He was fishing out of Newport. (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST)
No offense to Northwest waters, but the California Delta is one of the premier bass fisheries on the West Coast, and that’s where Mount Vernon’s Roger Davis caught this 11-pounder this past summer. (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST) 56 Northwest Sportsman
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Best of British Columbia
nwsportsmanmag.com | NOVEMBER 2018
Northwest Sportsman 57
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PHOTO
CONTEST
WINNERS!
Chris Clearman is the winner of our monthly Yo-Zuri Photo Contest. The pic he sent of himself and a very nice coastal fall Chinook wins him gear from the company that makes some of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best ďŹ shing lures and lines!
Aaron Schmidt is our monthly Browning Photo Contest winner, thanks to this adorable shot of granddaughter Emery and a tailgate full of grouse harvested in Southwest Washington. It wins him a Browning hat!
Sportsman Northwest
Your LOCAL Hunting & Fishing Resource
For your shot at winning Browning and fishing products, send your photos and pertinent (who, what, when, where) details to awalgamott@media-inc.com or Northwest Sportsman, PO Box 24365, Seattle, WA 98124-0365. By sending us photos, you affirm you have the right to distribute them for our print or Internet publications. nwsportsmanmag.com | NOVEMBER 2018
Northwest Sportsman 59
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Sound Seafood Dealer Jailed, Fined In Sea Cucumber Case
I
t’s not the typical poaching case you’ll see in these pages, but the owner of a Tacoma-area seafood processing business was sentenced in early fall to two years in prison for buying and selling 250,000 pounds of sea cucumbers illegally harvested in Puget Sound in recent years. Hoon Namkoong of Orient Seafood Production of Fife, “one of the leading wholesale buyers of sea cucumbers” in Washington, must also pay the state and tribes $1.5 million in restitution. That figure is equal to how much the 62-year-old’s company profited from selling the echinoderms to other businesses in the U.S. and Asia between August 2014 and November 2016. “This defendant lined his pockets by purchasing and selling illegally harvested sea cucumbers equal to as much as 20 percent of the total allowed statewide harvest,” said U.S. Attorney Annette Hayes in a press release. “This illegal activity damages the health of the Puget Sound ecosystem by endangering the sustainability of the sea cucumber population. Illegal harvesting undermines quotas designed to protect the resource and keep the Sound healthy for our children and generations to come.” We first reported on the case in the July 2017 issue after the joint state-federal
investigation came to light through a WDFW Director’s report. State fish police had begun investigating Namkoong’s company in late 2015 and found that the poundage of sea cucumbers being purchased from divers was “often as much as 40 percent more than was documented on catch reports (fish receiving tickets).” Falsifying fish tickets and illegally selling natural resources is a violation of the Lacey Act. A federal sentencing memorandum termed Namkoong “the hub and common player among at least four nontribal fishers and more than thirty Lummi tribal fishers who conspired to cheat the system,” and says he “profited far more richly from the scheme than any of his co-conspirators.” According to court documents, the value of the sea cucumbers has risen from $2 a pound 25 years ago to $5 a pound today with the rise of demand. Namkoong was buying product for $4.50 a pound with cash or checks. The activities came at a time that concerned fishery managers were lowering quotas for legal harvesters due to sea cucumber declines, but the illegal picking was actually increasing. “It is no wonder, then, that we have failed to see signs of recovery as a result
JACKASS OF THE MONTH
T
he author of Chuting Gallery, A Guide to Steep Skiing in the Wasatch Mountains might have shot himself in the foot in late summer. Andrew McLean, described as a “legendary skier,” and his wife Polly, an assistant city attorney, were charged with two misdemeanors after allegedly stealing hunting equipment put up in Utah’s mountains. After they were seen on a deer hunter’s trail camera toting two tree stands through the woods near Park City, bowman Sheldon Roberts spotted the same dog that was in an image in a nearby neighborhood and alerted police. Officers recovered a ladder stand and a tree stand as well as another trail cam at the McLeans’ two residences. Andrew McLean reportedly told Teton Gravity Research he’d “made a serious mistake,” had “no excuse” and was trying to atone for it. Meanwhile, Polly was placed on paid administrative leave, and gear maker Black Diamond yanked Andrew’s ski pass, or at least his brand ambassadorship.
MIXED BAG
By Andy Walgamott
Sea cucumber from Puget Sound’s Saratoga Passage. (PFLY, FLICKR, VIA WIKIMEDIA)
of the work of sea cucumber managers and the sacrifices of the lawfully compliant harvesters. Because we do not see recovery signs, we are forced to continue to reduce harvest. Therefore, the illegal activity continues to threaten the sustainability of the fishery and results in direct economic damage to lawful harvesters and seafood buyers,” wrote WDFW’s Henry Carson, who was the state manager when the poaching was taking place, in sentencing documents. The case has led to friction between fishery overseers. The newest Washington fish and wildlife officer’s bark just might be worse than her bite, just don’t tell the state’s bruins, cougars and other critters that! K9 Freya joined the ranks of WDFW’s Karelian Bear Dog Program in late summer, not long after another KBD, Cash, passed away after a long, successful career. The dogs are mostly used as bear deterrents – Freya will be trained by Officer Nicholas Jorg – but can help with poaching cases as well. K9 Mishka turned up key evidence in an investigation into a bull elk killed inside Olympic National Park. (WDFW) nwsportsmanmag.com | NOVEMBER 2018
Northwest Sportsman 61
By Andy Walgamott
“The illegal harvest scheme has damaged the complex relationship between state and tribal managers, policy makers, and enforcement,” Carson added. “The disagreements have not only been between tribes and the State, but also among tribes.” According to a federal sentencing document, nontribal divers involved in the scheme “received suspended or converted prison sentences for felony convictions (or in one case a gross misdemeanor),” while tribal divers “were charged with civil infractions.” “Despite not regularly fishing for sea cucumbers … the alleged illegal harvest has caused harm to our tribes and may continue to do so for years to come,” wrote Randy Harder of the Point No Point Treaty Council in sentencing documents, adding, “Damage done to the resource could stretch out for years.”
Let’s Go To The Video
N
ot all game warden work is an open and shut case. A bighorn sheep seized in late summer by Oregon wildlife troopers was later returned to the hunter after video evidence popped up showing her first shot had in fact killed it. The incident is detailed in the August monthly newsletter of the state police’s Fish and Wildlife Division, which says that a trooper out of the Lakeview office initially responded to a report that a ram had been shot by someone without a tag. The reporting individual said the shooter had twice fired at and missed the wild sheep, and then a person accompanying the tagholder had fired and downed the animal. When the trooper met the pair as they came out of the field with the bighorn, he found that the hunter had failed to validate her once-in-a-lifetime tag and cited her for it. While the other person admitted to shooting at the bighorn lest it get away, they claimed they had in fact missed it. Nonetheless, both the rifle and ram were seized by the officer. But the case wasn’t closed quite yet. “Hours later, a video from an unrelated hunter group was located and it showed the sheep was killed by the first shot, which was from the lawful tag holder,” OSP’s newsletter states. No word on the gun, but with the video evidence, troopers were able to return the sheep to the hunter.
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By Andy Walgamott
Washington Wardens Work Through Night To Save Elk
A
pair of Washington game wardens pulled an extra shift one weekend last month, and it had nothing to do with the very busy rifle deer opener. Rather, it was to untangle an elk – then make sure the heavily sedated animal didn’t die afterwards. It began on the afternoon of Oct. 13 when Sgt. Danyl Klump got a text from a Wenatchee-area landowner that a bull had wrapped itself in barbed wire up in the Stemilt Basin, so he tasked Officers Blake Tucker and Will Smith, who had both been on duty since that morning, with freeing the animal. “It had gone through a fence, ripped out a handful of fence posts and wrapped around a tree,” says Klump. It’s believed it could have been tangled up for as many as two days. Tucker and Smith arrived on the scene and drugged the seven-point – “You don’t want a massive bull elk thrashing its antlers” – and were able to get the wire off by 9 p.m., when they texted their boss that they should clear the incident in 45 minutes. So Klump was a little surprised to wake up early Sunday morning and see they’d just sent him a follow-up email that they were still with the elk. It had gone into heavy sedation, requiring Tucker and Smith to stay with it. “They maintained its breathing through the night. They used logs and sticks to prop it up,” Klump said. If they hadn’t, its lungs could have been crushed from the pressure and collapsed, killing it, he says. “When you sedate something, you take responsibility for it,” Klump says. He says that sometimes very large bears will react the same way, even when the recommended dosages are followed. Smith and Tucker took turns being with the elk and warming up in their rigs as coyotes howled through the night. He says that at one point the officers thought they’d lost the elk. The bull exhaled and didn’t inhale for a long while, but then took a shallow breath. As the elk came out of it, the officers
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Washington Fish and Wildlife Officers Blake Tucker (here) and Will Smith tended to a bull elk that got entangled in fencing, then went into heavy sedation and required propping up to keep breathing. (WDFW) helped it stand, then gave it a slap to get moving. “It slowly walked off, then ate some grass,” says Klump. It was a successful end to a workday that had begun the morning before. “They had basically a 23-hour shift,” the sergeant says. For Klump the rescue fit right into part of WDFW’s mission – “(to) preserve, protect and perpetuate fish, wildlife and ecosystems …” – even if it came at the most inopportune moment, the opening weekend of modern firearm deer season, the most popular single hunt in the state. “The timing was horrible, but you can’t leave a bull elk like that,” he says. Indeed, and these two dedicated public – and wildlife – servants didn’t. “They went way above and beyond,” Klump says of Smith and Tucker. “I’m very proud of these guys.”
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13.27-pounder Wins Everett Coho Derby
By Andy Walgamott
A
13.27-pounder held on to win late September’s Everett Coho Derby, the first held in three falls due to fishery closures because of low forecasted returns. And while the weather and salmon could have been more cooperative, organizers were still pleased to once again put on what is billed as the West Coast’s largest fishing derby. “We got back to offering a coho derby, sold almost 1,700 tickets, weighed over 500 coho, and had a great event!” said Mark Spada of the Snohomish Sportsmen’s Club, which along with the Everett Steelhead & Salmon Club puts it on. It also marked a return to awarding the Northwest Salmon Derby Series grandprize raffle boat in September, with Joshua Stokes of Post Falls, Idaho, scoring the fully loaded King Fisher 2025 Falcon package valued at $65,000 (see story next page).
MICHAEL RIAN OF North Bend was the lucky angler, catching his $10,000-derbywinning fish on Saturday, the bumpier but better of the two-day event. A longtime fisherman who bought his first boat at 11 with money from lawn-mowing jobs, Rian called the North Sound his home waters and said that he has fished the Everett derby off and on over its 25 years.
Silver SSi ilv lver err sizes siz izess were wer e e back back ba ck up up after affte terr 2015’s 2015 20 1 ’s derby der erby fish fishh camee in ca came in small. smal sm allll.. Michael Mic icha ich hael e Rian’s Ria ian’ ian’ n s winning winn wi nnin ingg fish in fish was fis ws wa nearrlyy 2 pounds near ne nearly poundds heavier heavvie heav he ier than ier tthhann that tha hat year’s year ye ar’ss winner, ar win inne ner,r,r lliike likely kely because bec ecau a see it au it found fooun undd better bett be tter tt er feeding er fee e di dingg conditions ding con ondi diti di t on ti onss inn the the he North North orth Pacific. or Paci acifi ac ific. c. (MICHAEL ((MI M CHA MI CHAEELL RIAN) RIA RIA IAN) N) N) For the 2018 edition, he and a fishing partner focused their efforts in the fishy southeastern corner of Marine Area 8-2, trolling from the Shipwreck north to Mukilteo. While their baits were down 50 to 90 feet, all the coho they hooked were at one precise depth, 66 feet. “Our group of friends who fish each year in Canada has caught a very high number of coho at that exact depth. We have tried to disprove the theory, and we keep losing!” Rian noted. On the business end were orange-label herring in Rhys Davis anchovy helmets
in gold, green and chrome and tandem 2/O and 3/O barbless hooks on 6-foot, 30-pound fluorocarbon leaders behind 11-inch flashers in black moon jelly and gold green. “With rain/heavy cloud cover, we chose dark-colored flashers and gear that would have better visibility given the low light conditions,” Rian said. With the outgoing tide and strong southwesterly winds and wind waves, the duo decided to fish south to north. “Everyone knows this about me, but I’m an O-dark-thirty fisherman. You can’t
UPCOMING EVENTS Rian details his Everett Coho Derby-winning catch during the Sept. 22-23 event’s award ceremonies.
Nov. 17-21, 23-25, Lake Pend Oreille Idaho Club Annual Thanksgiving Derby, Lake Pend Oreille; info: lpoic.org Dec. 15, Perch Assault, Smith Lake, Kila, Montana; info: facebook.com/PerchAssault To be determined, but possibly Sundays in January, Tengu Salmon Derby, Elliott Bay Jan. 19, NW Ice Fishing Festival, Sidley and Molson Lakes, Molson, Wash.
(EVERETT COHO DERBY)
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leave early enough for me! We had gear in the water at 6:15 a.m.; the winning fish was netted at 06:44, and others followed shortly after,” said Rian, reinforcing his theory that a solid percentage of salmon are caught at first light. “We knew we had a good fish once it was hooked, but boating it proved challenging given the weather,” he recalled. “We were all business and focused, given the weather and the steady action in a short window of time. I
did not realize the full size of the fish until we looked at it in the fish box a bit later. I have to say, both of our guesses were low! It was deceptively heavy.” The plan for the weekend was to fish Saturday, then hit the Seahawks home opener against the Cowboys, but as Rian watched the online leaderboard that evening he decided to try and upgrade on Sunday. Fishing was a wash, in more ways than one, and Rian and his buddy came in to derby headquarters after hooking only
one small silver. “We waited – me nervously! – at the derby for the Sunday weigh-in cutoff to come, and really didn’t know I won until my name was announced. I’m still getting my head around it for sure, and it’s been an amazing experience,” he said. When presented with an oversized check, he told MC John Martinis that he planned to use some of his winnings to buy new downriggers, music to the ears of Martinis, who runs an Everett tackle shop.
‘That Ticket Was Totally Worth It’ – Boat Winner
W
hen a (206) number popped up on the phone of North Idaho’s Joshua Stokes in late September, he let it go to voice mail as he didn’t know anybody from the Seattle area, then he went back to watching TV with his dad. Turns out it was Mark Yuasa on the line, calling with some good news for the longtime local angler: Stokes had won a prize in the Northwest Salmon Derby Series and Yuasa wanted to chat about it. Stokes, who literally cut his teeth as well as his angling chops on Lake Couer d’Alene Chinook, had entered midsummer’s The Big One Derby on the big Panhandle water and unbeknownst to him, his ticket had just been drawn 300 miles to the west as the series’ grand prize winner. His dad, Roy, figured he’d won a hat or T-shirt instead, but interested to find out what it was, and wondering if it just might be the fully outfitted Kingfisher 2025, Stokes called back to find out more. “(Yuasa) told me I won the boat and I was super spaced out and fully didn’t realize what happened to me,” Stokes said in a news release. “It still doesn’t feel real and I’ll know for sure once I get the keys to the boat.” The keys in this case include 150and 9.9-horsepower Hondas, EZ Loader trailer, Scotty Downriggers, Raymarine electronics, WhoDat tower and stereo, a package that all together is worth $65,000. For Yuasa and the Northwest Marine Trade Association, which puts on the
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Joshua Stokes poses with his brand new boat, the grand raffle prize in 2018’s Northwest Salmon Derby Series. (NMTA) series, it was a great way to end the season. Not only were the Everett and Edmonds Coho Derbies back in the lineup after a two-year hiatus, but the Brewster Salmon Derby joined the team. According to Yuasa, 6,585 fishermen purchased tickets for the 14 events. It also marked the second year in a row that a Big One Salmon Derby entrant walked away with the grand prize. Last year’s winner was Gary March of Worley, Idaho, who got the news not long after his truck and boat had gone off a 30-foot embankment during an eastern Montana hunting trip. Stokes has fished Lake Couer d’Alene
with his father since he was 3, landing kings to 28 pounds, and they’re both members of the Lake Coeur d’Alene Anglers Association. “This was the first year I bought a ticket to the Big One Derby since I was 15 years old, and that ticket was totally worth it now,” he said for a press release. He is the 15th grand prize winner, according to NMTA. The derby series is sponsored in part by Scotty, Tom-n-Jerry’s Marine, Outdoor Emporium/Sportco, Silver Horde and Northwest Sportsman, among others. For more, see NorthwestSalmonDerby Series.com.
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finishers included Glen Velasquez of Everett, second, 12.93 pounds, $5,000; Trevor Judson of Monroe, third, 12.81 pounds, $2,500; Roy White of Everett, fourth, 12.38 pounds, $1,000; and Brak Kelly of Redmond, fifth, 12.3 pounds, $500. Of note, the top 16 fish were all bigger than 2015’s winning coho, an 11.31-pounder, while nine were larger than 2014’s, an 11.96. The average size of the fish was also up, 7.04 pounds versus the anemic 4.54 pounds of three years ago. That season’s silvers were at sea during the height of The Blob and associated poor ocean conditions. “The size (of this year’s coho) is consistent with major food sources becoming more plentiful,” noted North Sound state fisheries biologist Brett Barkdull. “Northern copepods were more plentiful, for instance.” While the derby found good numbers of coho in Puget Sound and headed up the rivers, the overall catch was just 548. “The river fishing had been great all week, but on the weekend was very tough, for whatever reason,” organizer Spada noted. “I think this just proves what a lot of us already knew: Coho are a difficult fish to predict behavior. Weather changes seem to affect them more than any other fish. There were some very good fisherman who struggled, to say the least.” This year’s derby had 1,694 adult and 201 youth participants. In the kids division, it was literally neck and neck for first and second. Baron Kuehlwein and Alex Hotchkiss both came in with 10.79-pounders, but because Kuehlwein’s went on the scales two minutes before Hotchkiss’s he won $300 while Alex settled for second and $200. Madison Vanzandt came in third with a 9.11, good for $100. So many more prizes were also given out – largest fish caught on Silver Horde and Dick Nite gear; best father-son and mother-daughter catches; youngest and oldest anglers to weigh fish; biggest landed by active duty military; fisherman from the furthest away; and more. Proceeds benefit fishery enhancement projects, including the rearing and release of salmon, nutrient enrichment and triploid trout stocking, as well as youth angling.
Con t ac t Joe ( 253 ) 297- 0334 www ww w ww ww w.ba .ba barr b ba arr rrettm rre r ettm re tmar tm ari rin ine nec neco n e ecco.com com inf in nfo n o@b o@ @b barr arrr ett ar t mar tt marine marine ineco co.com
Boat Handling in a Head Sea
T Ocean 2585 Barrett LC2895
Landing Crafts 23 - 34 + Ocean 22- 37 Inspected & Documented
he Pacific Ocean creates large wind waves, as fishermen we are often running directly into these waves or running into a “head sea”. With a few tips we can improve the ride and minimize the impact on the passengers and crew. A “bow down” running attitude of your vessel is important to slice through the seas. Position moveable ballast weight (coolers, fishing gear, etc) forward. Use trim tabs and negative engine trim to force the bow down. This will allow the sharp entry of your bow to slice through the waves. In a particularly large head sea it is advisable to quarter the waves at an angle, applying engine power at the bottom of the swell and easing back on the throttle as the vessel crests the wave. Fuel usage will increase to some extent, although having the boat propped correctly should minimize the additional fuel usage. The engine should be able to reach the manufacturer’s recommended WOT rpms with a fishing load and full tank of fuel. Often vessels are propped lightship and when running in ocean conditions with a load are over propped creating excessive fuel consumption. A vessel designed to operate safely in ocean conditions will have a large proud bow with a sharp entry combined with a high dead-rise at the transom. An enclosed pilothouse keeps the crew safe and dry with ocean rated windshield’s. This is one instance where weight and heavy duty construction allow the boat to punch through the seas year after year. As always the occupants should have on the proper life preservers as well as working communications and safety equipment.
253-297-0334 www.barrettmarineco.com info@barrettmarineco.com nwsportsmanmag.com | NOVEMBER 2018
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OUTDOOR
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Elk River Bubble Chinook opener Last day to hunt blacktails in Oregon’s Coast, Cascade centerfire areas Oregon Rocky Mountain bull elk centerfire second season and Zone 1 snipe openers; Western Washington rifle elk, and statewide duck, coot and snipe reopeners; ODFW Art Show and Duck Pond Cellars’ Conservation Cuvee Lot 6 wine release party, Dundee – info: dfw.state.or.us 3-4 Extended Western Oregon youth deer season 3, 10 Steelhead Fishing Workshop ($, registration), Glenn Otto Park, Troutdale – info: odfwcalendar.com 5 Southwest Oregon Zone goose reopener 10 Northeast Washington late rifle whitetail opener; Oregon first Coast bull elk and Southwest Oregon late bow deer openers; NSIA’s 19th Annual Washington Banquet fundraiser, Twin Lakes Country Club in Federal Way – info: nsiafishing.org 15 Washington late rifle blacktail hunt opener in select units; Last day to hunt bear across Washington and Westside elk 17 Western Oregon late bow deer and second Coast elk openers; Oregon Northwest Permit Zone goose reopener 21 Late bow deer and elk opener in many Washington units 23-24 Oregon Free Fishing Weekend 25 Last day of Canada, white and white-fronted goose early season in Oregon’s Klamath, Lake, Harney and Malheur Counties Zone 30 Last day of Eastern Oregon bear, Northeast Oregon and Blue Mountain Zones general fall turkey, and Western Washington pheasant (except select release sites) and quail hunting seasons
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RECORD NW GAME FISH
With 2018 growing long in the tooth, we thought we’d list Idaho, Oregon and Washington fish records that have stood the test of time. Year 1910 1943 1947 1949 1954 1956
1961 1964 1966 1967 1970 1971 1973
Species Chinook* Coastal cutthroat* Gerrard rainbow Bull trout Burbot Black crappie Chinook* White sturgeon Bull trout Coastal cutthroat** Chinook* Coho* White crappie Steelhead Mackinaw Yellow perch Striped bass
* Sea-run; **Freshwater
Pds. (-Oz.) 83 6.00 37 32 14 4.5 54 394 22.5 12.00 70.5 25-5.25 4-12 35-8 57.5 2-2 68
Water Umpqua R. (OR) Carr In. (WA) Pend Oreille L. (ID) Pend Oreille L. (ID) Kootenai R. (ID) L. Washington (WA) Salmon R. (ID) Snake R. (ID) Tieton R. (WA) L. Crescent (WA) Sekiu (WA) Siltcoos L. (OR) Gerber Res. (OR) Columbia R. (OR) Priest Lake (ID) Brownsmead (OR) Umpqua R. (OR)
Angler Ernie St. Claire Budd Johnson Wes Hamlet Nelson Higgins P.A. Dayton John W. Smart Merrold Gold Glenn Howard Louis Schott W. Welsh Chet Gausta Ed Martin Jim Duckett Berdell Todd Lyle McClure Ernie Affolter III Beryl Bliss
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The LeeLock Magnum Skeg drastically improves steering performance and straight-line travel of bow-mounted electric trolling motors, a game FKDQJHU IRU VDOPRQ Æ&#x201C;VKLQJ $Q RYHUVL]HG VNHJ PDGH RI DQRGL]HG DOXPLQXP WKH [ [ LQFK XQLW is available for most 12-, 24- and 36-volt Minn Kota and MotorGuide motors. Batteries run longerr with the LeeLock Magnum Skeg. www.leelock.com
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(503) 620-2195
COLUMN
The waters of Portland Harbor attract both sturgeon and kayak-borne sturgeon fishermen in winter months. Brad Hole shows off a diamondside before release. (BRAD HOLE)
Super Fun In A Superfund Site I
f you’ve been kayak fishing in the Portland/Vancouver area for any length of time, it’s a good bet THE KAYAK GUYS that you’ve at least Kayak Guys heard of Jurassic Park. BBy M Markk VVeary As the name implies, it’s the haunt of giant dinosaurs. Well, maybe not dinosaurs, per se, but
rather a species of fish that survived the Jurassic period and actually dates all the way back to the Triassic, some 250 million years ago. We’re talking, of course, about the mighty white sturgeon and their infamous wintertime Superfund hideout – the Portland Harbor.
JURASSIC PARK ENCOMPASSES the Swan Island lagoon out to Waud Bluff, below
the University of Portland campus, and across to the dry docks of the Swan Island Shipyard. It’s the latter landmark that validates the area’s nickname, as fishing from a tiny plastic kayak in the shadows of massive oceangoing vessels and even more massive dry docks instills the feeling that you’re in the presence of dinosaurs. As if their sheer size wasn’t enough of an intimidator, these floating leviathans growl,
nwsportsmanmag.com | NOVEMBER 2018
Northwest Sportsman 79
COLUMN Connor Crowley displays the best way to fight a sturgeon, with the rod pointed towards the front of the kayak. Battling a fish to the side could result in an unexpected swim in very cold waters. (MARK VEARY)
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hiss and scream to the work of grinders, sand blasters, sirens and steam whistles. Obviously, this isn’t the type of place you go to immerse yourself in nature. This is where you go when you need to feel the deep bend of a meat stick being tested to its limits. This is where you go to hunt dinosaurs. While kayakers weren’t the first to discover the wintertime potential of the Swan Island lagoon and shipyard, the area has become a significant component of the Northwest kayak angling culture of camaraderie, limits pushing and giving back. It’s a proving ground of sorts, an easy-access destination that’s all but guaranteed to test a person’s mettle against the raw power of massive fish. For that reason, it has also become a regular meet-up location for Northwest Heroes on the Water chapters (fostering the healing and reintegration of wounded veterans thru kayak fishing), The Fallen Outdoors (facilitating organized hunting and fishing adventures for veterans past and present) and American Hero
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COLUMN Sturgeon actually date back to the Triassic period, which occurred before the Jurassic. (ROBERT PEREA)
Adventures (providing our nation’s finest, including military, law enforcement, fire, EMS and federal agents and their loved ones with adventures of a lifetime).
ASIDE FROM THE heavy concentration of fish, what differentiates Jurassic Park from all other Willamette sturgeon fishing holes is that it provides a place to target this armor-plated game fish safely outside the mainstem’s flow. A small anchor or any of the dozens of spill booms surrounding the The fish will signal that they’re done fighting and are ready for release by rolling over on their back. (ANTHONY STICKLE)
big ships can be used as a kayak tie-off point from which to fish. The “sturgeon general,” Robert Perea, a longtime volunteer with veterans groups and de facto mayor of Jurassic Park, takes full advantage of the slack water. “When there’s no wind,” says Perea, “I usually just ‘hover’ fish,” using only his cannonball sinker to hold position. Throughout the tide cycle, schools of sturgeon will migrate into and out of the lagoon. Savvy kayak anglers will start watching their fishfinder as soon as they depart the Swan Island boat launch, searching for a plume of fish arches near the bottom. “The fish could be anywhere,” says Perea. “Sometimes the fishing is hot way back in the lagoon. All you’ve got to do is [find a school and] hover over that spot.” When you find the marks, bait up and make your drop. If you’re not getting bites in the first 10 to 15 minutes, move on to the next cluster of marks.
TERMINAL TACKLE FOR this fishery is dead simple. “You don’t need to bring a lot of tackle,” says Perea. “I bring out a couple of hooks,
some weight and a tray of bait and catch a bunch of fish. Pretty dang simple.” To be more specific, the standard rig consists of a 4/0 to 8/0 barbless “J” hook on an 80-pound Dacron leader, held to the bottom by 4 to 8 ounces of lead on a sliding swivel. As for bait, herring and anchovies are the go-to offering, but squid, sandshrimp and earthworms can work just as well. When it comes to gear, most people go with a medium to heavy jigging rod backed by a levelwind or heavy baitcasting reel. I prefer a Daiwa Saltiga 6-foot-6 medium-power jigging rod with a Saltist levelwind or Lexa 300 baitcaster. Even though these fish can weigh well in excess of 300 pounds, there’s little advantage to using heavier gear from a kayak.
LANDING STURGEON FROM these small watercraft is an adventure that often includes a fish-propelled tour of the lagoon. To ensure success and minimize the chances of taking a swim, keep your rod tip pointed at the front of your kayak. Nearly all swims begin with an angler’s rod pointed perpendicular to the kayak. When the sturgeon decides that it’s ready for release, it will roll on its back at the surface, allowing easy access to the hook. While everybody loves a glory shot of their conquest, remember that Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife rules require that any fish over 54 inches long be left in the water. In this day of Facebook and Instagram hero selfies, the temptation to drag a 200-pound dinosaur into your lap for the perfect profile picture is strong. Just remember that demonstrated abuses of fisheries get them shut down. Perea gives event participants and friends alike the same advice: “Show some respect. Don’t mess with the ships or the dry docks … [and] ... don’t drag oversize fish out of the water for a pic.”
AND NOW FOR the requisite notes on safety: It’s wintertime and you’re chasing giants, so you should be dressed for immersion in 38-degree water. Also, the Swan Island dry docks are often used to service Navy vessels. When a kid with an M16 tells you to respect the 200-foot safety zone, you might want to listen. NS 82 Northwest Sportsman
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FISHING While this season’s low tides don’t align well with a traditional New Year’s Eve dig, Saturday of the long Thanksgiving weekend and the Saturday before Christmas will likely see openers. (MARK YUASA)
Dig Into Fall Razor Clams Here’s how to make the most of Washington’s upcoming openers for tasty coastal shellfish. By Mark Yuasa
T
here is nothing more satisfying than digging razor clams along the Washington coast, and about 250,000 diggers are expected to pursue these fine-tasting shellfish during the 2018-19 season. Being a native Washingtonian I’ve had the splendor of introducing others to razor clam digging, which in the fall and winter comes with challenges, since low tides often occur during hours of darkness. “Digging at night is a unique and exciting experience,” says Dan Ayres, the head Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife coastal shellfish
manager. “It is a magical time when you come across all the beaming lights (from lanterns, flashlights and head-lamps) stretched for miles along the beaches. It can look like a swarm of fireflies.” The most important factors during nighttime digs are to always be prepared for unexpected, precarious situations; watch the weather forecast, especially surf and wind advisories; and have an emergency plan in hand before heading out.
SEVERAL YEARS AGO, a group of friends – with a handful of young kids in tow – had a rather frightful experience during a winter trip on an extremely
Washington’s fall-winter razor clam season got off to a great start last month, with diggers averaging 14.2 each at Twin Harbors and Mocrocks. Those two beaches will be the real workhorses this year. (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST)
rainy and windy night at Copalis Beach near Ocean Shores. It was pitch black as they jumped out of their vehicles, hastily grabbing gear and rushing toward the roaring surf that could be heard, but not seen about several hundred yards in front of them. nwsportsmanmag.com | NOVEMBER 2018
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FISHING
“Digging at night is a unique and exciting experience,” says state shellfish manager Dan Ayres. “It is a magical time when you come across all the beaming lights stretched for miles along the beaches. It can look like a swarm of fireflies.” And when a full moon pops up, as it did last December for Rob Browning at Copalis Beach, it’s all the more special. (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST)
About halfway down to the beach they noticed that walking in a straight line in total darkness was difficult, and then they lost sight of their vehicles among the several hundred of others parked behind them. Eventually, they found the pounding surf as it rushed up the beach, quickly soaking a few from head to toe. Excitement settled in, although it was a struggle to find the little doughnut-shaped dimples known as “shows” that are the telltale sign a clam is hiding underneath. 88 Northwest Sportsman
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They strolled aimlessly along the beach surrounded by hordes of other diggers, and after a less-than-stellar couple of hours each had dug up some clams. The tide started to turn, so they called it a night. Then came some scary moments. First off, one of their young ones became separated from the group and it was a struggle to see where they had parked. Their shouts for the lost kid were drowned out by howling wind and pounding surf. Panic set in and they split up into
two groups. One group with the other kids in tow headed to the vehicles, while the rest looked in vain. Shortly afterwards came a cellphone call that the youngster had somehow found his way back to the car with the help of other diggers. A wave of relief set in, and then a four-wheel truck drove by the other group still on the beach with its bright lights illuminating them back to their vehicles in the distance. They ended up with about 28 decent-sized razor clams and learned some critical safety lessons along the way. “I can’t stress the importance of being aware of your surroundings, especially during nighttime digs,” Ayres says. “Always face and keep your eyes on the surf when digging and never turn your back against it. Before heading out, check the NOAA web site (ndbc.noaa.gov/data/ Forecasts/FZUS56.KSEW.html) for surf predictions. It is rare in the fall and winter that we don’t have bad weather. If it looks bad, stay home because we offer many other digging dates well into spring. Safety always comes first.” For the most part those heading to the coast won’t encounter dire situations and digging and strolling the coastal beaches is a thrilling experience, but being prepared will make it more enjoyable.
GOOD WEATHER AND nice conditions greeted diggers who ventured out on last month’s three-day opener – Oct. 11-13 – the first of the 2018-19 season, with many digging up oodles of razor clams. “It wasn’t the greatest low tide series, but good weather and no surf made for easy digging,” Ayres reports. “The average was 14.2 clams per person,” he says. “We had a little more than 3,100 diggers split pretty equally between Twin Harbors and Mocrocks (on Oct. 11).” Digging at Twin Harbors and Copalis on Oct. 12 and at Twin
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FISHING Whether you’re clamming in winter’s long night or under spring’s sun, safety and warmth are priorities on the beach. Keep an eye on the waves and wear layers and waders to stay as dry as possible. (MARK YUASA)
Harbors and Mocrocks on Oct. 13 saw equally good success by diggers who had near limits. “I thought the clams would be on the smaller size, but the average at Copalis was 4.4 inches,” Ayres adds. Razor clam population assessments taken this past summer by WDFW showed improvements on Twin Harbors, Copalis and Mocrocks. The only sour point was Long Beach on the southern coast, which showed a dramatic decline of largersized razor clams and this appears to be a “gap year.” Clam populations are the lowest seen in more than a decade here, and likely won’t see a recovery until the 2019-20 season. This will allow only one day to dig during the fall/winter portion of the season, with a few more days likely in the late winter/ spring timeframe. The total allowable harvest share of razor clams in 2018-19 is 333,557 with a projected daily harvest of 90 Northwest Sportsman
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60,000 at Long Beach; 1,377,125 with 35,000 at Twin Harbors; 860,768 with 50,000 at Copalis; 1,508,774 with 40,000 at Mocrocks; and 777,386 at Kalaloch with no projected harvest since no digging dates had been set. Digging in the 2017-18 season generated a harvest of 2.8 million razor clams for 257,000 digger trips and 11.0 clams per digger trip. A breakdown of last season showed diggers at Long Beach averaged 8.9 clams per trip for 16 days of digging (11 days in 2017-18 and 94 in 201617); Twin Harbors averaged 11.3 for 18 days (46 and none); Copalis averaged 13.1 for 12 days (33 and 18); and Mocrocks averaged 12.5 for 20 days (35 and 26). All upcoming digs are dependent on testing for domoic acid – a natural marine toxin produced by certain types of marine algae – which has remained very low. Clams with high amounts of marine toxins can be harmful or even fatal if consumed in
sufficient quantities. Domoic acid levels remain well under the 20-parts-per-million cutoff, ranging from 0.0 to 1.0 ppm, according to recent testing. WDFW announces final approval about one or two weeks before each series of digs. Fall and winter razor clam digs occur during evening low tides, while springtime digs occur during morning low tides. “We’ve been getting calls wondering why there won’t be any digs around New Year’s Eve and unfortunately the low tides during that time aren’t ideal,” Ayres says. “We have no control over Mother Nature. The good news is we can offer digs during Thanksgiving and right before Christmas for those who want to bring some clams home for the holidays.” The rest of this year’s proposed digging dates are: Nov. 8, 10, 23 and 25 at Twin Harbors and Mocrocks; Nov. 9, 11 and 22 at Twin Harbors and Copalis; Nov. 24 at Twin Harbors, Copalis and Mocrocks; Dec. 6, 8, 21 and 23 at Twin Harbors and Copalis; Dec. 7, 9 and 20 at Twin Harbors and Mocrocks; And Dec. 22 at Long Beach, Twin Harbors and Mocrocks. More digs will be scheduled to occur after the New Year and into spring. For details, visit wdfw.wa.gov/ fishing/shellfish/razorclam.
RAZOR CLAM GEAR is relatively cheap and in fact a lot of people will most likely have some stowed in their closet or garage. Add to that some basic knowledge and you’re on the way to success! 1. To dig, you’ll need a clam shovel or razor clam gun (found at most tackle and outdoor stores) with a minimum outside diameter of 4 inches or 4 inches by 3 inches if elliptical. Don’t expect success with just a garden shovel. A clam gun is the easiest to
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FISHING
Success! A clam digger shows off a particularly nice-sized razor. Last month’s opener found bigger shellfish than expected at Copalis Beach. (MARK YUASA)
extract clams from the sand. Many say that with practice a shovel can be a fun and effective way to gather clams. 2. Bring a bucket or clam net, as a rule states each digger must have a separate container.
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3. Fall and winter digs occur in the dark, so it is vital to carry a flashlight, headlamp and lantern. If you bring the kids, keep them closely by your side. “There are a lot of devices out there and powerful lantern works
best,” Ayres says. “Headlamps are getting better, but one issue I have is the beam of light is limited since you’re looking straight down at the sand. You need to have a better sight distance and there’s a new chest light that has a better angle.” 4. One should never leave the house without a waterproof jacket and pants, and a layer of warm clothes underneath. Also bring a spare pair of clothes just in case you get soaked. 5. Rubber boots or waders are very important. Diggers heading to the surf line will run into huge puddles of standing water that resemble small ponds, as well as the rush of incoming waves. 6. Beaches are located near towns like Westport, Tokeland, Seabrook, Ocean Shores, Moclips and Long Beach that offer amenities and accommodations. 7. Newbies can take guided clamdigging tours at Iron Springs Resort
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on Copalis Beach. Cost is $50 per adult and $25 per child. Packages include tour, license, gear, instruction and more. Accommodations aren’t included and for details, go to ironspringsresort.com. 8. The best digging occurs about one to two hours before low tide. Along the water’s edge look for shows, indentations that may appear like dimples, keyholes or doughnut holes. The old saying is the bigger the hole, the bigger the clam. 9. Some diggers will stomp on the sand and pound their clam gun or shovel to see where clams spew out water. On rainy days or where foot traffic is heavy it might be harder to see the shows. 10. Be sure to dig quickly – clams will burrow down if disturbed. Most can be found 8 to 24 inches under the surface.
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are other rules to be aware of: • Diggers must keep the first 15 dug regardless of size or condition. • Diggers age 15 and older must have a license. • During evening low tides, digging is allowed from noon to midnight each day. Morning digs in the spring time are open from midnight to noon. • Cover holes with sand after digging. • Wastage kills millions of clams each season. WDFW says 80 to 90 percent of wasted clams will eventually die because their shells are broken, necks are cut off or they’re improperly replanted into the sand.
NOW THAT YOU’VE dug your clams, clean them as soon as possible. They don’t have to be left in water to purge sand like other clams. Keep them cool by placing them in a refrigerator or putting them on ice right away. There is lots of information and “how to” clean razor clams on WDFW’s website, which also has my pan-fried panko clam recipe and others. NS
Late Fall Opportunities Fall is in full swing and brilliant deciduous colors decorating the countryside have now transitioned to amber and rusts. While the rest of the world farewells their celebrated summer of recreation, PNW sportsmen welcome new opportunity the waning year affords.
“Two big perfect fall coho!”
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Angler and hunters alike are tuning their tools and preparing for the year’s harvest. Some fall salmon rivers are wrapping up while other late run rivers are just getting going! Southwest Washington area rivers are now beginning to get the larger northern “hooknose” silvers which can average in the midteen size range and even reach the 20-pound mark on rare occasions. Early component winter steelhead runs also traditionally begin in rivers like the Skykomish near Monroe, Washington. Typically, the third week of November will see the Sky as well as other Western Washington rivers get going on these early hatchery fish. If that is not enough, waterfowl hunters look forward to the first heavy rains and cold air of November to supercharge migrating duck populations to head south past their waiting blinds. Opportunity abounds in November and navigating to premo locales is always easier when you have the right equipment. The 17- or 20-foot Wooldridge Alaskan XL model is a shallow-running boat that is designed to handle fall’s many moods, from fishing shallow rivers to shooting in the shallow flats in an invisible camo-clad duck blind. Enjoy the outdoors this fall; the year is far from over! This brought to you by Wooldridge Boats and sportsmen who build them. Always check the WDFW website for rule updates and changes. Have fun and be safe out there!
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COLUMN
Plugging Chetco Chinook I
f you crave big fall Chinook, fish that might tip your scale to 50 pounds or more, now would be the BUZZ RAMSEY time to visit the Chetco. Located on Southern Oregon’s coast, the river’s run peaks in early to mid-November, making it a destination for anglers from throughout the Northwest and beyond.
According to professional fishing guide Andy Martin of Wild Rivers Fishing (206388-8988), the majority of Chetco salmon are 4-year-old fish that average 20 to 25 pounds. However, 20 percent of each yearclass returns as 5-year-olds averaging 35 to 40 pounds, with some bouncing the scale at 50 pounds or more. Over the last dozen years of guiding clients on the river, Martin has netted at least one Chinook at, approaching or above 50 pounds each and every fall. His largest to
date is a 65-pound monster taken during the later portion of the 2011 season.
ORIGINATING IN THE Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, the Chetco flows freely for 55 miles before reaching the Pacific at Brookings. The river hosts a strong, self-sustaining wild run of fall Chinook that according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife can be as high as 15,000 adults. In addition, ODFW supplements the run with an additional 125,000 fingerling-sized Chi-
Better book it to Brookings if you’re looking for big fall Chinook this time of year. Jackie and Carl Howe of Bend landed this pair last fall on the Chetco River during a guided trip with guide Andy Martin of Wild Rivers Fishing. They were running 5.0 MagLip plugs. (WILDRIVERSFISHING.COM)
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COLUMN You can count on a few Chetco kings to approach or top the 50-pound mark, and in mid-November 2017, Junction City’s Shannon Lemieux brought in a 47-inch, 48-pounder while fishing with Martin. It bit a HawgNose FlatFish. (WILDRIVERSFISHING.COM)
nook that are liberated in the lower river, where they imprint and provide a two-fish limit opportunity for sport anglers as returning adults. The Chetco offers excellent access for bank anglers, thanks to the City of Brookings and state of Oregon owning a large section of the lower river. Called Social Security Bar, this nearly 2-mile stretch of public access is where many bankbound anglers plunk Spin-N-Glos, sometimes in combination with bait, from shore when the river is running 3,500 cubic feet per second or higher, and drift and float fish when the water is lower. In addition, the Chetco offers drift boaters excellent access, with several putin and take-out sites available. The most popular drift is from Loeb Park to Social 102 Northwest Sportsman
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Security Bar, a 5- to 6-mile float and which, according to Martin, contains about 15 deep salmon holes. The next launch is a private/fee site called Ice Box. There are two put=ins above Ice Box that are located within the national forest and appropriately called Miller Bar and Nook Bar. Nook is the uppermost and also marks the upper deadline for salmon retention.
TWO METHODS DOMINATE the boat fishery: back-bouncing bait and back-trolling plugs. Given the scarcity of sand shrimp in the Brookings area, most back-bouncers employ salmon egg clusters fished in combination with a Corky Drifter. According to Martin, the most popular Corky colors include rocket red and green chartreuse. When the water is on the high side, those bouncing
bait will switch out their Corky for a Spin-NGlo. A selection of 11/2- to 4-ounce sinkers is what’s needed if you are planning to backbounce Chinook on the Chetco. The other popular method is to backtroll salmon plugs. Big ones work especially well on the Chetco and account for the majority of the giant salmon taken on Martin’s boat. The plugs he employs most are the 4.0 through 5.0 sizes of Mag Lip; size M-2 FlatFish, and 5.5 Hawg Nose FlatFish. When it comes to determining which size to choose, it’s all about water conditions. The Chetco, like other rivers up and down the Northwest coast, is heavily influenced by rainfall. It’s the onslaught of storms originating over the Pacific and hitting the coast that causes rivers to rise and then drop after the rain stops. Salm-
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on migrate into rivers from the ocean each time the rivers go up and subsequently begin to fall. A big rain event can make the Chetco unfishable and not clear enough to fish for four or five days. When the mud first clears is when the catching is normally at its best. According to Martin, the ideal height for the Chetco is 3,000 cfs and the river is considered low when it drops down to 1,200 cfs or below. But over his years of guiding the river, he’s learned that he can catch salmon on plugs when the river is as high as 5,000 or at times even 6,000 cfs, providing the water has 2 or more feet of visibility. When the Chetco is dropping from a high-water event, it’s the clarity of the water that Martin closely watches. This is a time when he employs the large Hawg Nose or 5.0 size Mag Lip. The fast action these plugs provide not only catches fish but shakes the leaves off, which keep them working when the river is first dropping back into shape following fall storms that drop a lot of foliage. As the river continues to drop and clear all the way down to 1,200 cfs, Martin reduces his plug sizes down to a M-2 FlatFish and/or 4.0 size Mag Lip.
ALTHOUGH YOU CAN take your own drifter, fully guided salmon fishing trips are available should you decide to try your salmon luck from a boat. While the number of guides residing in Brooking is somewhat limited, this popular fishery draws professionals from the Grants Pass, Medford and Gold Beach areas. There are several guides from California who guide the Chetco each and every season too, so don’t limit your search to just the Brookings area. The Chinook limit on the Chetco is two salmon a day, but one must be of hatchery origin, signified by its missing adipose fin. In addition, you are allowed up to five jack salmon in your daily catch. Tackle, bait, shuttles and fishing info can be obtained at Riverside Market (541661-3213), which is located on the north side of the lower Chetco near Social Security Bar. NS Editor’s note: The author is a brand manager and part of the management team at Yakima Bait. Like Buzz on Facebook.
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FISHING “Even though we ended up walking away from the trip with an ice chest full of chrome salmon, what we discovered within one another had far more value to me than the meat I was so thankful to be taking home,” writes author Sara Ichtertz about Cynthia Davis, her fishing partner this day on Oregon’s North Coast. (SARA ICHTERTZ)
Looking Ahead, And Back Even with winter steelheading nearing, Sara’s not ready to let go of fishing for fall Chinook. By Sara Ichtertz
T
his cold, crisp, sometimes rather wet time of year has the winter steelhead lover in me so very happy. I get so excited just thinking about it that at times I overlook the chrome and joy that can also be found now. Having had Southern Oregon’s rivers whoop me
until Turkey Day year after year, late last autumn I traveled north for my final salmon adventure of the year with the man who over the course of 2017 became my fishy friend, David Johnson. He shared seven different fisheries with me last year, and I caught fish that would not have been possible fishing the way I do back home. I am a bank fishing steelhead
slayer who calls the riverside realm underneath my two feet home. But David shared with me fisheries that took an entire new approach to entirely new fish. The seventh and final fishery he shared with me was probably one of the most peaceful and laid-back days we’ve spent together. The busy hustle and bustle that is the North nwsportsmanmag.com | NOVEMBER 2018
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FISHING David Johnson pilots his jet sled through early morning fog hovering over tidewater of a North Coast river. (SARA ICHTERTZ)
Coast (to me) was a lot for me to take in. As I had never really seen a sled boat in my life until I stepped foot on one, this way of fishing was different than anything I knew back home. I have to say I loved this day because of the solitude we found on that water in a beautiful place, as the environment in which I hunt the rivers has just as much impact on me as the fish themselves. Dreaming of shiny monster salmon full of actionpacked adrenaline is good for our souls, though I believe engaging ourselves in the beauty of nature is crucial as well.
THE RAIN THAT fell the day before our trip was a good thing because we were not fishing the bay. Fall precipitation has a way of calling the fish into and up the river systems, as so many of us know. Yet where we were fishing isn’t what I would call upriver, as 108 Northwest Sportsman
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the water is still affected by the tides though the bay is nowhere in sight. A beautiful layer of fog awaited us as the sun began to rise and my heart felt at peace, which wasn’t normal because typically up north I feel a lot of anticipation that can at times make me semisick to my stomach. That was not the case this day, however, and so I was able to just relax and take in the beauty of nature all around me. David’s boat was not loaded up for one of the guide’s Fish Like a Girl Adventures, nor was it like I was deckhanding for him at Buoy 10. No, it was just us and my new friend Cynthia Davis whose path crossed my own in beautiful timing. Some mates who I meet on the rivers share no common bond with me aside from our love for the tug, though Cynthia was different. Even though she is damn near the size of my left leg and beautifully covered in tattoos (meaning we physically
have zero similarities), our souls and perspectives on what it is that truly matters in life are very much in tune with one another. Even though we ended up walking away from the trip with an ice chest full of chrome salmon, what we discovered within one another had far more value to me than the meat I was so thankful to be taking home. The sun had risen and we had reached our destination on that tiny river. Going over the rigging I kind of cringed, as the last time I ran any Pro-Troll flashers with David I was deck handing at the mouth of the Columbia and the constant tangledup messes that were his clients’ rods was not what I would call fun. I tried not to think negatively and listened to the rundown on David’s approach for the day and was optimistic. Even though those large flashers intimidate me, the rigging is quite
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FISHING simple. We were not running herring or bait, but rather hardware in the form of Hildebrandt Spinners by Yakima Bait, which were perfect for that shallow water. Slow and steady was the ticket to the takedowns this day, for sure, and David knows the drill. Once the gear was down and running at the perfect trolling speed, I’m not sure I had ever seen his G.Loomis rods ginning along quite like they did this day. As the fog began to burn off, it was very calming and therapeutic to watch the rods in waiting.
EMBRACING THE COMPANY, time moved
As much excitement as they can provide when a fish is on, watching rods pulling rigs in search of salmon can also be calming for the author. (SARA ICHTERTZ)
quite quickly, and as the fog burnt all the way off the water there was our first hit of the day. Cynthia sprang to her toes so ready for the go ahead to get that rod and get her fight on. The adrenaline was pumping from her head to her toes, coming out in the form of one huge smile, intense eyes, and a trembling body. She wanted to
Fishing for Walleye, Trout, Pike, Pan Fish, Bass, Stripers, Salmon and 7 Ìiw Ã Ü Ì >Þ `i V ÕÀiÃ
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FISHING
For Sara, the trip marked the completion of her Angles of Ladies Angling project, which we featured in last December’s Real Women of Northwest Fishing. (SARA ICHTERTZ)
bring that big ol’ Chinook to her! As we sometimes get so very fired up to embrace the fish it can slip our minds that they are very much in charge. I lost countless steelhead in my first two years simply because I was too fired up and incapable of staying calm. I have learned that as long I keep my line under tension I can swim along with the fish, in a sense, allowing them to guide me to some degree and enjoy the beauty of the fight instead of “Come to me, fish!” We all learn this through time on the water and sadly I saw Cynthia’s line go lifeless and her smile come to a screeching halt. The fish was gone. The most amazing thing was, no sooner did the moans of disappointment leave her mouth than the rear right rod got hammered by another fish. Fully pinned and taking line, this one appeared to be a monster and Cynthia’s chance was upon her. Ditching one rod and grabbing up the other was quite the sight! The strong pull of a Chinook is 112 Northwest Sportsman
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second to none. It was incredible to see such a sight in such a small body of water, but David can find the fish! As the monster Chinook tail slapped the water, declaring it was not done yet, we saw what a beauty Cynthia had on her line. The moment David scooped that baby into the net we were screaming to the heavens at the fish before us. So happy for my friend to land such a stunning fish I hugged her with all of me and I will never forget how her little self was just shaking with total adrenaline-packed joy. Not only did that fish mean so much to her it meant a lot to me because she was the final lady angler in my 2017 Angles of Ladies Angling project (Northwest Sportsman, December 2017), and I couldn’t help be feel thankful and complete right then and there alongside her beautiful catch.
WITH NO PRESSURE on the water we took our time having a little fishtography fun. I have to say photographing Cynthia that day
was beautiful. I sometimes keep the control freak inside of me well hidden, getting a few great snaps to the best of my ability and calling it good. But this day and setting allowed us more time to embrace something I truly love besides headshakes. After our fishy photoshoot we were back at it, telling stories and laughing it up to the point David was damn near in tears. We were feeling the joy of fishing that has nothing to do with catching. I love how when trolling, once you surrender every ounce of energy to watching the rods they tend to go off! It’s like when I look away from my float and it disappears. (Another reason I love drift fishing on every level is that it has zero to do with what you see but rather everything to do with what you feel.) I was in the bow of the boat when my rod went to knocking, and she was fully committed by the time I was able to get to her, which wasn’t a bad thing. I’ve found that waiting for the rod to be fully pinned is critical. Of course, there is no guarantee that when a rod flickers the fish will in fact commit to it. The only thing I know is that if you think by grabbing up that first flicker or two you are doing yourself any favors, you are wrong. You will learn this the more time you spend trolling. Allowing the fish to eat until the rod is fully pinned and possibly even taking line gives you a far better chance of landing said fish. I am thankful to have learned these details from David, and I believe I am learning from one of the best.
THOUGH THE SIZE of my fish was far from a monster I still loved it. Finding a challenge in fighting a salmon with a Pro-Troll on, I gave it my best, as it felt very foreign to me. Rushing with adrenaline from that one-of-a-kind mighty pull of a king I tried to stay calm, and once David netted me up no sooner than I released the tension on my line, I’m pretty positive my smile was bigger than my fish! As I cracked that beauty over the head I
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felt so thankful for my harvest, and for the opportunity 2017 brought into my life. Even though we were not constantly putting on fresh baits like we would in the jaws, we did keep a close eye on our riggings. This water has very little depth to it, so keeping our flasher and spinners clean to where they sparkled just right was crucial. If weeds get caught on them, not only will they not entice fish they very well could spook them. All those little details are what lead to takedowns. The simplest of flaw in your rig’s appearance and the way it swims could be the difference between tagging out or getting skunked.
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mission that day to see my year-long ambition through, so with my soulconnected girl getting her limit I felt very happy and very accomplished! I know with all my heart that had David not been impressed with my vision and desire to the point he wanted to help me, I wouldn’t have ever been able to get it done. Last year taught me so much about myself and what I am made of. It allowed me to grasp the fact that I must trust in our journey and know that not everyone is meant for me. The beautiful thing is that those I discovered who are truly meant for me will always be there. I am a four-quarters type of girl versus 100 pennies when it comes to friendships. I find it incredible how the river brings those quarter-type friendships into my life at exactly the right time, and I’m learning to trust it more than question it. Sharing the water with them as last year was coming to an end I very much know we share a common bond that cannot easily be broken. Our heart is on the river and we couldn’t change it, even if we tried. NS Editor’s note: For more on Sara’s adventures, see For The Love Of The Tug on Facebook.
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COLUMN
Midfall Prime For Summer, Winter, Tribal Steelhead C
razy, huh? I’m already thinking about going steelhead fishing and it’s not even December. That month WIESTSIDER by far is when things really start rocking for By Terry Wiest hatchery winter-runs, but don’t discount November. Although you won’t have many choices because most systems are between runs, there are a couple of standout rivers for putting steelhead on the table for Thanksgiving.
SUMMER-RUNS Yes, this column is called Westsider, but your best choice this time of year for this stock is on the Eastside, in the Grande Ronde River. Although not bright, these fish are certainly colorful, put up an incredible fight and are more than willing biters. For those who like to swing a fly, you should really take advantage of this system that cuts through the southeast corner of Washington’s Blue Mountains. There are some fantastic flats that rival those of the Skagit in its heyday. Most anglers, however, use a bobber and jig, as this is by far the most effective technique on this low, clear river. As for jig choices, now comes a little different twist than what most of us are used to with the aforementioned water conditions. Black is going to be your mainstay and almost all my jigs for this river will have black in them. But dark red, brown, green and blue mixed with the black are what will tempt these fish to bite. I also step down to 1/16-ounce jigs and a smaller hook size. Most of the jigs I’d use resemble a Woolly Bugger, which is what you should be using if you’re on the bug rod. Best access is at the mouth in Hells Canyon, the bottom of the Schumacher Road, and along Grande Ronde Road, which parallels the river past the Cottonwood Creek acclimation ponds to Troy, Oregon, and be-
TTrue, Tr ue,, th ue the he tr ttraditional trad rad adit itio it iona io naal Th Than Thanksgiving annks ksgi g viing kkickoff icko ic k fff ooff Wa ko W Washington shin sh ingt in gtton w winter inte in ter er st ssteelhead tee eelh lhhea eadd seas se season eas ason on iiss as m much uchh a th uc tthing hin ingg of o the past th the p st pa s aass turkey tuurkkey dday ayy lleftovers, efto ef tove to oveers rs, s, but but while whililee ma whil wh many rrivers many iver iv erss se er see ee la late-timed ate te-t -ttim imed ed rruns, unss, un s, tthere h re aare he re sstill tiill a ffew ew tthat hatt ha kick oout kick u NNovember ut o eem ov mbe berr fis fifish. hh.. H Hunter u te un terr SSh Shelton hel e to tonn of BBremerton reemeert rton on sshows h ws ho w ooff ff a ppair airr cca ai caught augght ht oonn a co coastal oas asta tall ttr ta trib rib eearly arly ar lyy llast astt as seas seas se season. a on on.. He H w was as fifishing shhinng a jijig ig un under nde der a flo float float. at. (YO-ZURI at (YO YO-ZU YO -ZU -Z ZUURI RI PHO PHOTO TOO CONTES CON CONTEST) ONTES TEST) TE T)
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COLUMN yond. Holes are known by various names, and pullouts abound. Catches vary by year, with October typical better on the Washington side and November on the Oregon end, but this month is still better than winter. This season’s limit has been reduced to one a day due to a low return, but on the bright side, Boggan’s Oasis, which burned down last November, has reopened and is again serving burgers, shakes and more.
WINTER-RUNS If you’d rather get the first crack at some chrome-bright winter run fish, then you really have one option anymore. Two, actually – the Bogachiel and Calawah. If you’re bank fishing, you can tackle both of these rivers’ most productive areas in the same day. Start at the state hatchery on the Bogey and work your way down to the confluence. There’s a lot of very good bank access here and without a doubt it’s the most productive hole on the river. If running a Corky or bait on bottom is your preferred technique, you’ll love this section. It’s incredibly good
SMOLT RELEASES The latest steelhead smolt release data for Western Washington rivers shows three you might want to put on your radar this coming winter. Stocking doubled on the Elochoman and Naselle in 2017 for return this season, and was up sharply on the Quinault system as well, according to state figures. Now, whether the fishing’s twice as good as last year on them is anyone’s guess, as ocean conditions play a strong role in returns, but they will be ones to watch for reports in the coming months. On the Lower Columbia trib, releases jumped from 66,000 in 2016 – a year-class that produced a “phenomenal” return during the 2017-18 season, allowing managers to recycle and even surplus fish – to 139,000 . According to a WDFW hatchery tech’s report, last season’s fish were the first smolts at the Elochoman’s Beaver Creek facility protected from predation by netting and fencing since 2009. A bit further west on Highway 4, the Naselle jumped from 37,000 to 73,000, bringing it back up to where it’s been in recent years, outside of 2015 when Puget Sound smolts were let loose here due to a court settlement. And releases into Lake Quinault and Cook Creek climbed by 73,000 over 2016 and previous years, to 488,000. You’ll need a tribal guide to fish the system below the lake. The one major blip is that Cowlitz stocking dropped by 161,000, but the number of late-returning smolts that went out is still nothing to shake your fish stick at – 437,000 from Blue Creek, 13 percent of all the winter-runs released in the state. Elsewhere on the Westside, the number of young steelhead turned loose in most waters didn’t vary all that much from the prior year. But for the record, they were up slightly on the Nooksack (+13,000), Salmon (+10,000), Wynoochee (+7,000) and Willapa (+7,000) Rivers, and down somewhat on the North Fork Stillaguamish (-20,000), Bogachiel (-20,000), Satsop (-17,000) and Skookumchuck (-13,000) Rivers. –NWS
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drift fishing water. Make sure and spend plenty of time pounding this hole, as fish are consistently moving into it. If there are fish being caught, don’t leave to find other fish. Once I work down as far as I can go, I’ll start working the bank back up, or I’ll switch over to the Calawah, where I’ll put away my drift gear and bring out the float and jig. The tributary’s lower half mile is one of my favorite stretches of any river for this tactic. Jigs in pinks, peaches and whites work exceptionally well. If you’re floating the Bogey, you’ll want to still hit the confluence, or even pull over and walk a good ways upstream to some amazing bobber and jig water. Tall Timbers, located just below the Calawah confluence, will hold traveling fish along the entire stretch of gravel bar on north side of the river and in the deeper water along the cut bank on the south side. Drift fishing is productive and you’ll find some bank anglers among your company here. If you have the hole to yourself, this is a great run to back-troll plugs. Before you reach the first sharp bend in the Bogachiel you reach the Crescent Hole, where pulling plugs and float fishing the upper portion will draw strikes, as will drift fishing lower down. At said sharp bend is Ice Box, a nice hole for drift fishing and it has a premium tailout for running a jig. Up next is Hundley, and if you like bobber doggin’, it is the hole for you. It leads into Mary Lou, a very deep hole best fished by back-trolling plugs. The tailout can be effective with bobber and jig. And for plunkers, the Goodman Mainline Bridge is your hole.
TRIBAL WATERS Another choice in November is to hire a tribal guide and fish the Quinault River or Cook Creek. By Thanksgiving, the latter is usually overflowing with fish and you should expect double-digit hookups. Water flow will generally dictate how you fish, but beads or bobber and jig do exceptionally well. If you like fishing small waters, you should really give Cook a try, as it rarely disappoints. NS Editor’s note: Terry J. Wiest is the author of Steelhead University: Your Guide to Salmon & Steelhead Success and Float-Fishing for Salmon & Steelhead, and is the owner of Steelhead University, SteelheadU.com. 120 Northwest Sportsman
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COLUMN
Say Yes To November Ops N
ovember offers fixin’s for a fresh homemade crab salad, or By Doug Huddle perhaps some venison tenderloin for Thanksgiving are in order. An offbeat hors d’oeuvres platter for the holiday dinner might also include a smattering of smelt from the Nooksack. And toward the end of the month, if you want to warm up your arm and steel your soul for winter steelheading, visit the friendly confines of the South Fork Nooksack for action on its late, hatcherybound silver horde.
NORTH SOUND
LATE LOUIE MAKIN’S Winter crabbing resumed in October on a seven-day-a-week schedule in all northern inland waters. Marine Area 7 options include some good inside or nearmainland Dungeness haunts accessible by smaller boats or occasionally without risk of getting your feet wet at all, as well as those crab haul-ups that require a roughwater bay boat to safely get to and from. Inside venues: Look to set pots or operate star traps at Chuckanut Bay or further south along the outskirts of Samish Bay near Wildcat Cove (Larrabee State Park); in Birch Bay from the so-named state park (launch and day use fees, or Discover Pass, apply); nearshore along Cherry Point at Gulf Road (no charge here); and Semiahmoo Bay just outside Drayton Harbor. Crabbing from dry ground (piers over water) is a proven method at the Port of Bellingham’s Blaine facility. Even with its all-gear daily time restriction, the historically lucrative north
Crabbing reopened in North Sound waters including Marine Area 8-2, where Noel Chilson’s “Here crabby crabby” song enticed this Dungeness into a trap a couple Octobers back. Winter season runs through the end of December. (YO-ZURI PHOTO CONTEST) Swinomish Channel site at the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad bridge is still an inviting spot. It’s easy to access from the east bank public boat launch under the State Route 20 Berentsen Bridges, which is also a fair departure point for crabbing further north in Padilla Bay. Outer options: Throughout the San Juan archipelago there are myriad gravel- or siltbottomed coves, inlets and bays into which crabs scurry to feed and/or escape tidal currents. Do be aware that preserves along the shore of San Juan Island, Shaw and the Yellow/Low cluster are off-limits to crabbing.
If you choose to set pots in such shallower crab lairs or on low tides, be sure to adjust the haul line length accordingly but not so much that your buoy is submerged by high slack. Though they are harder grounds to ply for crabs, I’ve occasionally found keeper-sized Dungeness in highly craggy nearshore submarine habitats such as Saddlebag Island in waters as shallow as 3 to 4 feet. Adapting the legal means to bring them to hand is challenging, however. Marine Area 8-1: One of the better things about the Whidbey-Camano inside
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COLUMN zones this time of year is that a trip on these waters can kill two birds with one stone. Come Dec. 1, be sure to load up both salmon gear and your crab pots. In the extreme north end of this “inner” management zone, Similk Bay, east of Deception Pass, stands out as the best place to set a pot or two. This backwater is well out of the twice-daily tidal bores through the pass and is mud bottomed, so it serves up inviting forage for the Dungeness. To the south, eastern Penn Cove in the tuck of Whidbey Island and Elgin Bay on
LATE BUCK BETS
Now that Game Management Unit 418 and other North Cascade units are no longer available in the late modern firearms buck season, GMU 407 sections in Whatcom and Skagit Counties still offer locales where you can still get high for the last hurrah for blacktails. Sumas Mountain, Van Zandt Dike, Stewart (Lake Whatcom) Mountain, Anderson (Alger) Mountain, the Blanchard/Chuckanut complex and Devils
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the southwest shore of Camano also offer good set-and-forget sites.
October’s comanager in-season update of the 2018 Skagit coho run to about 90,000 fish allowed the doubling of the overall nontreaty daily allowable salmon take-home. By special emergency rule, anglers may retain up to four salmon (read as coho only), with the proviso that no more than two may be wild or non-adipose-finclipped fish. No other salmon species may
be kept. The Skagit’s silvers often jet in on lower, unsullied fall flows tinged with just a hint of October rainfall only to have to holeup in that same gin-clear mainstem water until bone-dry tributaries rehydrate with run-off from November storms. Below the Baker wild fish are found distributed up and down the system in deeper holes just below most creek outlets. In the Nooksack, much of the November coho action for spin-casters and flyfishers gravitates up to the South Fork. Access
Mountain, southeast of Mt Vernon, all have state-owned forest lands as well as some private timber holdings that are legally accessible, though the latter are mainly accessible for boot (walk-in) hunters only. If walking stalks in the woods are not your forte but friendly persuasion is, private lowland small wood plots or farmed acreage with streams coursing through them are excellent options. You will have to quickly arrive at a concord
with private landowners for access, but some of these locales offer the closest thing to a gimme for deer these days. Just offshore in GMUs 410, 420 and 421, Cypress Island offers the best expanse of state-owned lands. Elsewhere in the San Juans, specifically within the countylines, to hunt private ownerships, you’re required by ordinance to carry written permission from the deed-holder to hunt their land. –DH
LAST SALMON
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COLUMN is limited below Acme, however you can get to this often-muddy stream at either the Potter Road (Van Zandt) or Highway 9 (Acme) bridges. However, the best reach for access is along Saxon Road east of the county road bridge just below the destination for these fish, Lummi Nation’s Skookum Creek Hatchery. During low, clearer flows, these fish hole up and in those crowded deeper pools will succumb to both cluster eggs and small spinning lures. Small, darkerpatterned bucktail flies fast stripped also will invite strikes.
the Nooksack’s banks below Lynden, while boat-borne drift fishers with pink ’crawlers often focus their fishing forays on the upper mainstem out of the Nugents Corner launch. Following on the heels of a better-thanexpected return in 2017 the Nooksack with this year’s return should now include solid contingents of both two- and three-salt fish. There will be a three-days-a-week (Sunday afternoon to Wednesday afternoon) treaty fishery that will intercept a number of early steelhead until Dec. 12, when the targeted steelhead fishery goes to seven days a week.
FIRST STEELHEAD
Around the 20th of November a small but highly motivated fisher fraternity frequents the lower Nooksack’s banks above Marietta for the two-week run of long-fin smelt called hooligans, a old settler play on the species name eulachon. These are finger food fish, “dip” caught with metal baskets on long poles in murky water, the muddier, the better.
Come turkey day, winter-run steelhead anglers start plumbing the depths of their favorite Puget Sound streams for vanguard hatchery fish. Problematic as water conditions can be with run-off from fall’s first big storms, impaired clarity – at least for us – actually invites the fish on. Plunkers using egg clusters frequent
RIVER SMELT
Access is via a left or east bank dike trail north from Marine Drive upstream to Slater Road on WDFW’s Nooksack Unit of the Whatcom Wildlife. Culinarily speaking, if you’ve not eaten these fish before – most often fried or dried and eaten guts, fins and all – ease into them to start, catching just a few to sample taste. For reference the name eulachon is a misnomer. For legal purposes biologists classify them as long-fin smelt, which are legal to catch as opposed to eulachons, which are off-limits statewide. However they’re not related to the Sacramento longfins that are under federal ESA protection. Things are complicated in the smelt world.
NEXT ISSUE Snow goose hunting, more Nooksack hatchery steelhead. NS Editor’s note: Doug Huddle lives in Bellingham, is retired from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and has been writing about hunting and fishing in the Northwest for more than 35 years.
Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation (All periodicals publications except requester publications) 1. Publication Title: Northwest Sportsman. 2. Publication Number: 025-251. 3. Filing Date: Oct. 24, 2018. 4. Issue Frequency: Monthly. 5. Number of issues published annually: 12. 6. Annual Subscription Price: 29.99. 7. Complete mailing address of known office of publication: 14240 Interurban Avenue South, Suite 190, Tukwila, WA 98168. Contact Person: John Rusnak. Telephone: 206-382-9220. 8. Complete mailing address of headquarters or general business office of publisher: 14240 Interurban Avenue South, Suite 190, Tukwila, WA 98168. 9. Full names and complete addresses of publisher, editor, and managing editor: Publisher: James Baker, 14240 Interurban Avenue South, Suite 190, Tukwila, WA 98168. Editor: Andy Walgamott, 14240 Interurban Avenue South, Suite 190, Tukwila, WA 98168. Managing editor: None. 10. Owner: James Baker, 14240 Interurban Avenue South, Suite 190, Tukwila, WA 98168. 11. Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities. If none, check box: none. 12. Tax status: Has not changed during preceding 12 months. 13. Publication title: Northtwest Sportsman. 14. Issue date for circulation data below: September 2018. 15. Extent and nature of circulation: a.Total number of copies: 71,100. b. Paid circulation (by mail and outside the mail). (1) Mailed ouside-county paid subscriptions stated on PS Form 3541 (Include paid distribution above nominal rate, advertiser’s proof copies, and exchange copies): 15412. (2) Mailed in-county paid subscriptions stated on PS Form 3541 (Include paid distribution above nominal rate, advertiser’s proof copies, and exchange copies): 0. (3) Paid distribution outside the mails including sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors, counter sales, and other paid distribution outside USPS: 43610. (4) Paid distribution by other classes of mail through the USPS (e.g. first-class mail): 4384. c. Total paid distribution: 52344. d. Free or nominal rate distribution (by mail and outside the mail). (1) Free or nominal rate outside-county copies included on PS Form 3541: 3480. (2) Free or nominal rate in-county copies included on PS Form 3541: 0. (3) Free or nominal rate copies mailed at other classes through the USPS (e.g. first-class mail): 623. (4) Free or nominal rate distribution outside the mail (carriers or other means): 3190. e. Total free or nominal rate distribution: 7293. f. Total distribution: 59637. g. Copies not distributed: 17463. h. Total: 77100. i. Percent paid: 87.77% 17. Publication of statement of ownership: If the publication is a general publication, publication of this statement is required. Will be printed in the November issue of this publication. 18. Signature and title of editor, publisher, business manager, or owner: John Rusnak, General Manager. Date: Oct. 24, 2018. I verify all the information furnished on this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on the form may be subject to criminal sanctions (including fines and imprisonment) and/or sanctions (including civil penalties).
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COLUMN The year’s final run of salmon, chums return to numerous Puget Sound tributaries, with the strongest numbers this year expected in rivers and creeks from the Duwamish south and in Hood Canal. (JASON BROOKS)
Battlers, Bulls And Bucks Beckon N
ovember is often considered the last month for salmon anglers and the late season for big game SOUTH SOUND hunters. But it still offers some of the By Jason Brooks best fishing and hunting of the season, especially in the South
Sound. Chums are filling just about every creek and estuary from Tacoma to Olympia, as well as up and down Hood Canal, and these toothy creatures are a lot of fun to catch. Blacktail deer hunters know that the four-day late rifle opener is their best chance at a mature buck, plus it is Western Washington elk season. Indeed, there are many opportunities to make this a November to remember.
THE GREEN RIVER from Flaming Geyser State Park down through the lowlands of Renton offers some of the best chum fishing in all of Puget Sound, with Metzler Park and the area near the Highway 18 take-out providing access for upriver fish. The Puyallup also sees a healthy return of chums. According to the preseason forecast, state and tribal managers are expecting just under 500,000 fall chums
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COLUMN
Nov. 15-18 marks the final general-season chance riflemen in Western Washington have for bagging a buck. Ray Navarette downed this Kitsap County blacktail during 2014’s late hunt with a 100-yard shot from his .264 Win. Mag. (BROWNING PHOTO CONTEST)
to Central and South Sound streams. Unfortunately, however, the Nisqually isn’t scheduled to open for winter chums. The Canal forecast is just under half a million. The saltwater has a lot of great fisheries. In Deep South Sound, give Kennedy Creek a try as the fish stack up in Totten Inlet’s Oyster Bay waiting for high tide. To get there take Highway 101 past Mud Bay, which is another salt spot to fish. The famed Hoodsport Hatchery Zone is always a top producer around midmonth. And while Minter Creek is a complete zoo, it’s because it has a lot of fish in it. How many? According to state catch stats, 45 percent of the 11,979 chums kept in Puget Sound rivers during the 2016 season came out of this single small south Kitsap Peninsula stream. No matter where you go you will find chums, but if you are looking for some high-oil-content fish for your smoker, it is best to catch those fish in the saltwater. Once they hit the rivers the fish turn quickly, and while still great to fight it’s
best to release them to help load up the system with future fish.
TO CATCH CHUMS there is one technique that can be used in both venues, and it is very easy to do. Use a float and a 3/8-ounce Mack’s Lure Rock Dancer Jig tipped with a piece of fresh prawn. It’s that simple, just floating a jig and bait. Best colors are black and cerise or black head with a chartreuse body. Pinch the barb, required in the salt and here and there in freshwater, and which makes it easier to release the fish anyway. If you want to try other techniques, swinging spoons and spinners is always fun and a great way to learn how to use these pieces of hardware before winter steelhead season begins. Blue Fox Vibrax spinners in sizes 4 and 5, again in black and chartreuse, are a good bet. Silver or chartreuse Dardevle spoons in ½ or 5/8 ounce and with a single siwash hook catch a lot of chums too. AS MUCH AS I like to fish for chums in
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November I must admit that this year I will be spending more time out chasing elk. That is because my son Ryan was lucky enough to draw a cow permit for one of the Mt. St. Helens units. We will be doing our best to find one without treponeme-associated hoof disease, or hoof rot as it’s colloquially known, which still plagues Southwest Washington elk. When not helping him pack out his cow or taking a day to chase chums I too will be hunting elk. Looking for a bull in Western Washington is tough and most units have low success rates. But if you have a rifle tag in your pocket, this is your month to get out and look for one. The Winston Unit still reigns as one of the most popular, but don’t overlook the Mashel Unit and its ample public land in the Elbe State Forest. Capitol Peak has some elk in it, along with the Lincoln Unit. But most hunters head towards Lewis County and the South Coast. With timber companies charging access fees and some locking their gates during elk season to everyone it makes it very tough. Venture away from the South Sound and give the far coastal regions a try.
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THERE ARE FOUR “magical” days in mid-November that for blacktail hunters reign supreme. Late buck, as most hunters call it, is the height of the rut and finds mature bucks on the move. Hunters know that more big ones are likely to be killed in this Thursday-through-Sunday stretch (Nov. 15-18 this year) than during the entire general two-and-a-half-plus-week October season. Find a clearcut and sit, keeping an eye on the edge cover. If you find some does, be sure to keep that spot at the top of your list, as blacktails don’t move far and the bucks will be looking for them. I had a friend who used to sit at the end of a long straight stretch on a dirt road. One side was reprod and the other was old growth. He just sat there in his truck, windshield wipers working to keep the visibility good during a rainstorm, and watched that road. Sooner or later a buck would cross and he then hiked in after him. Two years in a row this is how he filled his late-season tag. Another time I came across a guy who was watching a deep ravine that had old growth on one side and a clearcut on the other. He mentioned how for three years he just sat at this perch and filled his tag at last light when the deer would come out to feed. I don’t have that kind of patience, or that kind of success either. THE LATTER PART of November finds us heading into the long Thanksgiving weekend. Waterfowl hunters enjoy the fall rains, and muzzleloader and archery hunters look forward to the mountain snows to track deer and elk. As chums fade away, steelhead arrive. November starts off with fishing and elk hunting, midway through the deer take over and by the end of the month we are wiping our shotguns with a healthy layer of WD40 or waxing our bow strings. Heavy jigs tipped with prawns for chums are replaced with lighter ones, still tipped with prawns but for winter-runs. It seems that November never needs to end as just about every day is filled with something for the Northwest sportsman to do in the South Sound. NS
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COLUMN
Washington black powder hunters will take the field for the second time this season, some accoutered with traditional paraphernalia like author Dave Workman’s powder horn and antler-handled ball/bullet starter. (DAVE WORKMAN)
Keep Your Powder Dry For Late Hunts N
ovember is a popular m o n t h among “primitive” weapons hunters, because it gives them an opportunity to ON TARGET load the front-stuffer By Dave Workman and head out for late deer and elk muzzleloader seasons in Washington and some controlled hunts in neighboring Oregon.
But this isn’t an opportunity limited to “buckskinners” armed with flintlocks or caplock Hawken reproductions, though a fair number of people still hunt with such guns.
TODAY’S MUZZLELOADER HUNTER is typically armed with a modern inline that may take up to 150 grains of black powder or a substitute such as Pyrodex or Triple Seven. It often uses a centerfire rifle or shotgun primer rather than a percussion cap. I confess to being a traditionalist when
it comes to muzzleloaders. I’ve got two percussion caplocks, a slightly customized Lyman Trade Rifle in .54 caliber with a full buckhorn rear sight and white bead front sight, and a .50-caliber Thompson/Center Hawken Custom with all blue furniture. I spoke with Chris Hodgdon, whose family’s company markets all three powders. “Humidity and dampness doesn’t mix well with black powder or Pyrodex,” he observed. Ditto Triple Seven. The slight advantage to black powder
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COLUMN
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Muzzleloaders have three major options for igniting their charges, black powder or substitutes like Pyrodex and Triple Seven. The first has a lower ignition point, but all are tetchy when it comes to moisture. (DAVE WORKMAN) is that it has a lower ignition temperature than the two substitutes. Hodgdon also suggested that if someone is using a flintlock, they might want to use FFFg black powder in the flashpan if they happen to be using Pyrodex or Triple Seven for the main charge. Another bit of advice is to leave your
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rifle outside if you plan to leave the bullet and charge in the gun overnight. That way, there won’t be any condensation to dampen the powder charge and cause a misfire when you hunt the next day. Years ago, I ditched the wood ramrods and replaced them with synthetic rods that work superbly. I carry black powder
in a genuine horn, my round balls in a shot bag, and greased patches in a leather possibles bag. I admit to using Natural Lube 1000 Plus for patch lube, but my short ball and bullet starter has a genuine deer antler handle made from the rack of a buck I shot many years ago during a modern rifle hunt.
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COLUMN
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There are far fewer primitive weapons hunters than riflemen in Washington, but they tend to have better success on deer and elk than their brethren toting long-range rifles. Alika Robinson downed this Colockum cow elk last year with her muzzleloader, her first kill. (BROWNING PHOTO CONTEST) But let’s cut to the real chase. Today’s modern muzzleloader is a gem, no matter who makes it. They can launch a conical bullet or sabot at decent velocities and put that lead where it is aimed out to beyond 100 to 150 yards and with the muscle to conk a deer or elk. In keeping with the “primitive” spirit, optical sights are prohibited in Washington muzzleloader hunting.
THE EVERGREEN STATE’S late muzzleloader deer hunts begin in late November in several units, all detailed on Page 19 of the regulations pamphlet. For elk seasons, which also open primarily on Nov. 21 in 138 Northwest Sportsman
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several Westside units and Nov. 25 in Units 130-142 for any elk, consult Page 50 of the regulations. One black powder hunt that already began in several 200- and 300-series units wraps up Nov. 15. (I note with chagrin that the Washington regs pamphlet spans 124 pages. They were never that big when I was a kid!) Smart muzzleloaders will have one or two premeasured loads in a “speed loader.” In my black powder hunting days I had three such loaders, for quick reloading in the event a second shot was required. I used Buffalo Bullets that were pure lead, or Thompson/Center Maxi Hunter bullets, or patched round balls. Today’s
muzzleloader has a far better selection of projectiles. Hornady makes the Great Plains bullet, which is a dandy, along with an assortment of sabots with jacketed hollowpoint or MonoFlex polymer-tipped projectiles. Hornady also offers swaged round balls. Thompson/Center also has sabot bullet, Federal Premium offers the B.O.R. Lock MZ lead bullet. I also found round balls for rifles or black powder revolvers from Traditions available at one of the catalog stores.
SOME YEARS AGO I did a piece on maximum effective range, the farthest a shooter could competently fire a bullet or
nwsportsmanmag.com nwsp n wsp w orts ortsmanm manmag.c ag.com om | NOVEM N NOVEMBER OVEMBER OVEM B 20 BER 2018 01 0 18
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Workman’s trusty Hodgdon Data Manual No. 25. (DAVE WORKMAN)
ball and hit the target. I have known some traditional black powder shooters who can hit a bowling pin at 100 yards, and a couple of those guys never seemed to fail when it came to putting venison in the meat locker. One fellow hunted in Yakima County with a flintlock and frequently filled his elk tag. To determine your maximum effective range, simply hit the range and shoot at targets starting at 50 yards and going out to 100, 150 and, if you’re using one of those inlines loaded with 150 grains of Pyrodex, maybe 200 yards. But remember, you’re using iron sights and at that range, some people might be pushing their luck. It’s also important to understand trajectory. You’re not shooting a .300 Magnum, but a rifle that just might have the trajectory of an arch. Years ago, I got hold of the Hodgdon Data Manual No. 25 (and never let it go) because in the back, the company published ballistics data for black powder for flintlock or percussion rifles. I’ve tried some of the recommended loads and found them to be reliable in my guns. For the .50-caliber rifle, 80 grains of FFg black powder or the equivalent will launch a 370-grain T/C Maxi-Ball at 1,199 feet per second, while 90 grains of powder will push that out of the bore at 1,291 140 Northwest Sportsman
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fps, depending upon the rifle. A hundred grains of FFg will send that same bullet downrange at 1,396 fps at the muzzle. Hodgdon not only offers black powder (the company acquired Goex black powder a few years ago), but also manufactures Pyrodex and Triple Seven, the black powder substitutes.
ALL OF THIS said, the muzzleloader hunter must be part woodsman or scout, and be able to creep through the woods quietly to get within range. An option is to hunt from a blind or stand, like a bowhunter, but a lot of people don’t care for that because you must sit still and wait for game to come to you. You have the advantage of wearing camo, and I suggest mixing patterns to really confuse the critters. Whatever you shoot, it is imperative to clean your rifle after it’s been fired to prevent corrosion. After I shoot a frontstuffer, I will swab the bore at night with hot water and maybe a drop of dish soap, and then while the barrel is still hot, run dry patches down to get rid of lingering moisture. Then I’ll run a patch impregnated with 1000 Plus or some other bullet lube to recure the barrel and protect it. Hopefully, by the time that happens, you’ve notched a tag, butchered your deer or elk, and settled in for the winter and other pursuits that might include waterfowl or hunting rabbits or coyotes. NS
‘COMPACT’ 10/22 Ruger recently announced another version of its popular 10/22 rifle – one of those “semiautomatic assault rifles,” as defined by anti-rights Initiative 1639 on Washington’s November ballot. The Compact has a black synthetic stock, an adjustable fiber optic rear sight and fixed fiber optic front sight. It’s got a 16.12-inch barrel cut with six lands and grooves on a 1:16-inch right-hand twist, a 12.5-inch length of pull and overall length of 34 inches. It has Ruger’s traditional 10-round rotary magazine and hits the scale at 4.6 pounds. –DW
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COLUMN TThe Th he Oct. OOcctt.. 1100 IId Idaho daahho de ddeer eeerr oopener pene pe ner er fo ffound oun undd au aauthor auth uth thor hor or RRandy andy an dy KKing ing ing in hiigh hi high gghh iinn th tthe he mo m mountains ouunnta tain ins north ins nort nort no rth th of of BBoise, oise oi ise se, e, wh w where her eree ou out of out of tthe hee faast fa fast-falling sstt--ffal aalli llilinngg ssnow now no w a fo ffour-point our uur-p r-p -poi oint nt m mule ule ul le deer deer de er aappeared, ppea pp e re ea red, d, d, ffoorci forcing rccing ing hhi in him im ttoo m make aakke a ha hard hard r ddecision. ecis ec isio isi ion. n. (RANDY (RRA ((RA RANDY ND DDYY KKI KING) ING NG)) NG)
When Not To Kill A Big Buck M o s t people w i l l never give you the location of one of CHEF IN THE WILD their hunting spots. By Randy King They guard it like some hired gun in the Old West. My father always used the old World War II adage “loose lips sink ships.” The more people you tell about an area, the more likely it will be overrun with hunters.
Your buddy is your buddy until hunting season – then he grows friends, and they have friends. Suddenly your “honey hole” is overrun with dudes in orange. But that’s not the case today, folks. Hell, at the end of this story I will give you the exact GPS coordinates of a nice four-point mule deer buck. Not joking. However, first you might want to understand why I would give you that location.
ON LAST MONTH’S opening day in Idaho, I decided that it would be a good idea to hike up Antelope Trail in Unit 32A north of Boise. The area requires just a general season deer tag and is open to the public. The trailhead starts off at 4,800 feet and starts to climb quickly up the mountain. The trail is nice for the most part, by which I mean that most of the deadfall is cleared off – though not all. As I began the climb I noticed that the trail was a bit “soupy,” for lack of a better
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COLUMN
PENCIL IN THIS RECIPE IF VENISON SPAGHETTI GETS OLD
W
hile I did not get that opening day buck I write about this issue, I do dream of making this out of him. Basically I want to grind him up and eat him out of spite, but anyhoo ... The red/white distinction brought to us Americans by Olive Garden is not a true dichotomy. Pasta and specifically Italian game recipes often used the bold flavors of tomato sauces with the creamy and fatty flavors of white sauces. Neither is mutually exclusive to the other. Now with most of my cooking I work off the “mostly homemade” principle. One thing I especially love is canned tomato for red sauce cooking. While you might think that a chef only uses “fresh” for his or her cooking, you would be incredibly wrong. I had the opportunity to tour one of the finest open-air kitchens in the world in New Orleans. Emeril Lagasse (talk smack if you want, dude can cook and his food is routinely delicious) does a ridiculous amount of business and you can actually watch the food being prepared. On the tour one of the cooks made an observation I didn’t expect: “You might think we are scratch, and we kind of are, but we still have can openers. They are just in the back where the customers can’t see them!” As a young chef at the time I was blown away – they lied! Not true, they just used the most reliable and consistent product to make a delicious meal time and time again. In my case, it’s canned tomatoes. Now the sauce that we are making is a “pink Bolognese.” Bolognese is basically a ground meat cooked with a red sauce – I am making Italian grandmothers roll over in their graves, but what I say is true. Classic American “spaghetti with
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Venison penne with vodka “pink” sauce. (RANDY KING) meat sauce” is a bad rip off-of Bolognese. This recipe does not call for ground pork and ground beef – instead we are using coarsely ground venison.
Pink Bolognese 1 pound ground venison 1 small carrot, diced 1 small onion, diced 4 cloves garlic, crushed 1 shot Vodka 1 can diced tomatoes, drained halfway, pureed 1 tablespoon tomato paste Salt and pepper ¼ cup cream 1/8 cup cream cheese 2 cups spinach, fresh 1 pound cooked penne pasta, hot 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves Parmesan or pecorino to garnish Brown the venison in a heavy-bottomed
sauce pan; cast iron works great. When the venison is brown and crumbled add the carrot and the onion to the mix. Reduce heat to medium. Cook until the onion is translucent. Do not drain off any extra liquid, as this will be flavor for later. Add the crushed garlic. When most of the water is absorbed add the vodka to “deglaze” the pan. Basically, you want all the brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan to come off. Next add the tomatoes and tomato paste. Bring to a simmer and season with salt and pepper. When ready to eat (i.e., the noodles are done) add the cream and cream cheese to the pan. Swirl the cream cheese on the bottom of the pan to get it to melt better. Cook until the cream cheese is absorbed and the sauce starts to thicken. Add the spinach, hot noodles and thyme to the pan. Toss. Garnish dish with Parmesan or pecorino as desired. Enjoy! For more wild game recipes, see chefrandyking.com. –RK
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COLUMN word. The rain from the day before had turned the track into mud, not a big issue but annoying nonetheless. I climbed and climbed some more before making spike camp at 6,400 feet by shoving my extra camping gear and bivy sack under a tree. I nursed a cramp in my left calf and ate a few aspirin like they were M&Ms. Yeah, getting old is awesome. Then I made a snack and headed out on my hunt. I had climbed high enough that I began to worry about the weather. I had seen a storm cloud above but the forecast did not call for rain. As I made it to about 7,000 feet the snow started to fall. I had cut off of the main trail in my search for game and the first flakes were landing on me gently. Then the wind picked up and the snow hardened into pea-sized pebbles mixed with snow. Not exactly what I was prepared for. Cold, sure; After his encounter with the buck, King returned to his camp to find snow had drifted onto his bivy sack, effectively ending his hunt and precipitating a retreat down the sloppy trail in the dark. (RANDY KING)
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snow, not so much. I didn’t even have a tent at my camp! In about an hour over 5 inches of snow fell, and thankfully I had turned on the tracker option on my GPS at camp, so I knew how to retrace my steps back there. Otherwise I would have been clueless in the middle of a whiteout.
TURNING AROUND TO to head back I hiked over a rock outcrop I had passed on the way in. On the edge of the rocks, standing between two aspen trees was a large buck at about 60 yards. Broadside, looking at me. I pulled up my gun and placed the crosshairs on his vitals. Then something happened to me. I got, gulp, responsible. I looked at him in the scope, the snow hitting me in the side of the face, and realized just how bad of an idea killing him here would be. I was alone, miles from my camp, my truck and warmth. I owed it to my family to not be a greedy idiot at that moment. No buck is worth a dead dad. Had the conditions been better, boom, BBD. But given the amount of snow, time of day and distance from my vehicle, I passed. I have never done this before.
WHEN I GOT back to my hole under the tree I found the sideways-blowing snow had drifted onto my bivy sack. I couldn’t sleep there. In fact, I needed to get off the mountain. The snow had reached 6 inches deep and didn’t look like it would stop soon. I packed up my gear and headed down the hill. The soupy trail was effectively gone under the snow and I hadn’t used the tracker function on the hike in. The trail line on the map was inaccurate to the point of being dangerous. By headlamp I made my way down the mountain, slipping and sliding the whole time, my pack full of gear but no deer. Around a small bend in the trail I came within about headlamp distance of a young black bear that promptly ran away. Eventually I made it to my truck, cold and wet and never happier not to have shot a buck in my life. Last I saw, he was right here: 44.39005, -116.16821 Have at him! Just go in prepared. NS 148 Northwest Sportsman
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HUNTING
Anatomy Of A Layout Hunt Old waterfowling method still productive for hunting ducks on Columbia, other bigger waters. By M.D. Johnson
L
et me tell you a quick story, and you older baseball fans will like this one, I reckon. It’s 1976. I’m 12. Maybe it was ’77 and I was 13. Anyway, my Uncle Ed, a dark-haired good-looking Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin look-alike with underworld ties of some nature, though no one
quite knew how or what, takes me – a northeast Ohio native, mind you – to Lake Erie to see the Cleveland Indians play ball. Only we didn’t go to see the Indians; we went to see the New York Yankees play ball. First, we stayed at a fancy downtown hotel, along with the Yankees and their managers and coaching staff. Then, as the team leaves for the ball field,
Uncle Ed introduces me to each one. Hell, like they were all close friends or something. But it gets better. Next thing I know, I, a 12- or 13-year-old kid, am standing in the middle of the road throwing golf balls down Lakeshore Boulevard with – ready? – announcer and former Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto and manager Billy Martin. We’re laughing
There are easier ways to hunt waterfowl, but layout boats help duck and even goose hunters access different waters and pursue different species. (JULIA JOHNSON)
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HUNTING and joking like old pals, we were. And then to cap it off, I ride to the ballgame in a limousine with Rizzuto on one side and Martin on the other. Oh yeah, it was dead to rights the cat’s meow, I tell you. Jealous? You should be. Now fast forward exactly 20 years. I’m lying in the middle of the Mississippi River near Nauvoo, Illinois, surrounded by 200 pounds of fiberglass. The man who built the boat fashioned from the 200 pounds of fiberglass – Mark Rongers, perhaps better known as the mastermind behind The Mighty Layout Boys (MLB) layout boats – is lying next to me. Around us are 150 mixed canvasback, redhead, bluebill, mallard and wigeon decoys, all hand-carved, painted, floated and weighted by the same guy lying next to me. Overhead, swarms of cans hurtle upriver and down like so many jet-propelled bees. We have two drakes in the tender, along with a couple goldeneyes, two ringnecks and a pair of mallards. Are
you wondering if I’m thinking that this is as good as the Yankees ball game? Absolutely, it was.
IT SEEMS LIKE a very long time ago, that hunt on the Mississippi, but I remember it – yeah, I’ll go there – like it was yesterday. Not only for the company we had that day, for Mark and his brother John were and remain two of the most genuinely nice and knowledgeable individuals you’d ever hope to meet, but also for the fact that this was my very first introduction into layout hunting. What’s that? Aren’t familiar with layout boats and layout hunting for waterfowl? Well, don’t feel alone. Fifty years ago, layout boats were a common sight on many of the nation’s well-known waterfowling meccas – the Mississippi, Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, to mention just three. Low-profile boats and the style of ’fowling known as layout hunting was as traditional a method
Most layout hunting is done with a tender, as you won’t be paddling one of the boats very far very fast. Author MD Johnson hands a waterfowler his shotgun. (JULIA JOHNSON)
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of gunning as, well, the Yankees were and are to Major League Baseball. Layout boats, it’s assumed, were created for two basic reasons. One was the prohibition in 1918 with the passage of the Migratory Bird Act of the use of sinkboxes. A sinkbox was essentially a wooden (later fiberglass) box that concealed hunters below the surface of the water. Imagine a waterproof cardboard box with the four closure tabs laying open. Now, push the box down into the bathtub until the tabs rest on the surface of the water. That’s a sinkbox. Such boxes were often anchored into position, and many used cast-iron decoys set on the wings (tabs) in order to stabilize the hide and help prevent waves from spilling inside the box/ blind. Sinkboxes were, as one might imagine, ridiculously effective; thus, the prohibition, I’m assuming. And secondly, and with the prohibition on sinkboxes, ’fowlers wanted something similar, yet legal,
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HUNTING
The design of layout boats is pretty spartan and most minimize casting unnatural shadows on the water. Battleship gray is a popular shade for obvious reasons, but one company went with what Johnson called “aqua-camo.” Diving ducks are the primary target, but puddlers are sometimes taken too. (JULIA JOHNSON)
and something portable – a low-profile water-based hide that could be easily and relatively quickly relocated as the birds dictated. Enter the layout boat. Mind you, layout boats and layout hunting are no different than any other aspect of modern waterfowling. They are labor and equipment intensive. Often done far offshore and on water in excess of 100 feet deep, layout hunting isn’t for the faint of heart nor the lazy. Oh, and did I mention that it’s often cold? Very cold, as in watching the spray freeze on your gun barrel cold?
WHERE IT HAPPENS Layout hunting is typically, and perhaps traditionally is as correct a term as is possible here, associated with big open water, places where above-the-earth box-style blinds, boat blinds included, either aren’t possible or would stick out like a Styrofoam cup in a coal bin. Myself, I’ve layout hunted the Mississippi, the Great Salt Lake, Lake Erie and the Columbia River. This is big water. Open water. 154 Northwest Sportsman
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The birds feel safe here – secure – because it is open, and there’s nowhere for a predator, i.e. human beings, to hide. Almost nowhere to hide. But that’s not to say layout boats can’t be used on smaller bodies of water. They can; however, and when you see them used on something like a marsh, sheetwater, or an acre-sized pond, it’s often not a true layout boat, but rather one of today’s hybrid skiffs – an Aquapod, Marsh Rat, or Four Rivers brand. But wait a tick. If something like an Aquapod can be used in a traditional layout role, doesn’t it then qualify as a traditional layout boat? It does not. Please read on.
THE LAYOUT BOAT The difference, now that you’re intrigued, between a true layout boat and a low-profile hybrid skiff, e.g. the Aquapod, lies in their construction. In the case of a true (traditional) layout boat, the chines or edges of the boat slope gently to the waterline, thus creating no shadows on the water’s surface. In contrast, the sides
of something like an Aquapod rise vertically or sit perpendicular to the surface, and, given sun, cast a shadow or shadows. Why is this important? On open water, there are no shadows, and it’s thought, right or wrong, that birds, seeing such shadows, will understand something to be amiss and steer clear. True, these are often the same birds that will decoy within 25 yards of a 20-foot War Eagle draped in a grey bedsheet, but it’s all about tradition, right? Layout boats are many and varied. Today, most are made of fiberglass reinforced with Kevlar, but there are plenty of old school wooden layout boats still in use, most along portions of the East Coast or on the Great Lakes. These little boats are relatively spartan in design: cleats bow and stern for anchoring; an inclined and often adjustable backrest of some nature; and shelves and/or gun rests on the inside under the gunwales. Most are battleship gray in color, a choice meant to allow the layout boat to blend with the surface of the water. Occasionally, a boat would appear on the market with what I’ll call an “aqua-camo” pattern, a three- or four-color design meant to reproduce the shifting shades of lights and darks found on broken or wavy water. Tony Smith’s Lake Bonneville Layout Boats was one such example of this aqua-camo, and a damn good example, I might add. (He has since sold the company, though LBLBs can still be found.) To round out the description, true layout boats have no keel; rather, a slightly convex bottom. They also possess no means of propulsion, though some – LBLBs – can be paddled relatively easily for short distances. And as for amenities, I’ve seen only a removable heavy plastic or canvas splash guard, which affixes to three or four sides of the cockpit opening, and works to keep water from splashing onto the hunter or hunters. Oneor two-man models are available, though most layout boats are built to accommodate a single gunner.
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HUNTING Options for decoy spreads vary. Motherlines are used to put a number on a single cord, but can stretch into unnatural straight lines, so adding singles helps to break things up. (JULIA JOHNSON)
THE TENDER BOAT For those unfamiliar with the term tender as used in layout hunting, think of the tender as the mothership for the whole operation. The tender is a large, deep, extremely seaworthy vessel powered in most instances by a rather substantial internal combustion system. The tender does everything for the layout boat and the hunter inside. It transports the basically immobile layout to and from the hunting location. It sets and anchors the layout into position, and then builds a decoy spread using the layout as a point of reference. Once everything is set and the hunter is in place, the tender backs off some distance – say, 300 yards – anchors up, and keeps an eye on its child, all the while maintaining constant communication with the gunner(s) via two-way radio. The tender picks up downed birds, swaps out shooters, delivers breakfast and/ or lunch, replenishes coffee, and, at the end of the day, picks up and stows 156 Northwest Sportsman
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the spreads and hauls the layout boat home. A layout hunt without a tender boat is like trick or treat without candy. I mean, it’s just kinda silly.
DIVERS VERSUS PUDDLERS Some of you without a layout boat background might be wondering at this point just what kind of ducks these rigs are designed for. Typically and traditionally, layout boats were (and are) used to hunt divers. The list would include canvasbacks, redheads and bluebills (scaup), as well as sea ducks such as scoters, longtails/oldsquaws and in some cases eiders. Generally speaking, divers are open-water birds. Layout boats are open-water hides; thus, the two combine almost perfectly. Layout boats are effective for hunting divers for any number of reasons, perhaps the most significant being the fact that divers usually work a decoy spread horizontally; that is, straight on, parallel to the surface, with very little, if any
investigative circling. And circling. And circling. Conversely, puddle ducks like mallards tend to work a spread vertically, or from above. As such, they’re looking down into the open layout boat. They see the guy lying there, get scared, and fly away. Not always, but often enough. To combat this, some layout hunters will install doors overtop the open cockpit, essentially transforming the layout into just another clump of unassuming flotsam. Can it work? Absolutely; still, layouts and divers are, for all intents and purposes, synonymous terms.
DECOY SPREADS Every layout hunter is different when it comes to decoy spreads. This guy stretches nothing but mainlines. This other guy uses only single-rigged decoys. Guy three, on the other hand, deploys both mainlines and single-rigged. To each his or her own, and all can be effective. And by way
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HUNTING of definition: Mainlines, aka motherlines: A length of heavy cord – often dark-colored or sinking, à la leaded crab line, that disappears below the surface – anchored at both ends to which is clipped multiple decoys via short cords (droppers) and stainless steel spring clips. This system allows large numbers of decoys to be deployed and retrieved quickly and efficiently. It also works well in deeper water; say, anything over 10 or 12 feet. Dropper: I use Tanglefree decoy cord for my droppers. Some guys use No. 120 tarred nylon cord. Both work well. The droppers are permanently attached to each decoy using knots (tarred cord) or crimps (Tanglefree), and end in what I call a stainless halibut clip. Length varies, but my droppers are 40 inches long. This allows the mainline to sink below the level of my swimming retriever, and prevents Sadie Mae from becoming
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If you’re looking for a new or different way to pursue ducks on big water and the weather cooperates, layout hunting just might be worth looking into. (JULIA JOHNSON)
entangled and, potentially, drowning. Single-rigged decoys: As the name implies, these decoys are each rigged with their own cord and anchor. I have hunted over a 150-decoy spread, all of which were single-rigged, and it was a joy to behold. However, it was also
quite time-consuming to put out and pick up. Typically, single-rigged decoys will be used to compliment a mainline spread. Motherlines put all the decoys in a straight row, which looks almost nothing like a constantly moving raft of mixed cans, redheads and bluebills.
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Single-rigged decoys, however, placed randomly throughout a mainline spread help break up this far-tooorderly appearance. It makes it look more natural. As for the spread itself, a typical layout rig will start at the nowanchored boat, and work downwind in lines or rows, each wide enough to accommodate the tender as she goes about her duties. Single-rigged decoys can be interspersed here and there, including above (upwind of) the layout boat for a more realistic overall presentation. Now all that’s left is the gunner, a good wind from behind, gentle seas, and flock after flock of cooperative fowl. For you seasoned layout hunters out there, and I’m sure there’s a few, I realize this but scratches the surface of this most fascinating, albeit somewhat forgotten, method of waterfowling. For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity, my suggestion is to find someone who does layout hunts, and beg a trip. Or contact Capt. David Drewry, owner of Peninsula Sportsman (peninsulasportsman. com) out of Port Townsend, Washington, who, among offering an incredible array of waterfowling experiences, specializes in layout hunts for a variety of species including divers and sea ducks. NS
GOOSE CALLING LEGEND DIES Legendary goose caller and call maker Tim Grounds died earlier this fall when the ATV he was using to spray weeds at his hunting club tipped and rolled over onto him. Lower Columbia-based waterfowler MD Johnson, who last issue described himself as a “Grounds kid” while cutting his teeth in the fields and marshes of the Midwest, called Grounds, who was 60, the “godfather of goose.” “Grounds truly was a legend in the industry. Many a guy got his start calling thanks to Grounds. And many a guy became a successful competitive caller thanks to Grounds,” Johnson said. –NWS 160 Northwest Sportsman
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COLUMN
Pup’s First Duck Season T
hough waterfowl season in the Northwest has been underway for a few weeks, November marks the start of the best hunting. Cold GUN DOGGIN’ 101 days, rainy weather By Scott Haugen and migrating ducks and geese means the hunting is only going to get better as the season goes on. If this is the first season of waterfowl hunting with your pup, make certain you’re doing all you can to ensure the dog’s safety and comfort.
WHEN HUNTING WATERFOWL from a blind, having a platform for the dog to stand on is important. A platform allows the dog to stand out of the water, and stay dry. Allowing a dog to stand in the water all day can be very cold and unhealthy, especially if there are any open wounds or cuts on its feet. There are dog stands that attach to trees, folding dog stands that can stand in shallow water, and stands with covers on them and which act as a blind for your dog. It’s a good idea to do some work with your pup before the hunt so it knows its place and the purpose that the stand, or blind, serves. If hunting on dry ground, dog blinds are a good idea. If it’s a permanent ground blind you’re hunting from, you can build a box frame for the dog and line it with straw or a mat, to keep the dog warm. Be sure
A dog stand is a must when hunting in standing water to keep the dog comfortable, warm and healthy. (SCOTT HAUGEN) that whatever you put in the blind for the dog to sit or lay on allows water to drain off. You don’t want the dog coming in soaking wet on every retrieve and have to lie down in water.
A DOG VEST is also essential for keeping a dog warm on cold days. I like neoprene, as it insulates and adds lift, making it easier
for the dog to swim long distances and retrieve bigger birds. A vest with a handle on the back is nice in case you have to lift the dog into a boat, blind, or help it up a muddy bank. Make sure the vest fits your dog’s body type and size. My dogs are big in the shoulders, small in the hindquarters, and I found a Browning neoprene vest fits
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COLUMN
A durable dog vest with a flexible, sturdy chest plate protects your dog in a range of conditions, including busting through the ice, like this. (SCOTT HAUGEN) them best. Be sure to run your dog with the vest on before the hunt. Make sure it fits right and, if needed, trim places where it’s rubbing, usually behind the shoulders and between the legs and chest. If hunting amid cattails, rushes and thick reeds, having a dog vest with a sturdy yet flexible chest plate is great for helping break through these messes, and it guards them from getting cut. A chest plate also helps protect dogs when busting through ice.
IF YOUR DOG’S like mine, they are so excited on the morning of the hunt that they won’t eat before leaving home. So I take their breakfast with me. For this, I use Browning’s Portable Dog Dish. I like to remove one of the dishes – it’s attached to the case by Velcro on the bottom – fill the other dish with food, then zip it closed for compact carrying. I’ll take one of these for each dog, as I often hunt with two. This is better than feeding them by hand or dumping the food on a dirty surface.
Taking food for your dog is a good idea. Here, food is in one bowl of a Browning Portable Dog Dish, water in the other. (SCOTT HAUGEN)
If hunting on dry ground, where dogs don’t have access to water, take drinking water for them. Make sure your dog drinks, no matter how cold it is outside. Dogs lose a lot of moisture just by breathing, and expend a lot of energy running and swimming. Just like you, dogs must stay hydrated when afield. If they won’t drink, make them. Take a squirt-style water bottle, grab the corner of the dog’s lip, pull it away from the corner or the jaw, insert the bottle and squeeze water into the pocket. They have to drink it. If hunting in fields or areas of tall grass and weeds, it’s a good idea to take a finetoothed comb along too. You don’t want to get seeds or burrs matted into the wet hide, especially under the dog vest, so combing or even cutting them out is a good move. This can be done when there’s a lull in the action. As winter along with the ducks descend on us, make sure your dog is comfortable and safe. With the best days of the season still ahead, you want your dog in top physical condition so it can perform to the best of its ability. NS Editor’s note: To watch Scott Haugen’s series of short puppy training videos, visit scotthaugen.com.
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