Rogue Report

[Rick J]

Will post a couple of messages- Bruce and I headed up to new water for us - the lower Rogue. Left mid day Thursday and got up to the Rogue around 5 PM - we stayed in Huntley Park Camp Ground around 7 miles up-rver from the 101 bridge. For those who care, this is a drug free camp ground as can be seen from the sign :)

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Got up in the dark and had a quick breakfast then drove up-river a couple of miles to Lobster Creek boat ramp and launched and headed up on a new adventure

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Stopped in a run just upstream and got to fish virgin water for us

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The river was pretty slow - maybe close to the full moon or maybe the fish just were not there - some folks we talked to said they thought most fish were up past Agness (26 miles up-river). Even the gear guys were not hooking up.

The next run we stopped at I saw a whole bunch of buzzards sitting on the bank so said - must be something dead. Looked again and they were a flock of turkeys (sorry for bad photo).

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They stayed just ahead of me feeding along the gravel bar and finally flew across the river.

Although fishing was slow, the runs were incredible and I will post some more photos in a later post.

Now for the boat traffic. Maybe not as concentrated as on the lower Klamath but there were alot of boats - both jets and drift boats - worst were the tour boats - at least 6 every morning went up (maybe 10 to 15 minutes apart) and then came down in the afternoon and did they throw a wake!!

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However, I have never seen such great boat etiquette!! The tour boats would come off plane when they went by your boat parked near the bank so they would not beach it. And just about everyone would come off plane anytime they came to a boat that was drifting through a run and slowly motor around them - really nice to see and a far cry from etiquette on the Klamath!

We fished upriver probaly to within a mile of Agness and the Illinois River - it was very hot in the middle of the day but we stayed at it and had maybe a dozen half pounders or so by days end. I took the truck back to camp and Bruce ran the boat down to the camp and parked it on the garvel bar for easier access.

So more later!

[Adam Grace]

Thanks for the great report Rick!

[Rick J]

As mentioned above even though the fishing was slow, there were incredible runs - great long cobble studded runs that would take over an hour to fish through

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Here is a shot of a great lttle spot that produced a few half pounders in the choppy water outside of the rock

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Towards the end of the first day, as Bruce motored into the bank to drop me off on one side, I decided to do a cool move and jump out of the boat before he had come to a complete stop. Naturally I did not quite judge the forward momentum or the actual depth of the water quite right and managed a very graceful belly flop forward. Although the American judge gave me high marks, the Chinese judge marked me down for too much splash and was heard to mutter something about the appearance of a crippled emerging stonefly :P

Earlier that day, the cool dunk would have been refreshing. However, late afternoon with the sun going down and near the coast NOT SO MUCH!!! I gutted it out and continued to fish but it was nice to get back to camp and a hot shower!!

Here are a couple of shots of the half pounders -

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Bruce and I used switch rods most of the time and they were ideal on this water. The half pounders were incredibley stong and lots of fun, the majority were hatchery origin.

[SF fly fisher]

Great report --- makes me want to get up there. Wonderful looking runs,
too bad the fishing lower down river near the mouth was off. But judiging
by the pics you did get some good looking half-pounders up river. :)

[bigtj]

My buddy is saving up for a Wooldridge alaskan he's gonna buy next year...can't wait to try it out up on the Rogue and Klamath next year. Thanks a lot for the juicy preview.

-John