Chuck Downer: Weather doesn't faze fish
Friday, September 22, 2006 6:59 AM PDT
By Chuck Downer, columnist
Printable version
E-mail this articleDespite heavy rain showers at times, the recent onset of fall-like weather hasn't made much of a difference overall with fishing. With the Columbia River closed to fishing for chinook salmon locally, fishing pressure has eased significantly on the big river, although fishermen are still working silvers and steelhead near the mouth of the Cowlitz.
Mel Larsen, at Bob's Sporting Goods in Longview (425-3870), reports that there are significant numbers of silvers in both the Lewis and Cowlitz rivers, but getting them to bite is another story. Successful fishermen are casting Brad's Wigglers and Storm Wiggle Warts.
Wayne Orzel, proprietor of Mahaffey's on the River (673-4488) on the Kalama, reports that the river rose approximately five inches because of recent rainfall, and while the river colored up a little, it's gin-clear again as of mid-week.
According to Orzel, there's a mix of chinook, silvers, and late-running summer steelhead in the river. He says that about 10 percent of the chinook are worth keeping - the rest being the color and consistency of a car tire (must be kin to Cowlitz River cardboard).
As I reported last week, night fishing in the fly water is the best of it right now. Good numbers of salmon are coming out of the Beginner's Hole area at night.
Columbia River sturgeon
Oct. 1 marks the resumption of the retention season for sturgeon on the Columbia River, from the Wauna power lines at Cathlamet upstream to Bonneville Dam. The Columbia below the Wauna power lines to the mouth is closed to the retention of sturgeon through the remainder of the year, although catch-and-release is allowed.
When the season reopens, anglers will be allowed to retain one sturgeon per day, five for the season. The minimum size limit is 42 inches, and no sturgeon over 60 inches may be retained.
Above the Wauna power lines, retention will be allowed Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays only. Catch-and-release is allowed, once the daily or yearly bag limit is retained.
The above-listed regulations apply to the Cowlitz River as well.
Be sure to check the fishing pamphlet (p. 70-71) for closures and restrictions near Bonneville.
Silver Lake
In the DFW publication Warmwater Fish of Washington, revised in 2005, the following species are listed for Silver Lake; largemouth bass, black crappie, white crappie, bluegill, pumpkinseed sunfish, warmouth, yellow perch, arid brown bullhead.
Silver Lake has had a significant population of white crappie for as long as I can remember. I can remember catching two white crappie, well over a pound apiece, on consecutive casts when fishing one of the west-end ditches, from the bank, in 1959-1960.
From my experience, the black crappie is more rounded in body shape with the white being more slender. In appearance, the difference is obvious; the black crappie has black spots all over its body and gives an overall black and silver appearance.
The white, which is often called a "silver" by Silver Lake crappie fishermen by the way, has bluish vertical bands and gives off an overall blue and silver appearance. At Silver Lake the whites are generally larger than the blacks.
On a recent trip to Silver Lake I spent the afternoon fishing for crappie and was lucky enough to find a decent concentration of these scrappy little fish. I ended up catching approximately 60 crappie that day, and only five of those were longer than the nine--inch minimum size required at Silver Lake. And all five of those were white crappie in excess of 10 inches.
The majority of crappie that I caught were blacks, which averaged 8 1/4 to 8 3/4 inches, just under the minimum size limit. I released all of the crappie I caught. Crappie over 10 inches are a rarity at Silver Lake, and deserve to spawn as many times as possible.
I would be the first to applaud any effort to limit the number of crappie meat fishermen are taking at Silver Lake. However, crappie nine inches or better in size, at Silver Lake, have always been scarce.
The current regulation targets these scarce fish. I'd like to see it changed to target the average-size crappie in the lake. Allowing a crappie angler to retain 20 crappie, any size, would be more realistic than the current regulation, given the reality of the size of the fish in Silver Lake.
I like to eat crappie. In my opinion they are one of the best-eating fish out there. In the past I've usually kept two or three in the 81/2 inch range, which is all that I can eat fresh. If I'm going to keep crappie now, I'll be forced to keep fish that I would normally release.
For the record -- the current crappie regulation at Silver Lake allows the angler 10 crappie in excess of nine inches daily. From what observed the other day, it's obvious that many anglers either don't know the limit, or they don't care. I observed three other anglers catching crappie, and they were keeping everything that they caught.
The crappie that I caught were on a log in the main lake area. As far as I know, the crappie are not biting back in the canals or on the north bank yet. The water temperature is currently 65 degrees. It needs to drop another five degrees or so for these fisheries to pick up.
Watch for clam dig dates
And finally . . . the DFW should be posting razor clam dig dates for October soon, provided there are sufficient clams available. I'll have the schedule as soon as it becomes available.
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