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The rivers are in good shape as of today and will be perfect shape in a few days (for flies) if the weatherman is correct. Seven day forcast calls for no rain, but up here we trust the weatherman like San Diegoian's trust their congressman. Hoping to hit the river this week, have a bit of steelhead fever, and if it rains I'll be crying like Duke Cunningham and whining like Richie Cunningham.
Yeah, the "Dukester" is a bit of a cryer these days, isn't he? Might want to work on that before he gets to prison and someone makes him "the momma." Just watched a thing on the History Channel a month or so ago that retold the story of that guy shooting down several Migs one day in Vietnam before getting shot down himself by a S.A.M. Guess he really lost his way in recent years, though.
Think if I were faced with fishing a lot on those North Coast streams again--where gear guys generally outnumber steelhead ten-to-one--I'd probably be crying too. Hope you've got yourself some private access. The property about a block below Cedar Creek Hatchery on Three Rivers would be my first choice in a perfect world. :lol:
Bub,
I had a picture of Three Rivers at the deadline during salmon season. Counted fiftee-one anglers in a short space. It wasn't shoulder to shoulder, it looked like a line of conjoined twins.
Build a hatchery and they will come, but there is plenty of space to be out and about in search of the silver demons. Send me a dollar and I will spill the beans. I figure if those women get a buck for taking off their clothes for a dance, I ought to get the same rate for fishing info. Call it "A Buck for a Buck"...or "A Buck for a Hen". Since beers at The Junction only cost a buck, could be a living wage.
You’re dead on about upstream at the hatchery. There's usually more than 30 guys there standing shoulder-to-shoulder when the fish are in, and not a full set of teeth between 'em. Back when they still had a full-scale operation for fall chinook there, the “S curves” were like that too, and guys covered the bank pretty much all the way down to Hebo. But downstream of the bridge at the hatchery is a stretch of private property that is hatchery-assisted winter steelhead heaven.
The land just down from the hatchery is, or at least was, owned by a guy who owned one of the very well known big fly fishing lodges in Alaska. He let a few people in there to fish, but not many. The fish keg up in that area unbelievably thick, and the guys that got to fish there, all fly fisherman, enjoyed some incredible steelheading thanks to the ODFW and the state’s tax payers who were subsidizing it with thousands of returning hatchery fish each year. On a river that barely runs 400 c.f.s. during most of the winter, that many steelhead going through and holding on that property unmolested are the proverbial fish in a barrel. If you were going to build yourself a spot to clobber steelhead whenever you felt like it, it would be hard to do any better than that spot.
If you ever get a chance to see Jim Teeny's most recent how-to steelhead video, pay close attention to where he does it. The video was filmed on that property below Cedar Creek, and they even show the house just downstream from the hatchery on river left. That's how can't miss the fishing is there; they use it to film tutorials. I'm not sayin' I ever snuck in there and fished, but I would guess that if a guy were to do that on a day nobody was around he could probably catch nine steelhead on flies in about 90 minutes while still constantly looking over his shoulder. Approximately, of course. Purely theoretical. I would never personally succumb to the pressures and trespass. Really. Never.
There used to be some little known public access just down from there that had to be reached from the forest road that crosses at the hatchery. You had to hike in quite a ways--basically straight up and down--but the fishing was very good because of the number of hatchery fish that used to run up that river and because they stacked up in there where they weren't getting harassed (same deal as the private land, but with slightly more fisherman). That was as close to a guaranteed thing on the North Coast as there ever was. Unfortunately, "Heart Attack" as it was known by the few that knew it, got into the Fishing and Hunting News and was ruined overnight. That was about ‘97 or ‘98.
I haven't been up there since they implemented the broodstock program on the Nestucca (haven't fished anywhere on the North Coast since 2001). Would be curious to know how the rivers fish now that they’ve done away with the Alsea-strain early brats coming out of Cedar Creek. Also, I heard the sporting goods store at Hebo went out of business. Is that true?
Lots of good memories from the years I lived in the Willamette Valley and fished the North Coast several days a week, but I wouldn't go back up there at gun point. Way too many people, and the fishing in Oregon tends to get better proportionately to your distance from Portland.
"Purely theoritcal". I'm laughin' my ass off!!! I figure with such detail how could it be anything but a theory.
I haven't been to the Nes-took-her in six years. Used to fish the tidewater for 'dem Kings. After that blew out we would backbounce. I do love that backbouncing. Get so worked I up I would give myself a headache. Just got one now thinking about it.
Don't know about that sporting goods store. Their shuttle service had a knack for locking the keys in the vehicles. A few pissed off walking anglers. Always liked the name of the town: Hebo. One salmon season, living at the Riverview Inn, we adopted a cat. My buddy took it home and named it Hebo. In transit, damn cat crapped on my shoe right past the Kilchis. I was laughing and puking and trying to roll down the window at the same time. Tough multi-tasking.