Northwest Sportsman Mag - Aug 2023

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If you get in the area, visit our store!

Volume 15 • Issue 11

PUBLISHER

James R. Baker

EDITOR

Andy “Decent Article” Walgamott

THIS ISSUE’S CONTRIBUTORS

Dave Anderson, Jason Brooks, Chris Cocoles, Scott Haugen, Jeff Holmes, MD Johnson, Randy King, Sara Potter, Buzz Ramsey, Dave Workman, Mark Yuasa

EDITORIAL FIELD SUPPORT

Jason Brooks

GENERAL MANAGER

John Rusnak

SALES MANAGER

Paul Yarnold

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

Lucas Hoene, Mike Smith, Zachary Wheeler

DESIGNER

Lesley-Anne Slisko-Cooper

PRODUCTION ASSISTANT

Kelly Baker

OFFICE MANAGER/COPY EDITOR

Katie Aumann

INFORMATION SYSTEMS MANAGER

Lois Sanborn

WEBMASTER/DIGITAL STRATEGIST

Jon Hines

ADVERTISING INQUIRIES ads@nwsportsmanmag.com

CORRESPONDENCE

Email letters, articles/queries, photos, etc., to awalgamott@media-inc.com, or to the mailing address below.

ON THE COVER

Sara Potter, our For The Love Of The Tug columnist, got quite the tug out of this and another Oregon North Coast fall Chinook on one of guide David Johnson’s “Fish Like A Girl Adventures.” She details her catches and those of the other three gals on the water that day on page 97! (SARA POTTER)

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ALSO INSIDE

53 AUGUST PRIME FOR PUGET SOUND PINKS

Washington’s inland seas are about to turn pink – with salmon, that is. Some 4 million humpies are coming back this summer and Mark Yuasa details the wheres and hows of catching your share!

83 HEAD TO BONNEVILLE DAM FOR UPRIVER BRIGHTS

There’s plenty of fall Chinook to be had in the waters below and above the Columbia River’s lowest dam starting in August, providing an alternative to Buoy 10. Jeff Holmes features tips and advice from guides Tyler Miller and Jerry Reyes.

117 IT ’S GRASSHOPPER TRAPPING SEASON!

With a nod to beloved Northwest outdoor author Patrick McManus’s book and his tale about Rancid Crabtree and Crazy Eddie Muldoon’s scheme to catch some fishing bait, Jason Brooks shares why this time of year is perfect for tying on today’s ’hopper patterns and hitting the waters for trout.

133 FALL BLACK BEAR SEASON BEGINS NOW

Some Northwest hunters luck into a black bear while pursuing deer or elk, but others target the animals specifically as soon as fall seasons open in August. If you’re interested in boosting your bruin game, check out MD Johnson’s conversation with bear hunting expert and author Douglas Boze.

The arrival of albacore off the Northwest Coast should have you booking a trip or two. Jeff Holmes gets us ready for the action with how a daytrip out to the tuna grounds goes, as well as how to make the world’s best tuna fish sandwich from your catch!

BUZZ RAMSEY How To Work The Tides At Buoy 10

With understanding tides so critically important in successfully fishing the Columbia River estuary for fall Chinook and coho, Buzz gets out his charts and walks you through where and how to work these waters in August and early September.

COLUMNS

74 NORTHWEST PURSUITS ‘Bounty 10’: More To The Columbia Mouth Than Salmon

A certain navigational marker at the mouth of the Columbia will attract a whole lot of angling attention this month, but the nearby jetties offer several other good reasons to fish the extreme lower river in late summer. Jason hopped into the boat of Yakima Bait’s Jarod Higginbotham for a tour of “Bounty 10.”

97 FOR THE LOVE OF THE TUG Dropping In On The Fish

Lightning struck twice on one of guide David Johnson’s famous “Fish Like A Girl Adventures,” a trip that not only yielded limits of ocean-fresh Chinook and coho for the ladies that day, but a pair of very unique salmon bites for Sara.

142 CHEF IN THE WILD Houdini The Bear’s Great Escape

Chef Randy makes no bones about the difficulties surrounding his favorite Idaho black bear hunting spot: It suuuuuucks to get there, but it’s also rich in bruins, and one particular animal he’s pursued for years served up an unexpected – and crucial – lesson. And stick around as our game gourmet whips up a no-worries bear curry stew.

149 BECOMING A HUNTER Getting Ready For Archery Elk

Don’t fret, aspiring elk hunters, even with bow season beginning shortly in Idaho, Oregon and Washington, there’s still time to do some boots-on-the-ground and electronic scouting. Dave A. shares a game plan that will get you up to speed fast.

155 ON TARGET All Hail The ‘Old Reliables’

Today’s “headline calibers” don’t make game any deader than the old reliables. That’s according to Dave W., who shares an appreciation for all those game-killing calibers that might not be as cool as they used to be, but have accounted for far, far more bucks and bulls than the new kids on the block ever will.

163 GUN DOG Time To Ramp Up Gun Dog Training – Safely

True, these are the dog days of summer, but you need to be extra careful when conditioning and training your four-legged hunting partner in August’s heat. With September bird hunts just over the horizon, Scott details how to safely prep your pup for fall’s seasons.

(BUZZ RAMSEY)

Sporting Goods Store

Celebrates 75 Years

From humble beginnings selling worms to today’s comprehensive outdoor offerings, Verle’s in Shelton has stood the test of time. Arnie Schreiber shares his family’s story.

THE EDITOR’S NOTE

Ihurt my head last month trying to wrap my mind around the reason why the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife shut down the hatchery Chinook fishery off Tacoma with 81 percent of the quota still remaining.

That’s not a misprint: 81 percent, some 2,734 available keepers.

Honestly, I just should have used my email program’s suggested response – “not really” – in replying to the agency honcho who asked if I wanted to chat about it over the phone, and then gone on my merry way to proofread some more of this issue’s layouts. But here we are, so lemme detail this management migraine.

IT BOILS DOWN to angler encounters with sublegal Chinook, those that are less than the minimum keeper size of 22 inches. Given that Puget Sound is a vast estuary where young salmon rear, that size restriction is meant to protect juvenile kings before they brave the vast North Pacific or grow into the blackmouth fishery (what’s left of it, anyway). As anglers of the inland sea will also attest, recent years have seen the rise of managing state fisheries around sublegal, unmarked and/or legal-size encounter limits. Frustrating for sure, but these Chinook are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

As it turns out, the sublegal encounter limit can also protect jacks – randy male Chinook that return a year ahead of schedule. That’s the rub in Marine Area 11, where “a higher than expected percentage of sublegal jacks” were caught by test fishers, according to that WDFW official I spoke with. It’s something they’ve never seen before here. Essentially, it means that this summer, one of Pugetropolis’s most preeminent Chinook fisheries – storied Clay Banks, Slagpile, Point Defiance Marina rental boats, Les Davis, and all that – was managed by a jack encounter limit.

That shouldn’t be. That should not be. Shakers are one thing; they’ve got years ahead of them. Jacks are doomed to die this fall.

But bound by preseason agreements, WDFW had to pause salmon season off Tacoma after just eight fishing days. With only 17 percent – 636 fish – of the sublegal encounter limit left, sportfishing advisors wanted to preserve the rest of salmon season for August and late summer, when the bulk of adult hatchery kings come through and pinks and coho arrive. There’s a wee bit of anticipation – not to mention product – built up for those fish.

I DON’T ENVY state fishery managers’ jobs. I do believe they’re trying to eke out as much opportunity as possible under all the constraints. (And there’s a chance this mess could yield more hatchery kings than usual in the Puyallup River, which opens August 16.) But I do hope they can somehow address this misfire so that in the future important fisheries don’t get straightjacketed again. –Andy Walgamott

Tacoma, Commencement Bay and the waters of Puget Sound’s Marine Area 11 spread out in this 2018 aerial image. (DICKLYON, WIKIMEDIA, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Wonders Of Wandering Wildlife

How a bluefin tuna ended up on an Orcas Island beach in July is a mystery, but it helped to resurface an ancient Northwest fishery and sparked speculation.

By Andy Walgamott

Idon’t know what it is about wandering wildlife that is so wildly fascinating to me, but the traveler that turned up in the San Juan Islands last month was a good reminder that fish stray too – and how.

That a bluefin tuna would not only be found inside the Washington archipelago, but on an Orcas Island beach 6 miles up a dead-end inlet boggled my mind. It was totally inconceivable that a temperate, open-ocean species fished for way off of San Diego would be there, of all places! My first instinct was that reader Gary Lundquist, who’d spotted the otherwise healthylooking fish early that mid-July morning and quickly emailed me pictures, was pulling my leg. “Come on, Gary, get serious, no way,” I initially responded. But it’s legit.

ONE OF THE great things about critters like the Portland wolverine, Haystack Rock cougar, Mt. Rainier moose, dispersing Washington wolves and Oregon mountain goats, 2021’s pink salmon in the Wenatchee and Snake, etc., is that they help expand our knowledge of what’s possible with our fish and wildlife – and what has been. The Orcas bluefin led me to learn that middens – piles of household waste – on the Northwest’s outer coast show the big tuna were on the menu for tribes from time to time for at least five millenia up to as late as 1880.

Imagine – night falls a thousand Augusts ago inside a Pacific inlet lined by towering spruces and with cedar longhouses here and

there. A bluefin feeding frenzy begins near shore. Guided by bioluminescent plankton that make the tuna more visible, fishers in a high-prowed canoe hurl special harpoons at fish in the school. Attached ropes and floats ensure that those that are hit don’t escape. It’s a scene one can paint from a 1997 federal fishery bulletin that mixes archaeological evidence with ethnographic accounts.

AS LONG AS I’m speculating, after chatting with tuna skipper Mark Coleman of All Rivers and Saltwater Charters about what the initial evidence seemed to show, I wonder if that Orcas Island bluefin actually got stranded at the high tide mark as its school either hunted in the shallows or was chased there by killer whales the night before Lundquist and others found it. Coleman’s theory is sounder – it was “a lost, cold tuna that died right at the reach of tide.” The carcass was taken to a lab; autopsy results were expected after my deadline, but it reportedly weighed 214.7 pounds – and that was apparently after someone walked off with a quarter of the warm-blooded fish’s meat – more than twice as large as the state record bluefin, caught in 2019 off Ilwaco.

While there are no scientific observations of bluefin in Washington’s inside waters, that record is also short and ones from coastal middens are long and suggest that more than just warm ocean waters and/or a changing climate may have brought this tuna here. It’s thought-provoking to wonder what it and all the other Northwest nomads are up to, and what they may bode. NS

JD Lundquist gazes at the bluefin tuna that inexplicably turned up on Orcas Island’s Crescent Beach on July 11. The pelagic species has never previously been scientifically recorded in the relatively sheltered waters of the Salish Sea, but centuries and millenia ago, they were harpooned on the Northwest’s outer coast by tribal fishermen. (GARY LUNDQUIST)

Sporting Goods Store Celebrates 75 Years

From humble beginnings selling worms on the honor system to today’s comprehensive fishing, hunting, boating and outdoor offerings, Verle’s in Shelton has stood the test of time.

By Chris Cocoles

Among the biggest headlines in 1948 was an incorrect headline (spoiler alert: Dewey did not defeat Truman). It was also the year the Cleveland Indians won their last World Series title (the drought is so long now the team has a new name, the Guardians).

But at the far southwest end of Puget Sound, 1948 marked the modest debut of what became one of the region’s most comprehensive outdoor and boat retailers. Verle Schreiber got his start selling nightcrawlers out of his garage, and today Verle’s (360-426-0933; verles.com) features separate 7,000-square-foot retail and bay service shops, and a 3.5-acre spread with

200 boats on-site for sale.

This family-run business in Shelton is now into four generations of Schreibers sharing in the operation. And as Verle’s celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, we caught up with Arnie Schreiber, son of the company’s founder, to reminisce and look ahead to continuing to serve an outdoors-crazed community.

Not many businesses are around so long as to be able to celebrate 75 years, but that’s what Verle’s Sports Center & Marine is doing this year. The company, located near Shelton at the southwesternmost end of Puget Sound, was founded in 1948 by Verle Schreiber and is now into its fourth generation of family helping run the operation. (VERLE’S)

Chris Cocoles Congratulations on celebrating your 75th anniversary! What does that mean to this family-owned business to have advanced through multiple generations now?

Arnie Schreiber It’s a very proud moment. Not just for our family but also for our employees. The community and customers have also shared this special occasion with us.

CC Can you give us some background of how Verle’s got its start with your father Verle Schreiber back in 1948. What was his motivation for starting this business?

AS My dad was an avid fisherman, so in 1947 when visiting my aunt and uncle in Portland, everybody went to Colwood Golf Course, where my uncle was the greenskeeper, to get nightcrawlers for fishing. This is done at night when the sprinklers bring the worms to the surface. Using a red lens on a flashlight, you can pick the worms if you’re fast enough before the worms get back in their hole. We brought back a washtub about half full of worms. My dad shared them with his fishing buddies. These worms are much larger than your typical angle worms.

In 1948, when his friends ran out, they asked my dad to get some more. He said he could but it would cost a little to have them shipped and pay the pickers. Hence, the start of the business. The nightcrawlers were sold by having customers bring their own containers to my folks’ garage, get the worms they wanted and pay on the “honor system” by putting the money into a tin can. Both my folks were working and not at home.

CC Can you speak how the store has evolved over time? It looks like Verle really had a vision and that’s emerged into the full-

service outdoor equipment and boat retailer. AS After that meager start in 1948, my dad put in a small selection of fish hooks and leaders. No pretied hooks back then. “Do it yourself.” Customers began asking for lures, dip nets, etc., so Dad added to his offerings. Still the “honor system” to pay for what you bought. No problem! As he sold things, he bought more.

By 1952 my folks had built a home on Highway 3 going through Shelton. They

planned on about 200 square feet for an attached store. Dad cashed in his life insurance policy to buy more tackle. This was spread out over two 4-foot-by-8-foot peg boards in the new store. To grow the business they were open seven days a week and 24 hours. My mom quit her job and ran the store during the day until my dad came home from work. For years the store hours were from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Service outside of this time was by ringing a doorbell by the

The company’s origin story stretches back to half a washtub’s worth of nightcrawlers collected off a Portland golf course and given away for free to Verle Schreiber’s fishing buddies. When the worm supply ran out, Verle arranged to have more shipped north and sold them on the honor system, like at a farm stand. (VERLE’S)

The early years saw Verle Schreiber and wife Bernice expand their budding tackle business from a peg board to an attached garage to a second attached garage. (VERLE’S)

front door. What a commitment!

As it grew, he added more selection of fishing tackle. He expanded the store into one attached garage, then into a second garage, making the store about 1,200 square feet. He added hunting, camping, boating and athletic supplies, and another 1,000 square feet. During these years, customers from other areas were buying worms and returning home to tell their local sporting goods (stores) they needed to sell these great worms. Word traveled and my dad went into the wholesale worm business, shipping nightcrawlers all over Washington, Oregon, Idaho, British Columbia, Alberta and Northern California. To support this increase, more pickers were hired and my uncle in Portland coordinated the picking.

The next move was adding small boats up to 14 feet and small outboard motors under 25 horsepower for pickups or trailers. In the 1970s, he sold six to eight runabouts with inboard/outboards each year.

[The second generation: Arnie] I helped in the store until high school graduation. After that, I went to computer school and

the [University of Washington] in Seattle to prepare myself for a career. I spent 18 years in software development, and with tight schedules and pressures and Seattle traffic, I needed a change. My mother’s health was requiring my dad’s help and they needed to retire. Timing was right and my wife [Bunny] and I bought the business from my folks in 1980. To honor my dad, the business name has remained the same all these years.

When we bought the business, Bunny and I and one part-time employee ran the store. The store was open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Saturday. I saw a lot more potential, so in the winter of 1981 we expanded the store into the house, adding another 1,400 square feet. The store was now 3,600 square feet. The first year increased sales by 45 percent and continued to grow.

The third generation: Our sons Gary and Chris worked part-time while in school. When our sons finished high school and college, they came into the business full-time. Over time Gary became sales manager and Chris service manager.

They married and both daughter-in-laws have been working in the business for years. All family members and employees work wherever they can help.

In 1984 we bought a closed Shell gas station with two attached vacant lots on the north side of Shelton and proceeded to do a remodel. This was a high-risk experiment to see if the community could support a marine store. All small boats, outboard motors, trailers, parts and marine accessories were moved in by that winter. We added more accessories, parts and runabout boats. We lost money the first two years. By year three we were going strong and running out of room. We were able to make back our losses from the first two years.

In 1987, we expanded again by buying a closed Ford dealership (9,000 square feet) and property at a sheriff’s sale. The remodel came during fall and winter. Both the sporting goods and marine stores were combined at this new location. Another 4,000 square feet was added the next winter. The following year we added another 3,600 square feet of dry boat storage. The next year I purchased

At its current location on Golden Pheasant Road just off US 101 south of Shelton, Verle’s offers just about everything you could ever need for your Northwest fishing, hunting, boating and outdoor adventures. It has weathered both the pandemic and fishery shutdowns like the closure of the nearby Skokomish River over a boundary dispute with a local tribe. (VERLE’S)

an adjoining half-acre lot for service boats and used boat sales. We discontinued the athletic supplies to gain more space to expand the marine accessories area.

In 1998, Fred Meyer made us a great offer so they could build a super store attached to their existing grocery store. After accepting their offer we started a search for a new site. This would become the fifth location since 1948. A site was located south of Shelton along Highway 101. It is 3½ acres along the highway –great exposure and great building site. This was the first time we had the opportunity to design and build what we needed. Previously, we made things work for us, but sometimes not well. The fall of 1999 we moved into our new store. This time things worked out very well. This location is continually reminding customers, “Here we are whenever you have a need.” We have new customers show up at our store almost daily after 24 years at this location. The store is on 3½ acres with sales, service and storage buildings over 18,000 square feet.

Over the years we were able to have great products to sell. Besides a full offering of fishing, hunting and boating accessories, we carry in stock Alumaweld, Hewescraft, Smokercraft, Sunchaser, Mercury, Suzuki, Yamaha and EZ Loader. In 2000, we formed

Verle’s LLC to allow our sons Gary and Chris to become part owners.

Our fourth generation: Grandkids Zach, Cass, Jacob and Jess have all worked in the business between school years. Currently, Jess is the only one working part time.

CC What is the family most proud of as your business celebrates 75 years of serving Shelton and the South Sound?

AS I don’t think any of us gave it much thought. We had a plan to serve our customers with the products they need in the best possible way. It has been a great formula for success. In addition, all of our family and employees are outdoor enthusiasts.

CC I don’t think any of us were prepared for what happened during the Covid pandemic lockdown. How did Verle’s handle it?

AS We were shut down in March and reopened in May 2020. During this time, we helped our employees meet their financial needs.

CC It does seem like one positive for many of us during the pandemic was the ability to get outdoors and social distance while fishing or hunting. Did that help your

cause during such a difficult time?

AS We let our employees know we were opening and all came back as scheduled. Good employees! When we reopened in May, we didn’t know what to expect. As it turned out, we were one of the lucky businesses to be busy right away.

CC How has a business like Verle’s thrived and adapted at a time of such consolidation, online ordering and fishery constrictions? Did the nowlengthy closure of the Skokomish River Chinook fishery affect your bottom line in late summer and fall?

AS We work very hard to provide exceptional customer service with a knowledgeable staff. We don’t take our customers for granted. We have been consistently busy. Recently, some merchandise has not been available, but it’s improving.

Our most difficult time was 2021-22, when we had depleted our boat, motor and trailer inventory and couldn’t replace it for months. Fortunately, our customers understood and were willing to patiently wait. Most boats were presold before they came in. When boats came in, they were sometimes missing parts or we couldn’t get motors or trailers for them, causing

Verle’s also carries Alumaweld, Hewescraft, Smokercraft and Sunchaser boats, among other lines, as well as Mercury, Suzuki and Yamaha engines and EZ Loader trailers. (VERLE’S)

further delays.

Some fishery shutdowns for salmon and steelhead have created a 10-percent drop in tackle sales.

CC Do you take a lot of pride in helping your customers achieve all their fishing, hunting and outdoor goals and dreams? It must be a good feeling to be a go-to stop for all their questions.

AS Our customers have meant everything to our business since the beginning. We provide a high level of service in all areas. Our employees have in-depth knowledge to offer them. Employees have personal experience in the outdoors as well.

CC What advice would you give to newbies to the outdoors world who go into your store and ask for help to start learning how to fish, hunt, camp, etc.?

AS Our pro-staff employees can provide specific guidance to new outdoor customers, depending on their areas of interest.

CC What’s remarkable for having a business go on for 75 years is how the gear has changed and how technology has evolved one step at a time. What opportunities or products do you find yourselves leaning on far more than in the old days?

AS Our products have certainly changed over the years. For example, you couldn’t buy pretied hooks and leaders, and all tackle was made in the USA and was very expensive. Now, most fishing tackle is imported and less expensive. In addition, we’ve seen lots of significant changes to flashers, plugs and many other lures that use reflective material, scents and lights to attract fish. The use of depth finders/fish finders and GPS improves fishing success. Outboard motors became more reliable and efficient with features like power tilt and trim, more stainless steel in the right places, four strokes and electronic fuel injection. These upgrades have made outboards the preferred power choice for trailerable boats.

CC Do you hope for another 75 years of Verle’s continuing along, with more generations of the family taking over?

AS We hope to see the business continue into the foreseeable future. NS

The Westport fleet enjoyed some pretty darn good Chinook fishing last month, including for Darrel Smith.

(KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

READER PHOTOS

Like mother, like son! Jessica Faris and Jarron Honeycuttt, 13, have been enjoying excellent angling for German browns and more this year at Northeast Washington’s Waitts Lake.

(KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

PHOTO CONTEST MONTHLY Winner!

The fishy west coast of Vancouver Island is where Vincent Galvani, 13, got into this nice Chinook. He was on a guided trip out of Kyuquot, featured in our December 2022 issue. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

For your shot at winning great fishing and hunting knives from Coast and Kershaw in our Knife Photo Contest, send your full-resolution, original images with all the pertinent details – who’s in the pic; 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, 941 Powell Ave SW, Suite 120, Renton, WA 98057. By sending us photos, you affirm you have the right to distribute them for use in our print and Internet publications.

This year’s Lower Columbia summer Chinook opener produced an “epic day” for Kenny Howard, Jess Zerfing of Always Catching Guide Service and Dennis Schwartz. They were running Kwikfish on anchor in the western gorge in mid-June. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

READER PHOTOS

A trip to the razor clam grounds also yielded some bait in the form of sand shrimp for Amanda Wiles. She pulled nice bags of both off a Washington Coast beach this past spring.

(KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

Idaho grows some big smallies! Sixyear-old Oliver Ruen holds a nice one he caught at Lake Pend Oreille in June. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

The Han-Raleigh cousin crew caught crab and sturgeon bait for miles! Annika, Lexi, Austin and Kellan used silver size 1 Dick Nites behind divers to wail on American shad in the Tri-Cities area. It was “great fun for everyone,” except for their guide (and dad and uncle), who was tasked with desliming the boat. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

If coho are open off the mouth of the Columbia, count on the “pink lady” to be out there after ’em! That’s Jamie Mcleod, who got the season started the right way with this pair last month. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

Buzzer beater! Jeff Flatt caught this very nice Lower Columbia springer below the Longview Bridge on the very last day of season, May 31, after an upstream tribal overage led to an early sport shutdown. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

The Hazards Of Dumping, Part I

Acouple clamming on an Anacortes-area beach thought they’d gotten rid of the warden when they made a show of counting out their legal limit of 40 Manila clams apiece as the gamie watched from afar and then left to go check others.

They were wrong.

Ages ago in these pages I featured a ride-along with a local Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife sergeant whose motto was to mix up how he worked his beat, and it appears WDFW Officer Lance Stevens adopted that tactic. Usually, Stevens watches clammers with binoculars and then contacts those with an overlimit at their vehicle. On this occasion, however, he made himself obvious from the get-go, and it worked, with the couple dumping their steamer clams onto March Point beach for tallying.

“Officer Stevens watched the subjects count out legal limits of 40 clams and allowed the pair to see him leave the area without conducting a check,” WDFW Police posted on Facebook.

Stevens then drove off a ways to observe other clam diggers and when he glanced back at the couple, he “wasn’t shocked to see the male subject return from depositing the expected legal limit of clams in the vehicle and head back to the beach. The man couldn’t stand the idea of the overage remaining on the beach and nervously ran back out with a mesh bag to recover all the clams they had dumped.”

When Stevens swung back around to contact the man, the guy had somehow caught wind of the warden and had hidden his mesh bag with the extra clams – but not well enough. The officer found it and, as it turned out, the couple were 113 Manilas over the limit, leading to citations for both of them.

JACKASS OF THE MONTH

By Andy Walgamott

If you’re going to snag or poach on waters known as Gnat Creek, expect to get bit. That’s what a number of hatchery hole zeroes found out this spring while targeting returning Chinook on the smaller Lower Columbia tributary – and with the, er, no-see-ums watching their every move.

In one case, an Oregon fish and wildlife trooper on plain clothes detail watched as five people foul-hooked and then hid “multiple” springers in the bush. They received a mix of citations and warnings and the salmon were seized.

In another, a sergeant and trooper found a subject with two springers but no license or tag. In a third, three people were cited for possession of an unclipped Chinook and angling without a license or tag, and two for snagging. And in a fourth, a trooper watched as a male snagged, killed and kept what was described as a “large” king. Upon contact, he claimed he’d hooked it in the mouth, but eventually implied it was just too darn big to have let go, as required with snagged fish. It was seized and the guy was cited for snagging.

The Hazards Of Dumping, Part II

Just because someone hastily dumps their catch as the game warden approaches doesn’t mean they won’t get in trouble. A couple on Netarts Bay learned that lesson this spring.

According to the May newsletter of the Oregon State Police Fish and Wildlife Division, the duo had been crabbing for Dungeness with traps from the shores of

the little estuary between Tillamook and Pacific City. They’d caught some too, but when a trooper headed their way, “they immediately dumped all of their crab into the bay.”

Asked by the officer why they’d done that, the man essentially replied, “You can’t check them now.”

Maybe not, but to the trooper’s sharp

eyes, two of the dumped Dungies sure looked like big females, while a third one appeared on the smaller side.

Asked if they had planned on keeping the apparently illegal crabs, the man allegedly said they likely would have.

“The two subjects were surprised when the trooper issued two citations for Failure to Allow Inspection of Catch,” details OSP.

A Washington game warden seized this overlimit of Manila clams from a couple who knew the limit was only 40 but had dug 113 too many. (WDFW)

Unlock The Challenge

That’s the boast from the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association about its Buoy 10 Salmon Challenge fundraiser coming up on Friday, August 25. That day should find the middle to upper estuary of the Columbia River loaded up with Chinook and coho, thanks to a series of bathtub tides in the leadup to and during the event. For advice on fishing the tides, as well as tips and tactics, see Buzz Ramsey’s article on page 65.

Participants who weigh in a hatchery salmon will receive a raffle ticket that will

go into drawings for gift cards and prizes, and as always there’s an award for biggest fish. Anglers will also receive door prizes, dinner and more, while team captains will score goody bags. The evening includes two fun auctions.

The event is cosponsored by Northwest Sportsman, Fisherman’s Marine, D&G Bait and Silver Horde, among others, and is based out of Clatsop County Fairgrounds. Proceeds help fund NSIA’s advocacy work in Salem, Olympia and Washington DC on behalf of Northwest fish and fisheries.

For more, see nsiafishing.org/buoy-10salmon-challenge.

Coho Cash Added At Umpqua Derby

There are new prizes to fish for at the 30th Annual Gardiner, Reedsport, Winchester Bay Salmon Derby, held over the Labor Day Weekend on the Umpqua and nearby ocean waters.

Organizers at this local Salmon Trout Enhancement Program chapter are offering daily prizes of $150 for largest coho and $500 for the biggest one overall. While wild coho are offlimits in the river, hatchery fish bound for the South Umpqua are open, as are unclipped silvers in the Pacific off Winchester Bay in September.

By Andy Walgamott

MORE UPCOMING EVENTS

 Now through Sept. 10: 2nd Annual Small Mouth Bass Derby, Coquille River; thepocrd.com

 Now through Sept. 10: Bandon Crab Derby, Coquille estuary; tonyscrabshack.com/crab-derby

 Now through end of fishing seasons: Westport Charterboat Association Lingcod, Halibut, Chinook, Coho, Albacore Derbies, Pacific off Westport; charterwestport.com/fishing.html

 Now through Oct. 31: WDFW 2023 Trout Derby, select lakes across Washington; wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/ contests/trout-derby

 Aug. 1-27: 5th Annual Rogue Pikeminnow Roundup, Rogue River; ODFW, (541) 630-3681

 Aug. 4-6: Brewster Salmon Derby; brewsterkingsalmonderby.com

 Aug. 11-12: 18th Annual Oregon Tuna Classic, Pacific off Garibaldi; oregontunaclassic.org

 Aug. 11-12: Washington Tuna Classic, Pacific off Westport; missionoutdoors.org

 Aug. 12: 27th Annual Gig Harbor Puget Sound Anglers Salmon Derby, Marine Areas 11, 13; gigharborpsa.org

 Aug. 12: Kokanee Power of Oregon Odell Lake Derby; kokaneepoweroregon.com/derby

 Aug. 12: Lipstick Salmon Slayers Womens Fishing Tournament, Buoy 10 and Pacific off Astoria; lipsticksalmonslayer.com

 Aug. 25: Buoy 10 Salmon Challenge, Columbia estuary; nsiafishing.org

 Sept. 2-4: Gardiner, Reedsport, Winchester Bay STEP Salmon Derby, Umpqua River estuary and Pacific; 541-662-5505, grwbstep@gmail.com; Facebook.com/LowerUmpquaSTEP.org

 Sept. 9: Edmonds Coho Derby, Puget Sound; edmondscohoderby.com

August is rich with Northwest fishing derbies, including midmonth’s Lipstick Salmon Slayers Tournament at Buoy 10 and on the Pacific off the Columbia's mouth – that’s Stacy Ihly Keeter with 2022’s 29.4-pound Big Fish winner that scored her a check for $5,500. There's also a pair of tuna classics, plus events in Puget Sound and Oregon's Cascades, and much more!

SALMON SLAYERS)

Those coho prizes are in addition to the same amounts for the largest salmon of the day and derby – last year it took a 25.8-pound Chinook to claim that $500 top award. At the conclusion of the event, there’s food, beverages and raffle drawings. The derby helps fund the annual release of nearly 200,000 hatchery fall Chinook into Winchester Bay’s East Boat Basin for boat and bank fisheries.

 Sept. 23-24: Everett Coho Derby, Puget Sound and open rivers; everettcohoderby.com

 Oct. 7-8: Alsea Bay Salmon Derby; facebook.com/AlseaSportsmansAssn

 Oct. 27-29: King of the Reach Derby, Mid-Columbia’s Hanford Reach; ccawashington.org/kingofthereach

“Virtually no one will go home empty-handed!”

CALENDAR OUTDOOR

AUGUST

1-20 Buoy 10 (actual buoy to west Puget Island

fishery opens, hatchery Chinook and hatchery coho only

3-5 Oregon Central Coast summer all-depth halibut dates

6 2023 Washington State Duck and Goose Calling Championships, Sumner Sportsmen’s Club, Puyallup – info: facebook.com/ WashingtonStateDuckAndGooseCallingChampionship

12-13 ODFW Adult Shotgun Skills Workshop ($, register), Grants Pass – info: myodfw.com/workshops-and-events

17-19 Oregon Central Coast summer all-depth halibut dates

19 ODFW Adult Shotgun Skills Workshop ($, register), Bend, Creswell – info above

21-23 Buoy 10 fishing closure

24 ODFW Intro to Hunting Workshop ($, register), Tualatin Cabela’s – info above

24-27 Buoy 10 fishery open, hatchery Chinook and hatchery coho only

26 CAST For Kids event on Lake Washington – info: castforkids.org

28-30 Buoy 10 fishing closure

30 Idaho deer and elk bow opener in many units; Idaho fall black bear opener

31-Sept. 2 Oregon Central Coast summer all-depth halibut dates

SEPTEMBER

begin on mainstem Columbia from The Dalles Dam to Highway 395 bridge

Calendar, continued on page 46

1 Oregon and Washington fall black bear season openers; Columbia from west Puget Island line upstream to Highway 395 bridge in Pasco Chinook and hatchery coho opener; Steelhead retention closes on the mainstem Columbia from Buoy 10 to The Dalles Dam

line)

1 Washington cougar and bow deer openers; Fall turkey opener in many Eastern Washington units; Oregon grouse and mourning dove openers; Fall turkey opener in Western Oregon and select Northeast Oregon units; Steelhead closures

The sun rises on the Buoy 10 fishery this month, with angling for hatchery Chinook and hatchery coho scheduled to be open for all but five days in August. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

1-4 Buoy 10 fishery open, hatchery Chinook and hatchery coho only

1-30 Oregon Central Coast ocean any-coho dates (or 25,000-fish quota met)

2 Oregon general and controlled deer and elk bow openers

2-3/7/10 Washington September goose season dates (varies by area)

5 Buoy 10 switches to hatchery coho only, daily limit three

9 Washington bow elk opener; CAST For Kids event on Henry Hagg Lake –info above; Tentative Nehalem, Tillamook and Nestucca Basins wild coho openers (select dates)

9-13/17 Oregon September Canada goose season dates (varies by zone)

11 Opening of fee pheasant hunting at Fern Ridge Wildlife Area

14-16 Oregon Central Coast summer all-depth halibut dates

14-17 Portland Fall RV & Van Show, Portland Expo Center – info: otshows.com

15 Washington grouse opener; Tentative Siletz, Yaquina, Alsea, Siuslaw, Coos and Coquille Basins wild coho openers

15-23 Oregon bandtail pigeon season dates

15-25 High Buck Hunt dates in several Washington Cascades and Olympics wilderness areas, Lake Chelan National Recreation Area

16-17 Oregon youth upland bird hunting weekend at Denman, Klamath, Ladd Marsh, Sauvie Island and White River Wildlife Areas, and Madras and John Day locations; Washington pheasant, quail and partridge youth hunting weekend

16-24 Washington bandtail pigeon season dates

18 Opening of fee pheasant hunting at Denman, Sauvie Island Wildlife Areas

18-22 Washington senior and disabled hunter pheasant hunting week

23 52nd Annual National Hunting & Fishing Day – info: nhfday.org; Western Washington youth waterfowl hunting day; Take a Warrior Fishing event on Lake Washington – info: castforkids.org/event/twflakewashington

23-24 Coquille Valley and EE Wilson Wildlife Areas youth upland bird hunting weekend

25 Opening of fee pheasant hunting at EE Wilson Wildlife Area

28-30 Oregon Central Coast summer all-depth halibut dates

28-Oct. 1 Tacoma Fall RV & Van Show, Tacoma Dome – info above

30 Washington early muzzleloader deer opener; Eastern Washington youth waterfowl hunting day; Last scheduled day of 2023 Northern Pikeminnow Sport-Reward Program season – info: pikeminnow.org

30-Oct. 1 Oregon youth waterfowl hunting weekend

OCTOBER

1 Salmon, steelhead opener on numerous Oregon streams; Coho opener on Oregon Coast’s Siltcoos, Tahkenitch and Tenmile Lakes; Oregon razor clam opener on Clatsop County beaches north of Tillamook Head; Western Oregon and most Oregon controlled rifle (any legal weapon) deer openers

7 Washington muzzleloader elk opener; Eastern Washington quail, partridge openers

10 Deer, elk rifle openers in many Idaho units

14 Oregon quail, pheasant, partridge, Zone 2 duck and snipe, and Southwest, High Desert and Blue Mountains, and Mid-Columbia Zones Canada goose openers; Washington general rifle deer season opener; Washington Goose Management Areas 1-5 opener

14-22 Washington early duck season dates

14-30 Oregon Zone 1 early duck season dates

15 Last day of Oregon recreational ocean crab season (bays open year-round)

21 Last day of bottomfish retention off Washington Coast; Eastern Washington pheasant opener

21-29 Northwest Oregon Permit Goose Zone early season dates

25 Washington duck season resumes

28 Eastern Washington rifle elk opener

31 Last day to fish many Washington lowland lakes listed in regulations

DESTINATION CANADA HUNT • FISH • TRAVEL

Events Calendar

AUGUST 6-13

Prime fly fishing (rainbow trout, bull trout & Arctic grayling). Excellent pike fishing. For details visit nradventures.com

AUGUST 22-26

6th Annual Charity Fishing Derby For details visit joessalmonlodge.com

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Catch wild native fish from monster Northern Pike, trophy Rainbow trout and Bull trout, Lake trout to feisty Arctic Grayling & Walleye in crystal clear rivers, streams and lakes. We call these 6 species the Grand slam of the Northern Rockies, land this tremendous fishing variety in over 70 remote fly-in fishing destinations as you soar daily on an unforgettable fishing adventure. Freshwater fishing is at its finest in B.C.’s pristine Northern Rockies! Connect to our remote fishing destination with ease All-inclusive fishing package from Vancouver British . Convenient easy travel, premium accommodations world-class Fishing fly in fishing await

Fishing season is from June-September and spots are limited be sure to contact us soon to make that dream trip happen in 2024!

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August Prime For Puget Pinks

By Mark Yuasa

Did you hear that? I think salmon’s knocking on the door to Puget Sound!

All silliness aside, we’ve finally turned the corner on summer and are heading into one of the busiest times for Pacific Northwest salmon anglers, although the clock is ticking against us, as fall house chores, preparing for hunting seasons or going back to school become the priorities. But let’s not dwell on the inevitable and focus our precious time instead on an expected robust return of pink salmon. The front end of this pink steam train is barreling toward Puget Sound and the caboose extends far beyond the Strait of Juan de Fuca to most likely somewhere off the west coast of British Columbia.

Some 4 million of the odd-year salmon are expected back this summer, and here’s where and how to catch your share.

With their big numbers and snappy ways, pink salmon offer a great summer fishery for Pugetropolis anglers, whether targeting them out on the salt – this one was hooked while the editor was fishing out of his kayak off Richmond Beach in 2021 – or from the beach or local rivers. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)

When Sekiu and Port Angeles opened for salmon fishing in early July, anglers had already caught some pinks, and several also showed up in creel data for central and southcentral Puget Sound waters going back to early June and July.

“We’re optimistic on Puget Sound pinks this year, given we had solid outmigration numbers from the brood year and a great climate cycle to rely upon, all which should have provided sufficient ocean productivity,” says Mickey Agha, with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s fish management division. “With a total forecast of 3.9 million for Puget Sound and median forecast of 6.1 million for the Fraser River, if the return comes back as expected, we could be seeing a lot of pinks in the water!”

The 2023 forecast mirrors the 10-year average of 4 million and is expected to rival the glory years from 2009 to 2013, when returns were well beyond expectations. Predictions the last two odd-numbered years were for 2,925,681 in 2021 and 608,388 in 2019.

Among the higher expected river returns in 2023 are the Green, 821,681; Skagit, 552,193; Snohomish, 642,279; Nisqually, 45,428; Stillaguamish, 199,564; Puyallup, 397,255; and Strait of Juan de Fuca streams, 365,427. Hood Canal is another location not to be overlooked, especially the Hoodsport Hatchery area, where the pink forecast is for a whopping 492,858.

While relatively small at 3 to 5 pounds, pinks are also the fastest growing of the five Pacific salmon species and spend less than two years in the ocean before migrating back to their natal rivers.

A small percentage of pinks stray on the way home and wind up in a wrong stream, including places like the Green and Nisqually Rivers, where at the beginning of this century they weren’t found in large numbers but now those populations have

exploded. In 2023, some stray pinks were found as far up the Columbia River as Wenatchee and as far up the Snake River as Lower Granite Dam.

A pink can be distinguished from other salmon species by its very large black spots on the caudal fin and back. Their nickname “humpies” or “humpy” comes from the dramatic hump formed on the back as well as the gnarly hooked upper jaw that develops on male pinks at spawning

time in rivers.

The Puget Sound pink return usually peaks in mid-August, and in southern Puget Sound the last week of August and early September are best. Pink fishing in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound was very good at times in 2021 and 2019 during late summer.

FISHING TIPS FOR PINKS

When targeting pinks, the color of

Zac Smith gets an assist from his mom Sara while reeling in his first salmon ever, a Humpy Hollow pink in August 2021. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

FISHING

choice is a hot pink lure, spoon, jig or fly, as the color resembles the plankton or krill that are part of their main diet. Red-, chartreuse- and orange-colored presentations will also get the job done.

Anglers tend to stick with smallersize presentations, like pink mini plastic squids or spoons tied behind a short, 13- to 16-inch leader to a

white-colored dodger or silver flasher. Another method is a smaller 8-inch Pro-Troll flasher with a slightly longer leader of 15 to 20 inches.

From boat or shore, casting a pink Buzz Bomb or Point Wilson-type jig works. Let it sink about a foot per second, and once you feel the jig go slack, reel up (don’t set the jig hard because pinks have soft jawlines) until

you feel the rod bend. Others will cast out a pink mini hoochie jig with a single 1/0 pink- or red-colored hook.

Other lures include a pink Rotator trailed behind a small pink plastic hoochie with a single 1/0 pink- or red-colored hook. Let it flutter down to the desired depth and then slowly retrieve from shore or a boat.

One of the more exciting ways

Pinks are smaller than other Northwest salmon species because they only spend roughly 18 months at sea. But they feed heavily as they return toward their natal rivers and lures that are colored pink, which match their primary forage, usually are winners. Tegan Yuasa and Valentina Shevchenko show off a pair from the last run. (MARK YUASA)

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Rivers from the Skagit to the Nisqually all will see fishable numbers of humpies by late summer, and the Duwamish-Green is forecast to get the most, making for good angling from the Spokane Street Bridge on upstream. (EPA)

to catch pinks is fly fishing with a pink Clouser Minnow using a 7- or 8-weight fly rod with a sinking line that’ll give the streamer an irresistible action when stripping line in with intermittent pauses.

The key to success when fishing from a boat is to troll very slowly (1.5 to 2.0 mph at most, depending on current, tide and wind).

Around an hour before and right after a flood tide or a slack tide is the optimal time to catch pinks. Pinks often remain on the bite throughout the day, but early morning, just before and right after first light, gives up the best action that you’ll not want to miss. The evening bite is

often equally as good.

Whether from a boat or shore, pinks are rather easy to spot, as schools of fish like to streak across the surface or can be seen jumping out of the water.

WHERE TO FIND PINKS

There are endless areas to try along the Strait of Juan de Fuca from shore or boat east of Neah Bay, off Sekiu to Pillar Point, and from Port Angeles to the bend into Admiralty Inlet –and don’t overlook the deeper water areas of the shipping lanes too. You can find numerous places to fish for pinks from shore along the Strait, although kelp beds in some areas can

hinder success.

In Puget Sound, look for pinks congregating in schools during the entire month of August off Midchannel Bank at Port Townsend; Possession Bar; the west side of Whidbey Island; Possession Point; from Mukilteo south to Shipwreck; Browns Bay; off the Edmonds Marina; Jefferson Head; Richmond Beach; the west side of Bainbridge Island; and West Point south of Shilshole Bay. The San Juan Islands are also a good place to look for pinks.

Keep in mind when fishing from a boat that pinks are much less oriented to structure and don’t stay way down deep in the water column or near

or on the bottom like their Chinook cousins. Usually, you’ll find them schooling in open water and they can be found from the surface to usually no deeper than 100 to 125 feet.

Pinks like to stay close to the shoreline to avoid strong currents, making them easily accessible for bank anglers. Excellent shore spots include Fort Casey, Keystone, and Bush and Lagoon Points off the west side of Whidbey Island; Point Wilson near Port Townsend; Deception Pass; Point No Point; Possession Point Bait House on the east side of Whidbey Island; the Mukilteo Lighthouse shoreline and the pier at the new Mukilteo ferry pier; Edmonds Pier; Picnic Point in Edmonds; Carkeek Park; Golden Gardens; Alki Point; Lincoln Park in West Seattle; Redondo Beach shoreline; Dash Point State Park shoreline; and Point Defiance Park Boathouse and Les Davis Piers in Tacoma. (Unfortunately, both the Dash Point

The mild flesh of pinks caught in the saltwater and very lowest ends of rivers shouldn’t be overlooked. Salt, butter, dill and lemon will do you well. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)

FISHING

and Redondo Piers are still closed indefinitely due to structural issues.)

This season is a little different in terms of places you can go to catch pinks in Puget Sound. One notable change is that the entire east side of Whidbey Island (Marine Areas 8-1 and 8-2) is wide open, including “Humpy Hollow” clear up to Mukilteo and beyond, during the month of August.

Once the end of August rolls around, the vast majority of pinks will migrate into freshwater; anglers should check fishing regulations for what rivers and streams are open or closed.

When pinks enter the rivers, the action is often fast and furious, with anglers lining productive banks shoulder to shoulder. To avoid conflict be sure to give the angler next to you plenty of elbow room.

Target the lower reaches of rivers and estuaries, as the pinks tend to have higher quality meat there. As the

season progresses, the flesh of pinks within the freshwater environment begins to deteriorate near the final stages of their lives, although catching and releasing them is still a viable option. Many fish get snagged in rivers, which is illegal and only pinks hooked in the mouth or on the head are considered legal to retain.

Pinks will remain part of daily catch limits in marine fisheries, while limits in freshwater areas are watershed-specific. For details, be sure to check the WDFW regulation pamphlet or website at wdfw.wa.gov.

PINKS ARE EXCELLENT EATING FISH

Caring for your catch of salmon is very important and even more so when it comes to pinks. Nobody wants to eat a piece of mushy salmon meat.

A pink salmon has a rather mild flavor, and pairs especially well with citruses like lemon, lime or orange and a dash of seasoning. Pinks are

noticeably less oily than other types of salmon, so expect the salmon fillets to be a little bit leaner than sockeye, coho or Chinook.

Once you’ve got a pink in the boat or on the shore, be sure to bleed it right away and then pack it in a cooler filled with ice immediately, especially on a hot summer day when the quality of meat breaks down quickly.

It doesn’t take much to bleed them. Simply cut the gill rakes with a knife or by hand tear a section of the gills while holding the fish in the water. If you need to club them, do so gently, as this can also damage the meat.

By taking the right steps you’ll be able to ensure a grilled, poached or oven-baked pink salmon dinner is a hit around the dining table! NS

Editor’s note: Mark Yuasa is a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife communications manager and longtime local fishing and outdoor writer.

Charting Buoy 10 Tides

The number of salmon returning to the Columbia this month and next looks encouraging, with over 500,000 Chinook and another three quarters of a million coho expected back to the big river. The largest single component of this year’s fall Chinook run is made up of fish bound for – not surprisingly – the last free-flowing stretch of the Columbia, the Hanford Reach, where they will ultimately spawn in the mainstem. These salmon, known as upriver brights, or URBs, will contribute 272,000 Chinook to the return at the Columbia mouth. As for the coho run, it’s pretty much evenly split between early-returning/south-migrating fish and late-returning/north-migrating salmon.

If you are planning to chase salmon at the mouth of the Columbia, you should know that the waters east of the Buoy 10 navigation marker, and a north/south line extending from it, is the first place you can ambush salmon as they enter the big river.

For those interested in fishing the ocean, understand that what’s known as the Columbia River Control Zone – the waters extending west of the Buoy 10 north/south line out to the ends of both jetties and onward to the green Buoy No. 7 on the north side and to the red Buoy No. 4 to the south and a straight line between all points – are closed to salmon fishing. You can view a map of what’s known as the Columbia Control Zone in both the Oregon and Washington Departments of Fish and Wildlife regulations booklet. As a reference, the buoy with the number 10 stamped on it is located midchannel just west of the entrance to Ilwaco Harbor.

SALMON FEEDING IN or near the Control Zone, as well as those wanting to migrate into the estuary and upriver, allow flooding ocean tides to carry them into

Steve Manome holds a Chinook he caught with author Buzz Ramsey at Buoy 10 last season while trolling a herring in combination with a Fish Flash. (BUZZ RAMSEY)

BUZZ RAMSEY

the Columbia. As you might imagine, the number of fish and how far they are carried into the river all depends on how big the tidal exchange is. When the difference from low tide to high is 8 feet or more, the coho action near Buoy 10 itself should not be overlooked.

Here, near the fishery’s western boundary, coho are usually found in the top 10 to 20 feet of water when tides are flooding in. This sometimes bait-filled surface layer of water is separated from a bottom wedge made up of cool, dense ocean water that moves in much faster than the surface layer. In fact, this layering is often visible on your fish finder during big tide exchanges.

It’s that deepwater current that swiftly carries salmon, many of which are Chinook, into the lower, middle or –during big exchanges – upper estuary. This is why anglers will often target coho during the first half of the flood tide near the Buoy 10 line before picking up their gear and running eastward to then target Chinook that whizzed past them as they allowed the deep, fast-moving currents to carry them eastward.

If you arrive near the Buoy 10 line at low tide or just after, when there is little or no current, try forward trolling. Once the tide starts to flood in, you should begin holding (back-trolling) into the current and allow the flooding ocean water to

move fresh fish into your trailing gear. The idea is to hold your position (facing west) as fresh fish move into the Columbia with the incoming tide.

Note that low tide near Buoy 10 may not match the time listed in your tide book or phone app and could, in fact, occur an hour or so after the listed time. It just takes that long for the flooding ocean water to slow, stop and reverse the massive flow of the Columbia. Arriving too early can sometimes mean the water near Buoy 10 will be fast-moving, rough and unpleasant. If this happens to you, try heading to calmer waters, like nearby Baker Bay, and wait an hour or more for the flooding water to calm things down.

Shown here is some of the gear and lures anglers might need or want to try while prowling Buoy 10 for Chinook and coho. Herring and anchovies are the top bait choices and can be rigged in combination with rotating flashers, but use a smaller one or a short, easy-pulling bait on a 40- to 50-inch leader when behind Pro Troll or Brad’s Evolution flashers. The same is true with lures behind a 360 flasher, and what works best are small spinners and size 2.5 or 3.0 SpinFish or similar-sized Brad’s Cut Plugs. Keep in mind that rotating flashers work best when currents are soft-running, since it’s a lot easier to obtain the right pulsating rod-tip action during these times. Of course, triangular flashers like a Fish Flash will attract salmon too and remain a popular choice at Buoy 10 and work just fine with larger baits, spinners or bait-filled plugs. (BUZZ RAMSEY)

During times of big tide exchanges, this area can produce a frenzy of action for the hundreds of boats, all lined up to greet the swarms of fish that can sometimes be funneled into the river by an aggressive incoming tide. Keep in mind that during much of August the coho that flood in with a big tide can and do retreat back into the Control Zone or ocean as the tide ebbs. During the latter half of the month, and especially during September, coho that are pushed into the river mouth will likely commit to their river journey.

If you try your luck near the Buoy 10 marker, realize that most fish will be found near the surface, which means you may only have to let your gear out 15 to 20 feet on your linecounter reels, which equates to eight to 10 line pulls (the distance from the reel to the first rod guide) off a standard levelwind.

AS YOU CAN tell by now, knowing what the tides are doing – during any given portion of the day – is all important in regards to where you need to be when targeting salmon at Buoy 10. Rather than using a printed tide book, what most anglers do these days is to download a smartphone app that will give you the timing of the daily tide swings at various locations within the Buoy 10 management zone and beyond, as well as convey the amount of water being exchanged with each in-and-out tidal movement.

This is critical because a big tide will push more fish further into the estuary, in which case you will need to move upriver with the surge of salmon carried by the incoming water. A small exchange will

cause fish to accumulate in the middle estuary, near Warrenton, Hammond, along Baker Bay and the entrance to the Chinook Harbor, where they may linger until building tides move them eastward.

Tides is the smartphone app I’m currently using. To give you an idea of how the tides vary depending on exactly where you are within the Buoy 10 management zone, the high tide for August 2 occurs at 2:40 p.m. at Jetty A, located at the Ilwaco Harbor entrance, and doesn’t peak until 3:13 p.m. at the Astoria Port Docks.

For those who don’t already know, there is a big sand island that starts 2 miles

west of Hammond and extends eastward all the way to Rice Island, well above the Astoria-Megler Bridge. This island, named Desdemona Sands, separates the dredged south shipping channel from the north channel.

The north channel, although ultimately a false one, maintains mostly reasonable depth over 3 miles on the Washington side above the Astoria-Megler Bridge and can offer success equal to, and sometimes better than, the deepwater shipping channel located along the Oregon shore. Although there are a few places you can cross the island, especially during a high tide, many anglers wanting to fish

Tide charts (below) for Jetty A, marking the entrance to Ilwaco’s harbor, and the Astoria Port Docks, about 8 miles upstream, illustrate how low and high tides occur later the further you move up the Columbia River, a key concept for correctly fishing Buoy 10 and the estuary this month. (NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE; TIDES)

the north channel and coming from the south will navigate around its western tip before heading eastward again.

Given a decent exchange of water, your trolling strategy near and upstream from the bridge should be to troll upstream (the same direction as the flooding water) during the latter half of the flood and switch directions, going westward, when the tide begins to ebb. Fishing this area is popular with those wanting to target Chinook.

A different trolling strategy that works near the bridge during times when there is a big tide exchange is to hold your boat into the incoming water, just like you might near Buoy 10’s western boundary, and allow the flooding tide to push fish into your gear as you hold steady in the current.

What many anglers do when fishing the north channel during medium tide exchanges is to troll near and parallel to Desdemona Sands in 20 to 35 feet of water and make their upriver troll well past the bridge as the flood tide nears its peak. Once the tide changes direction and begins to ebb, they turn their boats around and troll westward.

In the south channel, since it is a well-maintained shipping lane, anglers generally let their lines out 25 to 35 feet on their linecounter reels, as many salmon will suspend at middepth over deep water, especially when tides are soft or flooding. The fish can be found deep or along current edges when the tides, especially a strong one, are outgoing.

EACH AND EVERY year, including this one, I write the time of each daytime high and low tide for Buoy 10 on my month-at-aglance calendar. The reason: The majority of the time the best bite, especially for Chinook, can be found in the middle to upper estuary three hours before and after each high tide. Of course, high tide doesn’t always occur in the morning; when it happens in the afternoon, a late start might be worth considering.

This year, incoming tides mostly dominate during the first week of August, which could make for easy bar crossings during the mid- to late morning hours

should you decide to fish the ocean. In addition, these same big tides could push decent numbers of fish into the estuary all the way to and above the bridge.

However, the high tides will occur in the afternoon starting at 2:30 p.m. on August 1 and happen 45 minutes or so later each day until late in the week. If you start early in the day, you might try your luck for coho near the western boundary during the first half of the flood before moving upstream to catch the last half of the flood and first part of the outgo near or above the bridge during the afternoon. It’s not until August 6 that we will see a high tide during the early morning hours (5:20 a.m.) at the bridge.

The tides will then diminish in terms of the amount of exchange from August 6-12. I suppose the good news is that we will see the high occur during the morning time period. Since the tide will advance roughly 45 minutes each day, it will match the noon hour on August 12.

From August 13-20 we will see the tides slowly build each day. These soft tides can and often do fill the estuary with

salmon. Low tide will occur during the morning hours and flood from then on, with the peak of the flood happening at 1 p.m. on August 13 and push back later each day, with high tide occurring at 4:30 p.m. by August 20. These somewhat soft tides should provide good salmon action in the middle estuary all day, and perhaps especially during the afternoon timeframe.

Keep in mind that while the afternoon high tide will likely offer the best chance to catch Chinook at or upstream of the bridge, the west wind can be daunting when the tide ebbs as compared to when it’s flooding. To avoid the big waves, try timing your afternoon trip back to Oregon when the tide is still flooding or goes slack at its peak. In addition, if you fish the evening tide east of the bridge, you may be able to escape much of the rough ride back to port (assuming you’re returning to Oregon) by launching at the East Mooring Basin or John Day Boat Ramps, rather than Hammond or Warrenton.

Note that the entire Buoy 10 management zone, which extends upstream to the western tip of Puget

These hitchhikers called sea lice often can be found on salmon during their ocean journey and when first entering freshwater. They are a sign that a fish is fresh from the Pacific, as the lice – which are actually copepods, important marine forage early in the salmon lifecycle – die and fall off after a week or two in rivers or lakes. (BUZZ RAMSEY)

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Island, will be closed to fishing for any salmon August 21-23 and 28-29.

THE AUGUST 24-27 timeframe sees high tide occur in the morning, starting at nearly 8 a.m. on August 24 and advancing each day to 11:45 by August 27. Not that you will notice much tide movement, as these soft exchanges are what’s often referred to as “bathtub” tides because there will be only a few feet of tidal movement between the high and low. This should make for easy trolling and cause the estuary to likely fill up with salmon. As such, the most productive fishing might be had off Hammond, Chinook and the lower portion of Desdemona Sands.

The tides will begin to build starting on August 27 and will continue to do so until September 1. On open days, they will likely make for some hot fishing for coho near the western boundary and cause the thick numbers of Chinook holding in the middle estuary to move toward and above Tongue Point.

Keep in mind that September 4 is the last day you can keep one fin-clipped Chinook as part of your two-salmon daily limit at Buoy 10. However, beginning September 5, the fin-clipped coho limit will go to three fish a day through the end of 2023.

Oregon and Washington salmon managers can and do make emergency changes to scheduled seasons like the ones I’ve described here. Although season dates can change depending on in-season catch rates, you should realize that this year’s five closed salmon fishing days in late August were implemented and modeled to ensure the Buoy 10 season will stay open as described in this article. NS

Editor’s note: Buzz Ramsey is regarded as a sport fishing authority, outdoor writer and proficient lure and fishing rod designer. As such, fishing rod manufacturer Douglas Outdoors has added Buzz to their pro staff.

David Feucht shows off a hatchery coho he landed at Buoy 10 last season while trolling a herring near the Astoria-Megler Bridge. Tom Nelson, pictured with David, netted the fast-moving fish. (BUZZ RAMSEY)

‘Bounty 10’: More To The Columbia Mouth Than Salmon

NW PURSUITS

By Jason Brooks

quick internet search for the famed Buoy 10 fishery will yield more results than any angler could ever read. Same with YouTube videos and tutorials. It’s mostly fall salmon fishing info that you will find, and for good reason – usually, a million or so good reasons. Strong Chinook and coho predictions are why anglers will post, write and vlog about Buoy 10 fishing.

But they’re missing some other great fisheries and seafood bounty. Indeed, instead of it being called Buoy 10, it should be called Bounty 10, what with all the options this Northwest locale offers.

ASitting in my office one day a year or two back, the phone rang and it was Jarod Higginbotham of Yakima Bait Company (yakimabait.com). Jarod’s personality is as big as he is; he’s known as the gentle giant of the fishing world, always smiling and always up for an adventure:

“Hey, bro,” he asked me, “what are you doing next week?”

When Jarod asks what you are doing, the best answer to give is, “Hopefully joining you on your boat,” which was also the right answer this time.

The plan was to meet at Ilwaco for a day of fishing. Chinook had just closed but coho were still open and reports were that the river was full of them. When we met up, the first thing Jarod did was run up to

me and give me a big bear hug. Known for his smile and gracious hugs, Jarod is best friends with everybody. He’s a mountain of a man who is willing to help anyone, anytime, and is known to stop and talk to anglers and give any advice he can, as well as listen to what they have to say. This was how he came to organize this day on the water. His family was on vacation and had timed it to fish for coho, knowing that most salmon anglers who would rather pursue Chinook would be gone.

ILWACO TURNS BACK into a sleepy fishing and tourist village once fall king season is over. Camping and hotel accommodations are easier to plan, and Jarod’s parents were in the area enjoying the beach. They joined

us on this day, along with Jarod’s son Hunter. The plan was simple: Drop crab pots in a bay and then head to the main channel to fish for coho. And while we tried our hand at salmon fishing and did mark some fish, the potential of the day was too much to keep dragging around SpinFish for coho when there was so much more to do.

Soon we had switched out the trolling rods for casting setups and Jarod positioned the open boat parallel to the

north jetty. Bank anglers were here as well, casting jigs and spoons, reeling in seabass and lingcod. We began by pitching jigs and soon were hooked up. To our surprise it was a giant surfperch, one of the biggest I have ever seen!

Staying on the helm to keep the boat right off the end of the jetty, Jarod kept everyone in position to catch perch. It’s a bounty not thought of at Buoy 10, but a pleasant surprise nonetheless.

After landing six or so surfperch, we

made our way back to the middle of the jetty on the upriver side. The tide was moving the boat along the shoreline, so we did not have to cast but instead just dropped our jigs straight down. Another hookup and this time it was a Dungeness crab! This was a shocking surprise, but it ended up being one of three we landed on hook and line on this day.

A shoreline angler who had made their way out on the boulders that make up the jetty was casting a folding crab snare and

He’s the man with the plan – and a spatula. Jarod Higginbotham works the grill during author Jason Brooks’ trip to “Bounty 10.” (JASON BROOKS)

also doing well. We watched the angler haul in several crabs while we hooked them on jigs. It’s not exactly the tactic I would recommend for catching Dungeness, but as bycatch it wasn’t bad at all.

Finally, after all of the surprises, we started catching what we’d come here for – bottomfish. Black rockfish, with a few blues and a copper or two thrown in, along with a canary sea bass. Hunter was the first to get a lingcod to bite and this great-eating fish was the trophy of the day. Jarod’s father also landed a nice lingcod.

ONCE WE GOT bored of the North Jetty, Jarod dropped the hammer on the big motor and soon we found ourselves fishing the South Jetty, on the Oregon side. Here it was all black sea bass and lingcod – until we got a bit too close to the rocks.

Cormorants were resting on the rocks and diving down for baitfish. The jigs we were using looked like silver and blue herring that when jigged properly mimicked baitfish being thrown against the jetty. The first cormorant bit the jig in 60 feet of water – none of us knew the birds could dive that deep. The wiry, smolt-gobbling birds are known to be voracious predators of salmon and steelhead making their way down the Columbia, but they are also aggressive when hooked by a jig. Once we were able to grab hold of the bird and take the hook out, it promptly bit Jarod.

Lesson learned but soon enough we accidentally hooked another one, this time in the leg, which made it much harder to get

to the boat and safely released. After that it was time to move along until we were away from the resting and feeding birds.

WHILE SALMON FISHING will be closed for five days later this month – August 21-23 and 28-29 – angling for other species here will remain open. Be sure to have a boat large enough to handle the water and always watch the tides. Jetty fishing can

be done on the shore, at least on the North Jetty, but do some more research on the whens, wheres and hows. Most anglers will throw Buzz Bombs, darts or jigs; bring lots and be ready to lose some gear to the big boulders that make up the jetty.

Once September rolls around and Chinook closes for the season, coho will be the target. Ocean-bright and big silvers enter on each tide cycle and they will mill

The day on the water produced a handful of redtail surfperch (JASON BROOKS)

… As well as a couple tasty lingcod. (JASON BROOKS)

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around down by the jetties and continue to feed.

Crabbing here can be hit or miss due to the tides, but can be incredibly good here on days when the exchange is not extreme. We learned that on our day on the water as we went to pull the pots. At first the excitement was too much to bear when we grabbed the crab pot buoys and they felt heavy. Thinking we had hit the crab jackpot, instead we found out the traps were covered in eel grass and kelp. The tides were strong and the pots only yielded a handful of crabs.

Talking with fellow anglers and crabbers, the biggest key to good crabbing here is only setting the pots for a short soak during slack tide. We had left ours all day while we fished, and it caused the pots to become entangled with grass and seaweed.

Lesson learned, but now Buoy 10 and its famed salmon fishery is better known in our fish camp as Bounty 10, where a day or two on the water could yield multiple species of fish, some Dungeness – and hopefully no more cranky cormorants. NS

Hunter Higginbotham shows off a nice Dungeness. Crabbing inside the mouth of the Columbia shines later in the season, but can be good in late summer too. Target slack tide, and beware the ebb. Daily limit here is 12 males with a carapace width of at least 5 3/4 inches across. (JASON BROOKS)

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Head To Bonneville For Brights

There’s plenty of fall Chinook to be had in the waters below and above the dam starting in August, providing an alternative to Buoy 10.

By Jeff Holmes

Every year as the Northwest’s fall king run moves down the Alaskan and British Columbian coasts, we are regaled with claims of the greatest fishing in memory, of a run so underforecast that fisheries managers will admit the failures of their predictive models and liberalize all limits. But such miracle runs rarely materialize. The annual hype is primarily about the fact that fishing is almost always at least really good at the lodges along the Salmon Highway where these reports emanate and because it makes sense for businesses to make exciting reports to attract people to these amazing places.

This year, however, has been different. Not since the record king runs of the early 2010s has the hyperbole matched up with catches. Lodges, charter operators and private boaters are reporting hooking numbers of ocean kings that are tough to achieve on opening day of trout season. Washington anglers are already seeing excellent king fishing for larger than average fish in all of the marine areas – when they’re open – and the run was just starting to show up as of this writing in mid-July. It’s safe to say that we are in store for amazing king and coho fishing this late summer and early fall.

A HUGE NUMBER of the kings and coho gobbling their way down the coast will ultimately hook a hard left into the Columbia River, fueling Buoy 10 and other lower river fisheries, before a slug of the kings ascend Bonneville and streak upstream to the mid-Columbia,

Tyler Miller, here with a fall Chinook caught just below Bonneville Dam, is a true-hearted dude with strong character and a fantastic and creative fisherman. He’s high on my list of recommended guides and I like how he loves to fish even when he is not guiding, while at the same time having lots of other interests and knowledge. I prefer to spend a day in a boat being guided by a well-rounded, kind person I respect. (FISHMILLERTIME.COM)

FISHING

Snake River, Hanford Reach and elsewhere. Guide Tyler Miller of Miller Time Adventures (fishmillertime .com) is one of the many thousands of above-Bonneville anglers who await excellent king fishing close to home. He was up at Brewster when we talked for this article, limiting clients on sockeye with some bonus kings mixed in. Miller is a kind, thoughtful, mildmannered guide who is on the water a lot and who has pioneered some secret spots, including for fall kings

in August that I cannot talk about. Brewster is exactly the opposite, and Miller had been out at the mouth of the Okanogan on a Wednesday with at least 150 other boats in 100-degree temps, a far cry from how he’ll start his fall king season later this month.

“I really like to fish the heavy water below Bonneville on the Washington side of the river and concentrate efforts here for a couple weeks a year in early August,” says Miller.

He mostly slow trolls or holds in

the current with flashers and spinners or Super Baits here, but adapts as flows and conditions dictate.

“The fishing right below Bonneville is fun despite the presence of lots of sea lions and the very, very occasional loss of a fish. Maybe a tenth of our fish get chased,” he reports.

Meanwhile lots of Miller’s guide colleagues from Tri-Cities and elsewhere concentrate on Drano Lake or other fisheries until the kings show up in big numbers to the dam. Until guides see some serious fish over Bonneville, they avoid the Klickitat, Deschutes and other upriver fisheries that pop off at the end of August and beginning of September. Although it’s nothing like the crowds in spring, Drano is very popular. Miller fishes there when he needs to get his clients on fish and things aren’t working elsewhere, but most seasons he’ll stay below Bonneville until he sees about 2,000 kings a day ascending John Day Dam.

“Once there’s at least a couple thousand fish around, I’ll skip over Drano and the Klick and head straight to the Deschutes,” says Miller. “Those are not great numbers, but not many people will come out to fish on 2,000 fish, so there is little pressure to move the fish around, and the catching can be excellent.”

Like Miller and our mutual friend Bryce Doherty, I love to fish the Deschutes, and I have learned a lot from not so subtly following them around. Late August can yield good fishing if the fish are in, and the Klickitat fishes early too when just a couple thousand fish ascend The Dalles Dam. Counterintuitively, way further upstream, 100 miles above Tri-Cities, Crab Creek and certain parts of the upper Hanford Reach will fish nearly a month before the Reach reaches its peak way downstream. Some of the biggest and best kings are pilot fish at the front of the run. Those pilot fish race through the Columbia in front of my house in Pasco, but every year I go out early for them here in town in Tri-

In fewer than three hours last August, five of us limited on chrome kings fishing Drano Lake with my friend Jerry Reyes of Flatout Fishing and our mutual friend and Jerry’s deckhand, Eddie “Hoe Candy” Plata. We also released four big tules and had other savage takedowns on subtle, unbaited spinners behind 360 flashers – all after the bite had supposedly stopped for the day. Fishing with Reyes and Plata is a blast, although every other boat on the water heard every word said in our boat due to the need to scream at Eddie. His hearing isn’t great, but he’s a great deckhand and all about killing kings, breaking hearts and knowing Seattle sports. (JEFF HOLMES)

Cities. I do that because I occasionally catch a really nice early-arriving fish – although I catch more jacks, moldy summer Chinook and smallmouth – but I mostly do it to get my fall king program dialed in and to make sure I’m ready for good fishing when more fish arrive.

MILLER AND I combined to produce a top-10 list of suggestions for your Lower and Mid-Columbia River success this season on fall Chinook. If you are at least doing these things, you are giving yourself a much better chance on the water this late summer and early fall when our waters are likely to be teeming with kings.

1) Buy all of your needed gear in advance, and if you’re not super experienced yet, take steps to know what you’re going to need (e.g., flashers, baits, leader, bead chains, sliders, lead and all of the other many essentials). September isn’t the best time to find your favorite spinner/ flasher/Super Bait/plug, nor is it the time to get a sense for all that you’ll need. Store shelves can be ransacked and devoid of what you need. Buy now in early to mid-August, or, better yet, already be stocked up!

2) Even if the fish aren’t in yet in great numbers in your preferred and closest salmon fisheries, spending time on the water getting everything dialed in is invaluable for the familiarity and efficiency it lends when the fish really

Even before the bulk of the fall salmon run arrives, getting out on the water in your own boat or with a guide is a great idea to make sure you have the knowledge and skills needed for when the run shows up in force. Battling in crowded fisheries and seizing critical harvesting windows depends on being dialed in when the opportunities present themselves. Know how to run gear like an expert, know that you have an effective setup, and ensure you have the gear you need. (FISHMILLERTIME.COM)

do show up. Also, plenty of kings get killed on early-season shakedown cruises. Understand exactly how the program works on your boat. Practice deploying and stowing gear over and over, and make it like riding a bike when the fish are in. Similarly, if you haven’t already been in your boat a bunch this summer, shakedown cruises allow you to dial in all of your gear, including safety gear.

3) Even if it’s early in the season, book a trip to watch an excellent guide run gear and make decisions throughout the day. Or, if you know some true experts, see if you can jump in with them to learn on the water. Some of the best fishing can come on the front of the run before there are big numbers of fish. Early fish tend to be bigger on average and can be snappy, and with less competition and pressure, good results can be had. But even if you did not catch a fish, spending time learning from someone who trolls for salmon for a living or has a lifelong passion (or both) for it is going to reduce your learning curve, especially if you choose a guide like Miller, Jerry Reyes (flatoutfishing.net), TJ Hester (hesterssportfishing.com) or Bryce Doherty (odohertyoutfitters .com), who is happy to teach you to become a better angler and to answer your questions.

4) Attend to your motor maintenance annually. Similar to an ideal approach to maintaining

Fishing below Bonneville in August means waves of chrome fish, and Miller is really good at catching them, but the sea lions know that too. Miller says maybe one out of ten salmon hooked gets harassed by the marine mammals. Here, Miller captures a picture of his dad, Scott, in what resulted in a tie with a sea lion: Scott got half the fish. (FISHMILLERTIME.COM)

Fishing for Walleye, Trout, Pike, Pan Fish, Bass, Stripers, Salmon and Whitefish with Bay de Noc Lures

Some really big and fat pilot fish come in at the front of the run, and Jerry Reyes nailed this one well inside Drano a couple Augusts ago. The 29-pounder put on a tremendous fight before succumbing to his Edge rod. Reyes loves his Edge rods, and they are admittedly sweet, but you could restrict him to Ugly Stiks and he would still be one of Drano’s very best and one of the best in general. (FLATOUTFISHING.NET)

DRANO FISHY FOR FALLS TOO

Drano Lake and the productive Columbia River trough at its mouth is the most reliable bet for fresh-arriving Chinook above Bonneville during the month of August, hands down. This is a widely known fact, which means you’ll be anything but alone. But the fishing can be quite amazing for chrome upriver and midriver kings. The lake also sees returns of tule Chinook, a more sexually mature and less desirable fish as table fare. Most anglers carefully release these largefinned, heavily spotted, bronze-hued beasts, though it can be difficult because some tules are whoppers.

That trough in the Columbia just outside of Drano is the Little White Salmon River channel, hidden from all but electronics under 20 to 30 feet of Columbia River. Off-limits to angling during spring, in fall boats may fish inside and outside of Drano, opening up a whole world of intercept fishing. It is through this channel that fish enter Drano; however, exponentially more fish merely swim into the channel to feel the cool water emanating from Drano before they continue cooking and booking up the Columbia to their preferred locales. In August, it is a great mix of fish bound for Drano and everywhere upstream, and the catching can be fantastic, especially for guides and regulars who have the slow troll with rotating flashers down pat.

My good friend and neighbor, Flatout Fishing’s Jerry Reyes (flatoutfishing .net), has been fishing Drano hard for over 20 years and has become one of the best – if not best – all-around Drano angler. Reyes and I are close, but we argue sometimes, usually because I bring over different brown liquors to parties or because his wife and my friend, Priscilla, is being an absolute terror. So I’m a little biased, but I am not exaggerating how good he is at Drano. Last August he proved it yet again when he got friends and I into nine kings in under three hours during the hottest part of the afternoon after others told us the bite had “died.” We also released four large tules during that time. Others were not catching at the same rate.

DRANO TECHNIQUES HAVE changed over time, and even during the year techniques change based on water temperature. Most anglers have a 360 flasher on even in spring these days, and everyone in August and September fishes a 360, trailed by a baited (coon shrimp) or unbaited spinner or a small Cut Plug Super Bait stuffed with tuna and various scents. Reyes has been a Drano diehard since it was common practice to randomly drag around an orange Wiggle Wart, and he has been part of the evolution of techniques at the lake. I have permission to discuss his August approach.

In August, unless briefly targeting early coho he might see on the surface, Reyes and clients are chasing bottom inside of Drano in what in springtime is called “the Toilet Bowl,” but he is also fishing outside the lake in the channel of the Little White Salmon. Years ago, he started experimenting with fishing only 16-ounce lead balls at Drano to keep baits and flashers really close to the boat, but he also learned that he can troll more slowly and with greater control when fishing 16s. He runs a short bumper in front of his flasher, followed by approximately 32 inches of leader and a hand-tied spinner trailed by two single hooks. He likes white, chartreuses and other light colors in the morning, and he will go to darker colors as the day progresses. Whereas many anglers invariably

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your body, make sure it’s serviced regularly and in top condition. This includes attention to your oil/ water separator and a visual wire inspection. Attention to your main and kicker before the season can obviously go a long way, including making sure you replace filters and plugs every couple of years. If your boat goes down during the season, you might not get it back from the shop until the Chinook

are spawning zombies.

5) Keep a clean boat. Boats can become quite filthy in the heat of salmon season. Even at the peak of craziness, you’ll notice that all guides wash their boats meticulously. Not only is a dirty boat gross and decreasing faster in value if left unattended, but some guides and expert anglers draw a direct correlation between a dirty boat and fishing success. Whether or not that is true, controlling scents and baits and

tip their spinners with bait, Reyes avoids weighing down his spinner, believing that action is far more of a key than smell, especially when the water is warm. Reyes takes a subtle, ultralight approach to a lot of his fishing, including Drano, and I continue to watch this thinking and approach lead to success.

Reyes points out, though, that he will dig back into the old bag of tricks when the bite is off. I remember a time in late summer when the bite died briefly, and Reyes rigged up a subtle spinner trolling rig from back in the day, trolling around a size 5 Vibrax on a 5-foot leader with a bead chain in the middle. Generally you’ll see Reyes and other Drano slayers with an 11-inch flasher pumping slowly, but Reyes is always religious about switching things up when needed. My usual approach when things get bad at Drano is to leave. There are reasons why Reyes is so good at what he does.

other messes is smart, and making sure you deploy clean gear to the fish is absolutely essential. Moreover, when the fishing is done for the day, leftover oils on spinners or Supers can deteriorate future quality and confidence in those baits.

Intercepting fall Chinook at and above Bonneville in August and even early September means chrome fish in great shape. All but one of these fish went to the smoker, true to my belief about only smoking quality fish.

(JEFF HOLMES)

6) Have multiple lengths for everything: bumper to flasher, 18 to 24 inches; Super Bait leaders, 36 to 42 inches; spinner leaders, 30 to 38 inches. Having all bumpers and leaders pretied and at different lengths makes it a lot easier to change gear on the fly and saves time on the water. By the way, the suggested lengths above are our preferences, but many prefer different approaches, including slightly shorter spinner leaders so that the flasher “throws around” the spinner in addition to its spinning.

As for rods and reels, if you are new to salmon angling or still building an arsenal, I would personally suggest looking hard at Okuma. Their low price points on functional gear enable lots of people to get into the sport, and for those of us who are hooked, they make some of the best reels and also rods, including the new X-Troll salmon rods. The Coldwater

The Flatout Fishing boat we were in was definitely getting the most action out of the 25 or so craft we fished around at Drano Lake last August, but nets were flying often in many boats under smoky skies. After a good fight in boat traffic, Reyes (middle) lifted this king aboard. (JEFF HOLMES)

TROLLING MOTOR MOUNT

The #MK02 Trolling Motor Mount accommodates some Minn-Kota, Garmin, and Lowrance bow mount trolling motor’s installation in any of the LeeLock Quick Change Bases. Simply slide your Motor Mount on the base and lock it in with the pin. The #MK-02 Motor Mount will fit in the LeeLock #QB-01 Quick Change Base, the #QBR-01 Quick Change Bow Roller Base or either of the bases that are sold with the Large Anchor Can Assemblies (#LCA-02 and #LCA-03

LEELOCK CRAB CRACKER

This new tool from Leelock will allow you to measure your Dungeness crabs to determine which ones are legal to keep. Then use the Crab Cracker to crack them in half, separating the two clusters from the shell and guts.

The Crab Cracker has been designed so that it sits nicely on top of a 5-gallon bucket, perfect for when you clean crabs. The bucket gives you a stable base, which makes it easier to clean – the guts and shell go into the bucket, making cleanup a snap. Crabs cleaned this way take up half as much space as whole crabs, so you can cook twice as many in your kettle.

The Crab Cracker is a unique tool made from solid aluminum, and comes in handy for cleaning Dungeness crabs.

low-profile SS (stainless steel) and the standard Coldwater low-profile linecounter reels are my favorite reels, ever. In my opinion, the new Coldwaters and their 22 pounds of drag have matched or exceeded Shimano’s Tekota in quality and value and are definitely superior in fishability for those of us with big hands. Coldwaters may now be fastened to more Northwest salmon rods than any other reel.

7) Use fresh bait, always. For Super Baits or even wrapping plugs, cheap canned tuna works great, but it must be fresh. You can buy the cheapest tuna in oil you can find, but never use the same can two days in a row. Many anglers have super-secret tuna recipes and specially cured shrimp or even sardines, but good success on falls can be had using 99-cent canned tuna with some sea salt and scents added to it as desired. For beginners, combos of anise, garlic, shrimp and

krill work great, as do other cocktails.

8) Keep your baits fresh and cold, and also store bait oil/scents in cool environments. It’s common sense what heat and time will do to most fishing baits, and most anglers know immediately to be dedicated in their efforts to keep bait on ice at all times. But many are careless when it comes to storing the expensive bottles of scent that many of us own in great numbers, which can go bad quite quickly when stored inappropriately. Keeping scents refrigerated when not fishing and on ice to and from the fishing grounds is a recipe for spending less money and having the scents you want available when you need them.

9) Learn your launches beforehand, and be an expert at backing down your boat. Oh dear God, the antics that go on around the Northwest at boat launches during salmon season … do not be one of these people. Practice launching your boat at uncrowded

BOATS & MOTORS

launches, learn from experts, and bring a friend when the launch is busy whenever possible. One person can launch a boat quite effectively, just not quickly. Having a friend to back you in or to drive your boat off the trailer as you back in is strongly advised.

10) Make sure you trust and maintain your electronics. Not all of us are computer whizzes, and like our phones and computers, most of us probably accomplish about 10 percent of what our fish finders are capable of. But that 10 percent is enough for most of us. Trollers really need to see the depth and bottom contour, and without that info, fishing and maintaining contact with bottom becomes much more difficult. Make sure your electronics are working prior to season, keep spare fuses on hand, and replace your transducers periodically, since most suffer from road damage and function poorly over time. NS

Dropping In On The Fish

o feel passion is a beautiful thing, but to share that passion is even better. As my passion for the fish grew, I realized I very much had the desire to share this newfound love with others, but how? Timing is everything. In life and in fishing, timing absolutely does matter. As the years fly by, I see it more clearly than ever. And the timing that brought David Johnson into my life not only would allow me to become a better fisherman from a boat, it opened up this opportunity for me to share the passion of fishing with other women through his “Fish Like a Girl Adventures.”

FOR THE LOVE OF THE

Tboat I ever stepped foot onto was this man’s and God knew exactly what he was doing when he brought us together. Johnson’s unique combination of passion and personality has created an outlet for women from all walks of life to embrace Oregon’s North Coast in a beautiful way. To be a part of these adventures truly is a blessing in my life. Fishing isn’t always easy, and experiences like this remind me that one must give a fair amount of time to their passion in order to have such epic days.

Not knowing any of the ladies on this fall fishing adventure had me feeling a bit nervous, but I trust that kind of nervousness. Growth comes from it and more often than not, joy does too.

Year after year, I have been blessed in gaining incredible hands-on knowledge through these adventures. The first sled

David does his part in giving that time day in and day out; pouring effort and passion into his fisheries is crucial and without him, none of this would be possible. However, the universe will bring days that surprise even the fishiest of souls. This particular day would not only bring fish; it would bring friendship and memories that would last a lifetime.

I would spend the day with a sweet young lady by the name of Jordan and a pair of pretty amazing sisters, Andrea and Christina. To see sisters fish was a joy in itself. Having a handful of sisters myself, I have always desired to fish with them. Seeing the bond between these two siblings as they shared this day was good for my soul; they have no idea how much I loved seeing them in action, and loved seeing them share memories, encouragement, love and tugs. Sisterhood is the best hood! And Jordan was so much fun for me; I’m sure I’m old enough to be her auntie, but her eagerness had me loving her before our lines had even dropped in.

One of guide David Johnson’s “Fish Like A Girl Adventures” yielded limits of northern Oregon Coast coho and fall Chinook for sisters Andrea and Christina, author Sara Potter, and Jordan. (SARA POTTER)

By Sara Potter

TUG

WHEN I DROPPED in for the first pass of the day, the anticipation I had been so tightly holding onto dropped right out of me like a 12-ounce sinker falling through the water. It was time to see what lay beneath! I love that wonder. It will always keep me coming back for more. And as I smoothly descended my rigging, the most wild of encounters occurred. I had not even clicked my reel over before the PowerPro line suddenly was ripping away at a high rate. Instant chaos ensued! Clicking that reel over as quickly as I was able, I tried to gain control of what was undeniably a fall Chinook. It continued to peel line, as they do, but I managed to get the salmon turned around and to the boat like I did in fact know how to fish.

With the sun just hitting the river as that Chinook hit the diamondplated floor, the fish beamed brighter than anything. What a start to the day! Trembling in amazement, I felt so alive. Laughter and joy was abundant in our boat – calming down with a boat full of excited ladies after such chaos takes a minute, as that rush, that tug, it’s the best high going! But you also want to get back to fishing as quickly as possible because there could be more fish. With a quick scrub-a-dub-dub and a checkover of my rigging, we were ready to drop back in.

On our second trolling pass, Jordan and I shared bits and pieces of ourselves. I loved Jordan’s sweet soul and I thanked the universe that we were meant to be more than strangers. Almost within that moment of joy, there it was again – my rod was just a knocking and I encouraged Jordan to get that fish!

The thrill within the tug and the fight are second to none, I will admit, but a very close second is watching someone else encounter such a creature. To watch this world where humans and nature collide from behind my camera is absolutely incredible! Even though Jordan was very young, she has embraced her slice of the Northwest wholeheartedly, catching multiple species in beautiful places. Loving nature, she fishes for all of the

Both of the author’s Chinook bit on the drop, as she was lowering her gear to bottom in preparation for making a trolling pass. If the first fish was a shock, she was ready when her second salmon tried the same trick on the Pacific just outside the jetties. (SARA POTTER)

right reasons and I absolutely love seeing that. She is the kind of young lady who will make women in the fishing world better. To share with her in this day and that fish is forever with me. She handled herself and that fish well and before we knew it, another Chinook was on board. The magnitude of happiness was written all over her beautiful face and radiated throughout all of us. That’s how it should be. That’s the joy of fishing, not just catching.

AS WE CONTINUED our pursuit, we made a few fishless passes. On days like this one, though, it doesn’t even matter, as the company and the environment are quite lovely. That’s all I ever hope for when embracing the uncharted waters of our life: good company and beautiful places.

David’s decades of devotion to his fisheries provides for the best of all worlds

for me. His knowledge and understanding of the fish and their ecosystem has everything to do with how he targets them and when, ultimately giving you the best chance of a truly fishy experience. In that devotion, David knows when it’s time to change gears – location, rigging, even rods, if need be. I will not lie: I love fishing where those massive currents collide. Just over the bar where the fish are channeling into the river is about the wildest salmon fishing from a boat I know! I love that “thunk” of a heavy lead hitting the sandy bottom in that current. Unreal! Between perfectly brined herring, the man with a plan and a boat full of eager ladies, I eagerly await the jaws each year.

Nature keeps me on my toes on this water, as its power is undeniable. The adrenaline of the takedown in such conditions is intense all within itself, let

alone once the fight is on. David knows right where he wants to be and when the ladies are able to execute on getting their rigging down in the fish, the bite can be quite the sight!

ACTION AWAITED US just over the bar that day and it made that first beautiful bite upriver seem small. With everybody’s gear on the bottom, our rods went to knocking and we were into them! Sisters Christina and Andrea cheered each other on, despite Andrea feeling the yuck of the ocean. Both women found themselves their first fish of the day. Mad coho exploding all over the ocean’s surface never disappoints! The fish were there and I honestly can’t even recall how many fish we hooked, but it was a lot!

I do, however, remember how I tagged out for the day, and once again I hooked my fish on the drop. Feeling him instantly,

Johnson and Jordan smile over the “absolutely beautiful” wild coho Jordan caught. (SARA POTTER)

I was ready this time and had pressure on my line as he went to tugging. Clicking my reel over, the salmon went screaming off through the ocean. As this monster was busy kicking my ass, Andrea’s rod on the starboard side got hammered! Fish! Fish! Fish! There it was, a Chinook double!

These salmon dive deep and peel line like the kings they are. The chaos of it was intense, as our fish swam off in opposite directions. As we finally netted mine, sadly, Andrea’s line went lifeless. Barbless hooks allow the fish to come undone at the worst of times. But that’s fishing; we can’t land them all.

Still, Jordan landed my favorite silver salmon! Not in terms of size, but in its beauty – stunning shades of teal and blue alongside the brightest of silver. Absolutely beautiful.

THE FINAL FISH of the day warmed my heart! After having experienced what it feels like to have Chinook nab your bait on the drop, I loved seeing Christina feel it too. It’s so incredible to feel that bite and execute on it! Ninety-eight percent of the time the bite does not happen while the rod is in your hands. In order for this bite to even happen, you have to descend your rigging correctly. I loved seeing her drop it in like she meant it, and then when she felt the bite and was able to hook that Chinook, it was even more awesome! She slayed that day and I was super grateful David chose me to be a part of such a day. I love seeing others gain confidence and to think I may have helped them in gaining some. That’s what’s good.

Being able to target and catch fish both upriver and over the bar within the same day goes to show timing is everything. I respect David’s devotion in learning the ways of his water and its fish. That’s where total success becomes possible. Watching him work is definitely an inspiration to me as I continue to grow as a boat fisherman. Pursuing passion brings out the best in any day and I am forever grateful he believes in me to be there year after year. These trips allow such growth for us all, in a safe and fishy environment. I’m so thankful for the happiness that is felt, the cultivation of friendships and the memories. My heart is on the river and I couldn’t change it, even if I tried. NS

Battle Stations! Tuna Are Back!

By Jeff Holmes

The owner of Anglers Edge Sportfishing, Bill Cheser, is a cool dude and a dynamo on land and by sea. When I talked to him after his 13-hour fishless day on July 12 and five straight days on the water, he was half delirious and a whole lot

of excited about tuna prospects.

“It’s just a steady line of perfect water all the way from Charleston, Oregon, up the coast. Jeff, I’m not kidding, it is teeming with life and 63 degrees close to shore. We didn’t get any today, but they are definitely out there, and it is looking good!”

Not yet a year into retirement

after 38 years of service in the US Navy, the last stint serving as Nuclear Operations Manager at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Cheser has gone all in on making the most of it. Along with spending time with family, traveling and doing as he pleases, Cheser works on his boat (anglersedgesportfishing .com) and fishes a lot, usually with

The arrival of albacore off the Northwest Coast should have you booking a trip or two.

More than any species, clients on guided albacore tuna trips seem extra certain to get their picture taken with a fish. There are probably lots of reasons for this, but primary among them is that tuna fishing is awesome and so unique that it’s tough to describe well. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

his excellent captain, Mitch Coleman. Cheser practically grew up afloat in saltwater and is an excellent captain himself, but he knows he has a good thing with the young but experienced Coleman. Mitch’s brother is of course Mark Coleman, pioneer of six-pack fishing out of the Westport Boat Basin and owner of All Rivers and Saltwater Charters (allriversguideservice .com), a Costa Rican fishing lodge (catchfishcostarica.com) and a Westport-based commercial fishing boat. Cheser and the Colemans are friends and work together and share information often, as do many Westport charter operators and private boaters. Sharing information lifts all boats, and news can spread fast.

On July 9, dudes from the uniquely themed and named Westport Hookers and Blow, a fishing tackle and kite store (westporthookersandblow .com), brought the first sport-caught tuna of the season back to the docks in Westport. Upon that huge news, Cheser, Mitch, Merry Coleman and a couple of friends headed west the next day in search of blue water and more tuna like those landed by the Hookers and Blow crew. They ran a relatively short distance, found great tuna water, and brought a dozen back to the dock in an abbreviated session. When I talked to Cheser for this article after his 13-hour day, he’d come back from fruitless prospecting, but he was confident there were fish out there and

that they would be switching over to tuna by no later than August.

At the time of this writing, Mitch was on a hot streak on big kings, boating a 32-pounder and lots in the high teens and 20s. The Chinook fishing is truly excellent this summer, with Westport leading the pack among Washington ocean ports for catch rates. But it won’t be long until many boats in the harbor abandon salmon and more salmon and rockfish trips and focus all in on tuna fishing. August in Westport means tuna and lots of them, and if early indications hold true, the fish should be well within reach. I have trips booked for August and September and you should too if you want to go in 2023.

Westport-based Captains Mitch and Mark Coleman and other excellent tuna guides grow adept at receiving a new crew every day and politely whipping them into shape as a team. Here, Mark explains the fishing approach and safety considerations for the day. Functioning as a team is critical to efficiency and success, more than for any other Northwest fishery. (ALLRIVERSGUIDESERVICE.COM)

I usually volunteer to help bag the catch on the run back to port as the tuna are relieved of their loins. It’s amazing to watch tuna deckhands working with knives on heaving seas while running at full speed. On this especially fruitful trip aboard Mark Coleman’s amazing boat, Integrity, we had to make more room in a fish hold to store the bags of loins. Each bag gets a belly, two top loins and two bottom loins. The result is a completely meatless albacore carcass being heaved into the sea before swiftly grabbing the next fish, resulting in another bag. On this exceptional day with All Rivers and Saltwater Charters, there were 51 bags on ice as we reentered the harbor. (JEFF HOLMES)

Sure, this tuna looks calm now that it has been brainspiked and bled and stuffed in an ice-cold hold for a couple hours. But just a couple hours earlier it greedily ate Kenny Wren’s offering at a high rate of speed, resisted capture for five to 10 minutes at speeds reaching 50 mph, and bled everywhere while continuing to try to swim on the boat’s deck until encountering the aforementioned brainspike. With these fish, a mere bonking will not do. They literally need a spike in their brain.

Seats will become hot commodities the better and closer the fishing ends up being. If you’re on the fence or just want a reminder of what a day of sixpack tuna fishing might look like, read on as I detail a 2022 early-season trip from dock to dock.

I LEFT MY room at Westport Marina Cottages (westportmarinacottages .com) on foot in the blueblack dark with the sun only starting to erase the night sky. I walked maybe 300 yards to the float where FV Bone was moored and was early for our 5:30 a.m. meetup time. I lurked awkwardly away from the busy skipper and deckhand until it was time. I was warmly welcomed aboard and stowed my gear and met five fellow anglers, some of whom knew each other and all of whom were pleasant and excited to fish. After a welcome and a tutorial for dealing with a 50 mph fish on light tackle, we pulled away from the dock to grab a couple scoops of squirming anchovies, which were

(KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

FISHING

dumped into the bait tank using an improvised dog’s neck cone as a funnel. We left the harbor, cruised over a flat bar, and 29 feet of Defiance Guadalupe rocketed west under 500 horses, cruising at close to 30 knots.

The water roughened slightly as we neared the continental shelf and the deep blue water where we would fish, which was good because a calm

A SUBLIME TUNA FISH SAMMIE

Ahh, the tuna sandwich. Like the cheeseburger, the taco, breakfast sandwiches, the BLT, and perhaps most beloved sandwichlike foods, there’s a certain attention to detail required to achieve excellence in most cases. I remember being a child and holding a white bread tuna sandwich with so much mayo and so few (zero) other ingredients that the tuna was nearly as white as the Wonder Bread. We danced around listening to Weird Al Yankovic’s “Eat It,” taking demonstrative bites coinciding with the lyrics, forcing mayonnaise-y tuna salad out of the sides of our mouths as we danced, ate and sang. That was a hell of a tuna sandwich.

However, today with Weird Al now late in his career, most of the childlike joy chased out of me and limited dancing ability, I need more from my tuna sandwich.

Here’s some deep fat-kid knowledge about how to make a simple and nearly perfect tuna sandwich with home-canned albacore, which cannot be replicated by store-bought tuna:

1) Prep a pint jar of home-canned tuna. Remove tuna from the jar and place in a strainer/colander that you set alongside a 32-ounce or larger bowl. Using gloves or meticulously washed hands, grab handfuls of tuna and wring them out of their juice. Once the handful yields no more moisture when squeezed, put the dried tuna in the bowl, and grab another handful and repeat the process until you have a bowl of tuna rid of the excess moisture that comes out of the meat during the canning process. Avoiding an overly wet or juicy tuna salad is a huge step toward making an awesome

flat ocean is not always as productive as one might hope. Captain Mitch Coleman politely hollered that we were starting off the morning with a bait stop. It seemed early in the season to hope for no trolling and one long bait stop to fill the holds with albacore, but Mitch was marking unbelievable amounts of albacore on his Raymarine electronics. He and the

deckhand began throwing anchovies this way and that to chum the fish up from the 70-foot depth where Mitch could see them, and all anglers were instructed to grab a live-bait rig and ready their tiny but powerful hook for Mitch and the deckhand to bait it with a single live anchovy.

Tied to the 30-pound braid mainline was a maybe 10-foot topshot

tuna sandwich.

2) Add the following to the bowl of tuna: ½ cup or more finely chopped fresh kosher dill pickles (some folks prefer sweet, some prefer a combo of sweet and dill; pickles can be omitted as well); ½ teaspoon celery seed; 1 teaspoon each garlic powder and onion powder; ½ teaspoon cayenne; 1 teaspoon kosher salt or ½ teaspoon sea salt; 2 tablespoon malt vinegar (or use rice vinegar or slightly less apple cider vinegar); and 1 teaspoon sugar or 2 teaspoons monkfruit sweetener or your favorite sweetener to taste.

3) Aggressively stir and combine the contents of the bowl, shredding the tuna. Overstirring is preferable. Once combined, add ¾ cup mayonnaise and 1 tablespoon French’s yellow mustard and fold into the tuna mixture until well incorporated. Taste

the salt level, and correct by adding more if needed. Add black pepper to taste.

4) Let the refrigerated mixture sit at least overnight if you can, then stir and sample. Correct seasoning if you wish.

5) Choose your favorite bread. I like homemade white or wheat bread or the next best thing in my neighborhood, Great Harvest white or wheat bread. Usually, I eat the concoction in a Carb Balance tortilla or with cucumbers and dream about bread.

Note: If you like to include small amounts of fresh veggies like extremely finely chopped celery, red pepper, jalapeno or onions, first salt the minced veggies in a separate bowl and let a teaspoon or so of salt pull moisture out of the veggies. Dry them or wring them in a paper towel and then add the salted veggies to your mixture without turning it into a soup!

The prerequisite ingredient to a truly excellent tuna sandwich is the freshness and quality of the tuna, and home-canned Northwest albacore is a sublime ingredient. (JEFF HOLMES)

FISHING

of 25-pound fluorocarbon. A very small piece of pencil lead in surgical tubing was 6 or 7 feet above hook, a hook that I held out eagerly for Mitch to bait, which he did. I found my spot at the rail, always facing into the wind, and I let my anchovy swim on freespool.

That big-jawed little baitfish with a hook in his back swam like a champ down and away from the boat at maybe a person’s walking speed. As I watched line slowly peel off my reel, I heard “I’m on!” and at that same moment my spool blew up as a slashing tuna grabbed my bait and ran away from the boat at 20 to 30 mph. After waiting the excruciating three seconds to engage the progressive drag and hook up the fish, I pushed the lever forward. Fifteen pounds of tuna moving 20 mph changed to a tuna running 50 mph as the hook drove home and the fish realized it was hooked.

Fighting tuna is hard work, and there is a minor learning curve. I once broke off six in a row, which is embarrassing because it’s hard to do. But I’ve gotten pretty good at helping albacore to tire themselves out enough to be brought alongside the boat to be gaffed and swung aboard for bleeding and brainspiking.

As my fish wore itself out, swimming in powerful circles below the boat, another angler hooked up, signaling the school was still around and that we might kill some fish, fast. Unfortunately, the first angler to hook up lost his fish, sending the school away, as often happens when a fish is lost and goes rocketing away from the school to ensure its freedom. The others often follow. And they did this time, so we deployed outriggers and five troll rods and started dragging cedar plugs and a modern assortment of trolling lures at about 6 knots.

WE MADE IT only a short distance before a fish hit, which means immediate action on a tuna boat. I usually stay out of the way to let others reel in the troll fish, unless we have just lost one or if it’s slow. Well, we had just lost one, so I grabbed the troll rod right next to me and took extra care not to lose the fish. Meanwhile, with the engine out of gear but the boat still sliding forward, everyone else sprung into action. Clients reeled in troll rods, and Mitch and his deckhand began readying live-bait rods and prebaiting them, handing them off to the five other clients. Just as my fish came into range for gaffing, two anglers screamed that they were on. Soon five fish were hooked up, with the troll fish slapping out a fast rhythm on the deck. I grabbed a livebait rod and joined the fun, and soon I found myself tired, breathing hard and standing amongst so many tuna that it became difficult to walk.

FISHING

Back on the troll after killing 14 tuna really fast, we again hooked up right away, resulting in the troll fish and several more tuna. All of the clients were in great spirits after this fast start to the day, and there were plenty of jokes and sassy comments flying around. We all ate and drank during a brief lull in the action as we went back on the troll. After a merciful 10-minute break to eat and enjoy warm weather offshore, we hit another troll fish. Soon several more live-bait fish hit the deck and were bled and added to the icy and rapidly filling fish hold.

As we went back on the troll again, some clients pitched in to deploy rods while others volunteered to spray down the crimson-stained deck, sides and rails. Our crew was functioning as a team under the expert instruction of Mitch and his deckhand, which is one of the cool parts of a good tuna trip on a good tuna boat. No one was screaming at us; we were being politely instructed

while the crew showed as much or more enthusiasm than the clients.

It’s difficult to explain how different a tuna boat is from a salmon boat, for example. The tuna swim 50 mph instead of a max 20 mph for a Chinook, and whereas doubles are a nice treat in salmon fishing, often all six anglers can be hooked up on a tuna trip. As we fought fish together, we were chasing our fish and keeping them always in front of us, which requires going over, under and around fellow anglers who are also hooked up. Despite a few epic tangles that Mitch and the deckhand somehow miraculously fixed, our good communication and teamwork paid off in efficiently landing well over 50 tuna and ending back at the dock just before 3 p.m. For running 50 miles offshore that day, a nine-hour trip to catch over 50 albacore felt awesome. I’d seen slightly faster fishing, but never in early August. That awesome fishing continued into the awesome

tuna year we enjoyed in 2022.

SIX-PACK TUNA TRIPS are awesome, but they require some mobility and endurance to catch hard-fighting tuna in close quarters in sometimes frantic conditions. The larger charter boats are better choices for some with reduced mobility, and these can result in even bigger hauls of fish due to time spent fishing and carrying capacity for ice and fish. I’m all about more fish, but the six or seven albacore I usually go home with are sufficiently satisfying. Still, the lure of the big boats is there because I am an absolute tuna addict. I love to stockpile loins. Whether you were to choose the big boat experience or the sportier six-pack trip, the key is that you would be going tuna fishing, which would check off one of the ultimate Northwest life-list activities. All anglers, especially saltwater anglers, should go tuna fishing. You should go tuna fishing. NS

It’s Grasshopper Trapping Season!

… Or at least, time to tie on a ’hopper pattern and hit the streams for trout.

By Jason Brooks

When I was younger, my uncle surprised me with a series of books by the great outdoor humor writer Patrick McManus. One of these books was The Grasshopper Trap and the title story was about how grasshoppers are one of the best brook trout baits.

I was a fly fishing enthusiast myself at that time and knew that grasshoppers were more than just a good bait for brookies; they were also great for rising rainbows and cutthroats. The idea of using a real grasshopper for bait felt archaic to me, much like how McManus described in detail the shack of Rancid Crabtree where Crazy Eddie Muldoon came up with the contraption to catch live grasshoppers for bait. Fortunately, anglers these days have better options for fishing grasshoppers.

KNOWING ENTOMOLOGY GOES with being a fly fisherman, but as young kids, most of us grew up using real bait such as periwinkles we found cocooned to rocks in streams, nightcrawlers we dug up in our mom’s favorite flower garden or maggots – well, let’s not describe how we collected the maggots. Thankfully, with today’s modern laboratorymade baits and fly-tying materials there are alternative options, but understanding how and when to fish

Mid- to late summer marks the time to try fishing grasshopper patterns for trout around the Northwest. (JASON BROOKS)

grasshoppers is still important.

Springtime means emerging bugs and using chironomids and Pheasant Tail nymphs to mimic several pupae or aquatic insects. Soon mayflies and duns hatch, giving a few hours’ window of dry fly fishing, even as most trout are still picking bugs off rocks along the stream bottom and rarely rising to the surface. As summer comes along, other bugs make their way to the surface, such as damselflies, flying ants and the annoying mosquito. Small flies and keen eyesight are needed to see a rising trout grab the offering of a mosquito.

As August and the last days of warm weather fade into September, it becomes grasshopper season. Sure, these terrestrials have been annoying farmers since late June and through July, but for some reason it is late August when they really head for

the rivers. These long, hot days with bright sunlight that keep anglers off the water find the trout covered in riffles and deep runs, away from eagles and otters. But the cooling nights and falling water temperatures also tell the fish it’s time to eat and get ready for winter. A grasshopper, large and full of calories and helpless on the water, is the perfect meal for an awaiting trout.

Grasshoppers are interesting bugs. They take 11 months to hatch from their eggs and are born already in the form of a miniature grasshopper with no wings. There are only three stages to their life cycle: egg, larvae and adult. When they hatch, they grow fast; from birth to adulthood takes only five to six weeks, eating whatever they can along the way and molting until they mature. Being a large bug, the grasshopper is cold-

blooded and needs the hot days to gain enough energy to feed and mate. This is why they are active during the middle of the day. That also means feeding time for trout is during this same part of the day, when the grasshopper “hatch” is on. They’re active little bugs, always hopping and flying around looking for a meal – or becoming one.

WHEN CRAZY EDDIE and Pat McManus set out to make their grasshopper trap, they did so because the terrestrials are hard to catch. These insects like to dodge around and blend in with rocks and grass, which is unfortunately where rattlesnakes also live and like to eat them too. Last August I was standing on a large rock along the shoreline of my home waters, Lake Chelan, leaning out on the boulder trying to keep my back

Grasshoppers can be the bane of farmers, but trout love it when the calorie-rich bugs accidentally fly into streams and lakes this time of year. (DAN CATCHPOLE, FLICKR, CC BY 2.0)

CONNECTICUT

Connor’s and O’Brien Marina Pawcatuck, CT connorsandobrien.com

Defender Industries Inc. Waterford, CT defender.com

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cast from snagging the trees behind, when I looked down at my feet. Swimming in the clear waters for the imitation grasshopper on my line was a large snake. When I say large, I am talking anaconda size – one that would swallow a man whole and not stop to spit out the shoes … or at least 2, maybe 3 feet in length. Needless to say, with the rattlesnake heading for my fly, the grasshopper and I were out of there! No, Lake Chelan does not have anaconda-size rattlesnakes, but when you are using a 4-weight fly rod and deathly scared of snakes, size is irrelevant, and I knew that thing would eat me alive.

On the other hand, my son, who was fishing next to me and still young enough to want to play with snakes, thought the cute little creature should

come home with us. He thought that because it did not have any rattles on the end of its tail, it was a bull snake instead. After a little coaxing, I finally was able to convince him that it was indeed a man-eating rattleless rattlesnake and though he argued there was no such thing, he also knew that I had the keys to the boat and it was a long swim back to his grandfather’s cabin, so it was agreed upon: Grasshoppers make for good trout and snake bait.

LUCKILY, TODAY WE do not need to trap, or even go near rattlesnakes’ feeding grounds, to fish with good grasshopper imitations. Years ago, when I was tying up some Joe’s Hoppers, which use thick yellow yarn, I found some synthetic yarn

pieces at a craft store used for “hook and loop” crafting projects. The bright yellow yarn floated high, and it was my first introduction to synthetic fly-tying materials. The trout we pursued were small, and so a longshanked size 10 hook was used, with wings made from seagull feathers I collected at the local drive-in where they pestered patrons for French fries. I gladly held out the fries and in an unbeknownst exchange to the birds, they gave up a feather or two, which was more than enough to tie a dozen or more grasshoppers with the synthetic yellow yarn for the body.

Flytiers and anglers today use foam bodies for their various grasshopper patterns. These easyto-tie and near bulletproof flies will last all day and always float. There’s

Just as with worms and other natural baits, there are many ’hopper mimics on the market, and they can be fished on either a fly rod or a spinning setup with a clear casting bubble. (JASON BROOKS)

no longer a need to rub petroleum jelly or other fly floatant on the line or ruin the body of the fly. Instead, the foam is cut to shape the body, wings and head of the fly. The best part is, they can be tied with bright colors such as yellow and orange, and unlike when you’re trying to match the mosquito hatch, you can actually see these patterns.

FISHING ’HOPPER PATTERNS, either a foam-bodied or traditionally tied one, is easy to do, even if you do not have a fly rod. Gear anglers using a lightweight spinning outfit and a clear casting bubble can cast out the rigging and let it float down the stream to awaiting trout. If you cannot find such a bobber, a cork float will work well, since it looks like a piece of wood drifting along and the fish are no more the wiser.

Fly anglers can really shine when it comes to fishing grasshoppers. Not only are they easy to see on the water, which makes for fun fishing, but they are often easy to cast if you match the weight of the line to the rod. Just remember that the fly is big but light, which means a little extra pause is needed to let it settle onto the water.

Dry fly fishing is exciting, but often the trout are hesitant. Only during the early morning hours or the last hours of light will the fish come to the surface, when their dark green and spotted backs help camouflage them from predators. There is one exception to this early and late bite and that is when grasshoppers hit the water. Even in the middle of the day and in bright sunlight, a trout will launch like a torpedo and often come clear out of the water for such a tasty meal.

Each time a trout rises to a grasshopper, it takes you back in time to when you used to trap them in your cupped hands and put them in a mason jar, and spend your entire afternoon wondering if Crazy Eddie Muldoon was not so crazy after all and thinking of ways to make your own grasshopper trap. NS

(“UV”) materials used. Tandem Gamakatsu hooks.

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Bear Season Begins Now

By MD Johnson

So my first and only black bear played out like this.

I’m in a ground blind reading a Zane Grey novel, drinking

Gatorade and eating old Pop-Tarts. About an hour before dark, I look up from my book to see a bear looking at my hide from the edge of the thick stuff.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I whisper

to no one ’cause I’m alone.

I get the scoped muzzleloader up on the sticks, and as I get myself ready, the bear walks out of the brush and moves slowly toward his apple tree du jour. I don’t want to

Some Northwest hunters luck out and bump into a black bear while pursuing deer or elk, but others target the animals specifically as soon as fall seasons open in August, and you can count Brandon Jewett among them. He bagged this one last summer at 12 yards with an arrow from a recurve bow made by his great uncle Don. “It was intense,” he states. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

Tips and tactics from an expert for bagging a fall bruin.

shoot him walking, so, as I would with a whitetail back in Iowa, I cough in an attempt to get him to stop. But, as it turns out, bears don’t play that game. This bruin jumps straight into the air, spins a 180, and runs off into the bushes from which he came.

Uh … huh …

I’m understandably bummed. As I’m texting my wife – “Hey! I just scared off my first bear. Ugh!” – the boar reappears and lumbers out into the orchard again. Now, I’m

not a smart man, but I’m capable of some degree of learning. Silently, I shoulder the .50-caliber smokepole, put the crosshairs behind his shoulder, wait until he stops on his own, and squeeze the trigger. At the “boom,” he whirls around and crashes into the tall weeds. I listen … listen … listen … and nothing.

Long story shortened, I find blood within a few feet of where he disappeared, and my first bear another 30 yards beyond that.

Skill? Some. I had to make the shot, I reckon. And I had to learn from my initial mistake. Luck? Absolutely, and I’m OK with that, for as the cliché goes, I’d rather be lucky than good.

BUT WHEN IT comes to bears and bear hunting, Douglas “Doug” Boze is good. Oh, I’m sure he’d say there’s some luck involved in his exploits, but there’s no denying when it comes to bears, the 47-year-old is damn good. Currently, as he has for some time, the Skagit County resident makes a living as a real estate agent and an Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act, or AHERA, inspector, which means he checks things out prior to structure demolition or remodel.

But it’s Boze’s outdoor resume that caught my ear and my eye.

“I’ve been big game hunting since I was about 12,” he told me. “Deer, elk, bear and cougar. And grouse. I use rifles and archery equipment; I’m not really into muzzleloaders. I’m a predator caller, and every other month, I write a column for Bear Hunting Magazine.”

Most recently, Boze accepted the presidency of the Washington chapter of the American Bear Foundation. Also to his credit, Boze has written The Ultimate Guide to Black Bear Hunting and No Bait…Just Bears, both titles available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and he has been featured on Steve Rinella’s MeatEater podcast talking tips and tricks for calling black bears.

Boze is a busy man, particularly now that it’s August and bear hunting has once again become an option for Washington and Oregon outdoor enthusiasts. Fortunately, Northwest Sportsman was able to slow him down long enough for a brief talk on bears, bear hunting and the most common mistakes he sees bear hunters make during the fall season.

You know, like coughing.

Northwest Sportsman Doug, what

Book author Douglas Boze with one of the bruins he’s taken while hunting the Northwest. (DOUGLAS BOZE)

makes you an expert on black bears? I mean, what makes you good at what you do?

Douglas Boze [Laughs] I’ve never claimed to be an expert, and I’ve said that on a lot of podcasts. I think why people “think” I’m an expert is I’m fairly successful at black bear

hunting. I can be successful year after year, and the information I’ve given out has proved helpful for thousands of people to be successful on their own. So in that respect, I think people could call me an expert. I’m not a biologist, but I’m good at being able to find and – I don’t like

the word “harvest” – kill black bears.

NWS What’s the biggest misconception people have about bears and bear hunting?

DB I would say that the nonhunting public (believes) hunters shoot bears only for their hides. That’s a huge misconception, as it’s against the law to waste bear meat (in Washington) and in several other states. The other misconception is, for deer and elk hunters especially, that bear meat isn’t very good. That’s very incorrect. Bear meat is very palatable. It takes spices very well, and makes an incredible breakfast sausage. Oh, and a close third would be that black bears are endangered, or we don’t have a lot of them in the Pacific Northwest. That’s a huge misconception. They’re all over the place.

NWS It’s August in the PNW. Where does a hunter even begin looking for a bear?

DB Of course, I’d point folks to my book, The Ultimate Guide to Black Bear Hunting, but beside that point, I always tell people to have this motto in their head: Find the food. Find the bears. That’s a very simple motto, but it can be difficult to find and maintain. Food sources change from week to week, month to month, and sometimes day to day. So it’s simple. I tell people that if you find the food that bears are eating in that area at that time, you’re going to be one step ahead of the game. Find bear scat and other bear sign [author’s note: tracks, trails, or in this modern age, trail camera imagery or video], then you’re right in the thick of things.

NWS Can black bears be “patterned” like whitetails or even elk? Do they occasionally have a routine?

DB There are some bears that follow the same pathways. I think a lot of their habits are similar throughout. Meaning, for instance, black bears are kind of lazy, and will take the

One of the best things about black bear season is its length. Want to fish for salmon in August and September instead? Hunting will still be open in October and November. Chad Smith downed this boar while helping his wife and brother-in-law glass up a blacktail buck in the immediate leadup to Halloween last year. (KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

HUNTING

path of least resistance, if possible. If they can walk on a logging road, they’ll take that rather than burning a bunch of calories fighting through the brush.

Some bears, again, might be patternable. For example, if you have a bird feeder out and a bear’s coming to eat the feed, that’s a pattern. Or an apple tree in your yard. In reality, I don’t necessarily pattern bears, but I’ll find areas where they’re working and go from there. It’s not like a whitetail that beds down in some brush, and then an hour before dark, he’s hitting in the same field night after night. I’m more focused on areas than I am patterns.

NWS What are the top three mistakes bear hunters make based on what you see or hear or are told, say, at your seminars?

DB First is shot placement. Bears are different from deer and elk. If you

look at a man and he has on a tight T-shirt, the shirt forms to his body and you can see his body. If, then, he puts on a bulky sweater, his “actual” body is hidden a bit. Bears are like that, so you need to adjust your shot placement to that “sweater.” A bear’s hair might be 4 or 5 inches long, and what looks like his belly might be just fur. You really need to focus on shot placement.

Next would be judging. Ground shrinkage is very real in bear hunting. People without a lot of experience think it’s a huge bear, shoot it, get up to it, and it’s twice the size of a dog. That happened to me on my first bear. It’s very common.

Third would be people finding just a little blood and not thinking it was a (good) kill shot. They might look for a little bit, and then give up too soon. I’m not saying hunters won’t look and will give up; I’m saying I think some people will

only find a little bit of blood here and there, and then think the bear didn’t die. When you shoot a bear, the hair and fat plug the entrance and exit wounds, and that can sometimes lead to a lesser blood trail in comparison to, say, a deer.

NWS It’s August. It’s hot. What role does heat play in what a bear does or doesn’t do, and where should a hunter start when it’s 90 degrees?

DB In the early season, August and September, I prefer to hunt the late afternoon into the evening. For the most part, bears are going to be holding up in shaded draws and creek bottoms out of the sun until evening comes – or early morning – as they’ve been feeding all night. Maybe they’re still feeding come daylight … before they find a place to bed down for the night. So I don’t believe in spending my time in August in the midday heat. I find it

more productive to hunt either the first four or the last four hours of the day. Along with that, you’re going to want to check water sources like creeks and ponds.

NWS Hunting methods, Doug, and let’s start with calling. Is one of the biggest myths about calling bears that it’s easy? I mean, all you have to do is go out, buy yourself a call, make a sound like an “easy meal,” and the bears will come running. There’s more to it, right, than merely tooting on a predator call?

DB I would agree with that, yes. There’s an element of patience. You don’t want to just blow on a call for 15 minutes and then leave. It’s not like coyote calling. I usually call (bears) for at least an hour, and then I’ll sit for another 20 minutes after I’m done calling to see if something comes in. Bears will, at times, hold up and wait to come in well after the

calling session is done. You want to have your shooting lanes correct. Predators live by their nose, and a lot of times animals will come in downwind. I like no wind or a crosswind; however, if there is some wind, I want to, when possible, put it down my shooting lane. That way if a bear circles to get my wind, he’ll go in front of me and hopefully I’ll be able to get a shot that way. There are a lot of nuances to calling bears. Safety issues, too, depending on where you’re calling. You always want to have your back covered up, so you don’t get jumped. Sometimes bears will run in. They’ll sneak. Every bear is different as to how they react to predator calls.

ALLOW ME MY two cents here, if you will. My best advice when it comes to black bears and bear hunting? One, forget the cough. Two, bears can run. Really, really fast. Three, and

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as Boze said, don’t give up looking if you believe you’ve made a good hit, or any kind of hit for that matter. I found no blood at the spot where I hit my bruin, and quite well I might add, with a 350-grain AeroTip bullet, nor did I find any in the 30-ish yards of 2-inch grass from where I hit him to where he entered the brush. And then it was several feet and many red fall blackberry “splotches” later before I found anything. But when I found blood, I found a LOT of blood. Keep looking.

And finally, get yourself a copy of Boze’s Ultimate Guide and then set aside 56 minutes and listen to Boze’s sit-down with Jason Phelps of Phelps Calls (themeateater.com/listen/ cutting-the-distance/ep-8-callingall-black-bear-with-douglas-boze) as the guys talk bears and calling.

Oh, yeah. And do NOT forget the Zane Grey paperback and the stale PopTarts – hey, they worked for me. NS

Houdini The Bear’s Great Escape

often the reply.

CHEF IN THE WILD

By Randy King

Ihave a hard time convincing folks to bear hunt with me, especially when the destination is central Idaho. Often, I get the same response: “Are you going to that spot?”

“Yeah, unless you have a different one?” I’ll reply.

Now, it’s not like I don’t understand the problem my friends have with my bear spot. The weather can change on a dime. The terrain is steep and full of cliffs. It is brushy. The mile-and-a-half walk to the glassing knob is a 1,700-foot elevation gain.

Oh, and if you see a bear, you must drop 700 feet to the canyon floor and climb back out of an alder-choked hellhole to get closer to the animal. Joyous times.

But here is the deal – you almost always see bears there. And that is the incredible part. If I’m not mistaken, seeing bears is a critical key in successfully hunting bears.

IT WAS AT this spot, solo, this past year that I found myself glassing up a chocolate-colored black bear. It was beautiful; the coat of the bear transitioned on the legs from lighter chocolate to almost a solid black on the paws. We had seen this bear in previous years and dubbed it Houdini. It would disappear on the mountain only to reappear a few moments later 100 yards away. It was a frustrating but hilarious game trying to stalk this critter.

The phone will go quiet on the other end and I swear I can actually hear the gears turning.

“You know, I think the wife and I have something planned that weekend” is

This year I found Houdini face down in a grass patch munching away on tender new greens. And it didn’t look like it was going anywhere. Even better, it had no idea I was there. So began the game.

I plotted a course over to the bear. I would go down into the canyon and up the other side. I would stay behind the northernmost finger ridge for cover and

Large black bears can make a tempting target ... (RANDY KING; KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

NO-WORRIES BRUIN STEW

Bear meat needs to be cooked to well done. There’s no getting around it, unfortunately. The reason for this is a high (-ish) prevalence of trichinosis spiralis in the bear meat. This little critter is very common in bruin flesh and your digestive juice is needed to open it from its calcified shell. The only way to kill it is to get the meat over 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Otherwise, it can come back and infect you.

The symptoms can be a real downer. Your whole body feels sore. You pee brown. Microscopic bugs burrow out of your blood stream and into your muscles. Forever. You are now a carrier, and if someone/-thing were to eat you, they would then likely get the infection.

The easy way to prevent this disease is to just cook your bear well. Should be easy, right, but the vast majority of trichinosis infections here in the USA are caused by eating bears … even though not many people eat bear. Let that sink in for a moment – and then make sure to cook your bear meat!

A surefire way to get a well-done and safe bear to eat is a stew or a curry. The recipe below is a combo stew/curry that I made. It is a rib-sticker!

THE MEAT

1½ pounds cubed bear meat (about thumb-knuckle sized)

½ stick of butter, divided

In a large stew pot (8 to 10 quarts) add half of the butter and melt it on medium heat. When the butter is almost brown and toasty-smelling, add half of the meat cubes. Give the meat space and let them brown on each side for about two minutes. When all sides are brown, remove the meat to a plate and brown the remaining meat with the remaining half of the butter. Do not add all the meat at one time. It will be too much for the pan and cause the meat to just boil and not brown.

STEW VEGGIES AND STUFF

2 large russet potatoes

1 medium onion

2 cups baby carrots

1 can coconut milk

1 (12 ounces) can beef broth

3 cloves of garlic

Curry roux (I use half a package of Golden Curry)

Basil/mint for garnish

After the meat is browned, add the veggies to the pan. Let them cook until they too have a little brown on them, or about four more minutes. The extra water from the veggies should cause all the brown bits from the meat to come off the bottom of the pan. This is good.

Next add the coconut milk, beef broth and garlic. Add the meat back into the pan. Bring it all to a simmer and add the curry roux into the pot.

Cover and let cook for about an hour. Stir well to make sure the curry roux is evenly distributed. (Cook time can vary on the cut you used.)

Serve with rice or another side. –RK

Bear curry stew with rice. (RANDY KING)

... But given the increasing scrutiny on bear hunting, at least in Washington and by implication the rest of the Northwest, it behooves hunters to be even more vigilant about ensuring any bruin they plan to kill is not accompanied by young. It’s illegal in Oregon to kill a female with a cub or cubs less than a year old, while Idaho sows with any aged young are off-limits. Washington hunters are strongly urged not to harvest a sow with a cub or cubs. (RANDY KING; KNIFE PHOTO CONTEST)

then make it to a specific deadfall snag for my shooting location. It seemed doable, so I dropped my bedroll and camping equipment and set off.

At this point it should be noted that bears do not have the best vision. I was not really worried about being spotted. It is far more likely my stink was going to alert the bear of my intent. Well, honestly, I don’t think they care about intent. But if they smell you, they are gone. Keeping your stink downwind is vital.

So I trudged and climbed and swore. When I finally arrived at my location, I could see the bear. Bears are truly majestic animals in the wild. When the wind catches their coats they change colors

a little. Sometimes they do something goofy and remind you of a dog. They are just so different from deer or elk. They are especially cute when they are teaching a little fluffball trailing around behind them how to roll rocks and look for bugs.

Which is to say, Houdini was apparently a sow.

Everywhere bear hunting is legal has some sort of a prohibition or strong advisory against shooting sows with cubs. This should not even need to be a law; it is just kind of common sense. Unfortunately, I know of several hunters who have orphaned cubs accidentally. They saw a bear, had a tag and shot it.

Shooting a bear on sight is never a good

idea. Always – and I mean always – give yourself some time to identify if the target is cub-free. I have, in the past, shot a sow. But she was also dry and cubless. I found her grazing a hill alone and glassed her for a long while before shooting. Take the time. It might be tempting to shoot a bear on sight, but you will feel like a real jerk when a little puffball goes running off orphaned.

AFTER HOUDINI AND her cub wandered off, I made myself a quick snack and hiked back up to my gear. The fog and rain soon settled in on the mountain and I saw no more bears on that trip. Bear hunting is more about being out than about killing anyway. Or at least that is what I tell myself. NS

Getting Ready For Archery Elk

BECOMING A HUNTER

By Dave Anderson

Archery elk season is right around the corner and will be here sooner than you might think. Now is the time to start dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s in preparation for the hunt. In this article I will go over the top ways I prepare for bow elk.

FIRST AND FOREMOST, there is nothing better than getting your boots on the ground and looking for sign. If you are trying to lock eyes on animals to see movement and zero in on their location, you will need to be there when the sun is rising and an hour or so before sunset.

When scouting potential locations this time of year, you will most likely encounter temperatures between 80 and 100 degrees, especially in regions east of the Cascades. Elk are going to be hunkered down trying to stay cool. I definitely prefer to get into the mountains, where I tend to spend most of my free weekends during the summer, but we are also very lucky to have a few options for e-scouting, as well as different mapping programs that we can take advantage of. E-scouting basically uses different forms of technology to help us locate several things in an area we are wanting to hunt. These include: access points, areas off the beaten path and –one of the most important things, in my opinion, this time of year – water. During the early season, when it is still hot and dry, you want to find a good water source. If you are able to locate a good one, you will find elk.

One of my first experiences hunting elk with a bow in Eastern Washington

Don’t fret, aspiring elk hunters, even with bow season beginning August 30 in Idaho, September 2 in Oregon and September 9 in Washington, there’s still time to do some boots-on-the-ground and electronic scouting. (DAVE ANDERSON)

was in an area I had never stepped foot in and we were struggling to locate elk, so I remember telling my buddy that we needed to do some driving around to find water sources. We found an area that was marshy with a natural spring that fed a creek and, sure enough, we also found elk tracks. Setting up there that first night, we were in elk immediately and ended up getting one by the end of the trip. In fact, we were in elk every single night of the hunt. There was a steep, dark timber patch on a north-facing slope behind the spring where the elk bedded. I hunted this area prior to having trail cameras, but nowadays I would have set out several of the devices to pattern the elk and figure out where, when and what they were doing prior to opening day.

THIS BRINGS ME to my next preparation tip: Set up and utilize trail cameras to locate elk and pattern their behavior.

When it comes to trail cameras, I am a firm believer that you get what you pay for. Paying a little extra for a quality camera that gives you good quality pictures and videos is key. I have had great luck with the Browning trail cameras and have quite a few of them. I have had no reason to shop other brands since they have served me so well.

If you will be setting up cameras in an area that has cell service, I would definitely spend the extra money to have a cellular unit. For me, this is not realistic, as I hunt fairly remote areas away from any cell service, but the benefits of the devices are huge in terms of saving you time and money. You won’t have to drive every couple weeks to check on cameras and you will also not be disturbing game animals in their habitat. In addition, who doesn’t like getting alerts with pictures of elk, deer, moose and bears?!?

When you are looking for areas to set cameras, I would suggest locations with intersecting trails, heavily used game trails and water sources. Depending on your state’s rules and regulations, I would highly recommend using an attractant like a Trophy Rock Mineral Lick to place in front of your camera. This helps you identify what is in the area and allows you to get a good look at them. True, you don’t

Make it a family adventure when checking your game cameras. (DAVE ANDERSON)

need an attractant in the right situation, but it definitely does not hurt either.

Once I locate an area where I want to place my camera, I find the best tree to strap the camera against. Be mindful of where the sun rises and sets, as this could have a negative effect on what you get for photos. In addition, keep in mind any vegetation that could blow in the wind and cause your camera to start taking pictures or videos – mine have taken 1,000-plus pictures and videos of moving grass and limbs because of the wind. Learn from past mistakes and check for anything that may trigger your camera before ultimately strapping it to a tree.

WHEN PLACING CAMERAS on public land, be mindful and aware that it could be missing upon your return. Unfortunately, people suck and many hunters have had their cameras stolen. I have been very lucky and haven’t had anyone steal or vandalize any of mine, but I did lose a camera due to

a logging operation when someone came through and cut down and limbed the tree with logging equipment. However, I was able to find my camera and security box and on the SD card was a video of the trail cam’s last moments.

I have never understood why people would mess with, vandalize or steal someone’s camera, but Browning makes a metal security box that my trail cameras fit into, and then I use a Master Lock cable lock to secure them to a tree. This will at least keep the honest people from making a poor choice. Unfortunately, if someone wants to destroy your camera they still can, but the boxes keep bears and elk from ruining your camera. I have a lot of videos of elk and bears rubbing, smelling, licking and biting at my cameras. Indeed, I feel like a lot of cameras actually get taken by wild animals and humans get the blame if they are not secured and locked against a tree. There is a cost involved to adding the security box and cable lock, but in my

opinion, it is a great insurance policy for your cameras.

Setting up game cameras also provides a chance to have some quality time with your family in the woods. There is no pressure about getting up early to get out and be there at first light. I take lots of snacks and drinks and make it a fun day of running around in the mountains with my boys. They always bring along their toy rifles and packs as well, which definitely makes for a fun day and memories that will last us a lifetime. Even with the arrival of August, it’s not too late to get down to your local sporting goods store and pick up some cameras. Find what works best for you and don’t forget a way to lock them down.

And that’s how I recommend budding bowhunters spend their time in the weeks ahead of archery elk season, which begins in late August in Idaho, the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend in Oregon and September 9 in Washington. NS

All Hail The ‘Old Reliables’

ON TARGET

By Dave Workman

Well, now, lessee; I’ve shot deer – on the move – at better than 350 yards and knocked one over that was standing still at what the landowner estimated was 400 yards, and did it with a rifle chambered for a cartridge that’s been around more than a century.

There were bucks at about 250 in eastern Montana, maybe 200-plus in southern Utah and I know for sure (because my companion paced it off) at more than 200 in southeast Wyoming. Two of those three dropped to the same rifle and the third went down to a test rifle chambered for a cartridge introduced in 1965 and considered by many to be obsolete.

And we shouldn’t forget the animals I’ve dumped within 200 yards, all with guns in calibers that have been around for ages.

With August upon us and a new Washington state law mandating a ridiculous 10-day waiting period for all firearm sales (remember this the next time you are asked to vote for a state lawmaker and a governor whose titles all end with a “D”), a lot of people won’t be hunting with a brand-new 6.5 whiz-bang, and will rely once again on the guns in their cabinets and safes. They’re the .30-06s, .308 Winchesters, .350 Remington Magnums, .270 Winchesters, .243 Winchesters, or classics such as the .257 Roberts and even the .300 Savage and .30-30 Winchester.

These are the calibers that have served Northwest sportsmen and -women for generations, and any buck or bull felled by any of them was no less dead. I’ve never owned a .270 or .243, but they are proven game-stoppers.

Yet every few months in one periodical or another, somebody will knock together an article about “Ten Calibers That Have Outlived Their Usefulness” or something similar, so let’s talk about this.

THE .30-06 SPRINGFIELD won two world

A Remington 600 in .308 Winchester accounted for this Northcentral Washington buck. Today’s “headline calibers” don’t make game any deader than the old reliables. (TOM WALGAMOTT)

wars, but I submit its best work has been done on the plains and in the mountains of the American West. Ballistically, it is a marvel and capable of taking everything on four legs in North America, including

coastal brown bears and inland grizzlies, with the right bullets. It has a flat trajectory and with 165- or 180-grain boattails, the ’06 is a buck’s worst nightmare. I prefer the 180-grain Nosler AccuBond ahead of the

maximum charge of Hodgdon’s H-110 V propellant ignited by a CCI large rifle primer.

Likewise, the .270 Winchester is a sizzler, especially when launching 130-grain boattails. I don’t personally care for it –recoil is a problem for many shooters and I believe it was overhyped in the 1950s, 1960s and into the ’70s – but it can reach out several hundred yards accurately.

When I discussed this column with Northwest Sportsman Editor Andy Walgamott, I noted the 6.5 Creedmoor might be suffering from the same kind of fan adoration heaped upon the .270 by followers of the late Jack O’Connor. If you have a chance, visit the O’Connor Center south of Lewiston sometime. When I was there, some of his rifles were on display, along with mounts of animals he conked with his own .270. I never met Jack but knew his son Brad, the now-retired longtime outdoor writer for The Seattle Times.

Sure, the 6.5 Creed is a shooter, but it is shaded by the .264 Winchester Magnum, which launches the same diameter of bullet and has been around since about 1959. Anything you can clobber with the 6.5 can be whacked decisively with the .264.

THE .308 WINCHESTER may be edging the ’06 out as the most popular deer/elk

Buy new ammunition, such as offerings in .243 Win. and .30-06 from Sig Sauer — a couple of old reliable hunting calibers — to make sure you’ve got fresh loads this fall. (SIG SAUER)

Author Dave Workman makes sure his rifles shoot to point of aim during annual August visits to the gun range. (DAVE WORKMAN)

cartridge in the country, and certainly in the West. Both my brother and I have terminated dandy mule deer bucks with this round, and we’ll be out there again in two months to try it again, either hunting the upper Teanaway River drainage or over in Douglas County somewhere around Badger Mountain and Douglas Creek (unless we make it to northern Chelan and southern Okanogan Counties!). Developed by the military to replace the .30-06, it was introduced to hunters in 1952 and it’s been filling freezers ever since. My personal load is a 165-grain boattail (Nosler, Hornady or Speer) ahead of a charge of IMR 4895 for approximately 2,600 feet per second at the muzzle.

Ballistically, the .257 Roberts and .243 Winchester aren’t really that different, although the .243 got better PR and therefore became more famous as a plains rifle. Truth be told, with 100-grain boattails, the .257 is superior in terms of muzzle velocity (why I own one), but both are great mule deer cartridges with moderate recoil and deadly accuracy.

For brush country in Southwest Washington and Pierce, Lewis and Skamania Counties all the way to the Cascade Crest, the .30-30 Winchester and the nearly identical .32 Winchester Special continue to perform even though both have been around more than a century.

I mentioned the .350 Remington Magnum earlier. Not to be confused with the .35 Remington, the magnum is a belted little number which may have been the first “short, fat magnum” but was years ahead of the hype fest. I put down a moving muley southeast of Terry, Montana, 20 years ago at 250 yards with two shots that hit so hard they spun the buck around 180 degrees and he dropped in a heap. In Washington, it can handle deer and elk easily.

Notice on this target how Workman walked his shots up above the deadcenter bull’s-eye. This image shows his handloads topped by Nosler 180-grain AccuBond bullets. The combo has put venison in his freezer more than once!

(DAVE WORKMAN)

COLUMN

IT’S TIME TO head to the range. I mention this constantly because it is so important, and it bears repeating: Spend time at the range this month and next.

August and early September provide ideal weather conditions for spending lazy evenings at the range. Fire no more than three rounds in a string, open the action, rack your rifle to let heat rise out of the bore and relax. You will have one or two shots this fall and you must make them count.

If you don’t have a sandbag, make one using the cut-off leg of an old pair of denim jeans. Sew one end shut, fill a large plastic bag with sand, seal it and put inside the pants leg, then sew the open end shut. Bingo, you’ve got a reliable sandbag and it is a terrific rifle rest.

My rifles are zeroed to shoot at least 2.5 inches high at 100 yards. With my handloads, this puts them dead-on at 200 to 225 yards. Your mileage may vary depending upon caliber and preferred

load, but this simple formula will put you on the field, and possibly at home plate.

Right now, clean your rifle thoroughly. Use a bronze bore brush to scrub out the dust and add a drop or two of oil to the action’s innards for lubrication and protection. Touch up any scratches in the stock unless it’s a synthetic, add a bit of cold blue to bare spots on the metal, be sure you gently wipe the lenses of your scope, check the rings and bases to make sure they’re tight, and then zero the gun. NS

LET IT ALWAYS BE KNOWN: WE PAY THE FREIGHT

Not long ago, research firm Southwick Associates released a report with an eye-popping estimate that hunters and shooters spent more than $23 billion in the hunting and shooting equipment market.

According to a news release, last year saw National Instant Background Checks hit the third-highest number on record. You might thank Joe Biden, Jay Inslee, Bob Ferguson and the majority in

Olympia for at least some of those gun and equipment sales.

And here’s the payoff. Thanks to the Federal Aid to Wildlife Restoration program, also known as Pittman-Robertson, Northwest wildlife management makes out pretty well. During Fiscal Year 2023, Washington’s share of the revenue apportioned to states and territories by the US Fish and Wildlife Service came to $22,615,536, while Oregon’s disbursal was

$28,513,417 and Idaho’s was $23,508,743. According to USFWS data, Washington’s figure included $6.9 million for hunter education, while Oregon’s and Idaho’s outlays were $4.3 million and $2.3 million.

Members of Washington’s Fish and Wildlife Commission might remember this and rethink closing the spring bear hunting season, or taking any other action that amounts to reducing opportunity for hunters. –DW

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Time To Ramp Up Gun Dog Training – Safely

For gun dogs, and gun dog owners, August is a month of transition.

to dedicate consistent training time and preparation.

this is done in intense heat, it can be fatal.

GUN DOGGIN’ 101

By Scott Haugen

Temperatures are hot and it’s easy to make excuses not to get outside and work your dog. But with bird hunting seasons fast approaching, this is the most crucial time

In order to get your dog proper conditioning work, commit time early in the morning and late in the day. Conditioning your dog when temperatures are cool is a must, for the safety of your pup. Dogs are driven and many don’t have an “off” switch, meaning they’ll push themselves to the point of exhaustion. If

RUNNING IN FIELDS is good for sprint work and gets your dog’s feet tough and in shape. But be careful if tossing bumpers. Dry grass fields can be very slick and if your dog sprints to fetch a tossed bumper, it can lead to hip and leg injuries. I like running with the dogs, doing controlled bumper work and command training in dry fields. This allows

Bird preserves open this month and create good opportunities for you and your dog to get ready for fall hunting seasons. (SCOTT HAUGEN)

them to hone their skills, build strength and acquire pad toughness, while I have control along the way.

For physical exercise, I like swimming dogs and running them uphill. Uphill runs build back-end strength and are a great cardio workout. I’ll toss bumpers up steep hills to get the dogs running in short bursts, or road them from a mountain bike, ATV or truck – but not too fast. Again, do this early or late in the day when it’s cool, and be sure to have plenty of water.

Swimming is a great way to get your dog in good physical condition. As with humans, swimming for dogs is low impact, leads to far fewer injuries and keeps their body temperature down. Long swims in calm water are safe and efficient this time of year. Having dogs swim beside you on a canoe or a paddle board works well. If you’re a swimmer, get in the water with them; they’ll love it. You can also toss bumpers a long way, several times.

Just don’t confuse conditioning in water with training in water. Conditioning in water

consists of extended swimming times and distances. Training in water is where specific behaviors are taught or enforced, usually following an aggressive water entry.

NOW’S THE TIME to also make sure all your dog gear is in top condition. Last hunting season I noticed Kona was getting rubs from his collar. Figuring I had the collar too tight, I adjusted it and we kept hunting, but still he had rub marks on his neck. That’s when I looked closely at the plastic e-collar and noticed it was splitting around the holes on the underside. The hard, dry cracks are what caused the chafing. Start with a new, clean collar; they’re cheap. And be sure to check that the posts in e-collars are secure so they don’t fall out.

Whether your dog will be wearing upland or waterfowl vests this season, put them on and let your dog run around. This can even be done inside the house where it’s cool. Watch the dog closely to see if it bites or scratches at any specific point. It’s good to train with a vest on too, but know

that your dog is usually so focused, it likely won’t stop if the vest is uncomfortable or rubbing. Check the vest to make sure it’s not rubbing under the legs. If it is, either trim the vest or keep exercising the dog – minus the vest – in order to shed extra pounds so the vest fits come hunting season. Do not exercise or train your dog with a vest on when it’s hot outside, unless you’re in cool water.

In August, bird preserves open up throughout the West. This can be a great primer for you and your pup. Be sure to hunt early and late in the day, when temperatures are cooler. Not only will this be safer for your dog, it will ensure more bird scent lingers on the ground in the heavier air, increasing your dog’s success. Preserves are a great way to brush up on specific needs. If your dog is gun-shy or breaking, go with a buddy and have them shoot so you can focus on handling your dog and correcting any problems.

A BIG CHALLENGE in late summer is training

Swimming is low impact and one of the best ways to get your dog in shape. (SCOTT HAUGEN)

the gun dog trainer – you – to do the right thing. It’s easy for us to get lazy because days are hot. You might not want to get up every morning before work, and you might be too tired to train after you get home. Set a schedule based on the weather and what your dog needs to achieve. If your pup is overweight, you have to get those pounds off before hunting season. If your dog needs to sharpen specific skills, dedicate yourself to making it happen.

Sessions don’t have to be long, but they do need to be consistent and serve a purpose. I work my dogs seven days a week, twice a day this time of year. I do it early and late in the day when it’s cool, and I keep sessions short and fun. Swimming work can go longer and will depend on the health of your dog. I usually swim my dogs three days a week in August, for 20 to 30 minutes each time. With hunting season less than a month away, you owe it to your dog, and yourself, to be ready. NS

Editor’s note: Scott Haugen is a full-time writer. See his basic puppy training videos and learn more about his many books at scotthaugen.com. Follow his adventures on Instagram and Facebook.

Avoid training in the heat of the day this time of year, and keep sessions short when it starts to get warm. Be sure to have plenty of water handy. (SCOTT HAUGEN)