Oregon Coast: It has been a rough few years for chinook fishing. The first year of the great collapse I only made a couple trips and caught five fish. The second year of the collapse I hooked up every trip but only landed coho. This year has been the toughest. I haven’t caught anything, of course, I haven’t salmon fished at all. Nada. Not one trip.
It has been difficult not salmon fishing. It’s what I do and the salmon are a big part of the reason I want to stay in Oregon. Salmon fishing is ingrained and wrapped up in my identity. It’s who I am.
But, the runs are still down. They are up from where they were but still below escapement goals. While ocean conditions are largely to blame for the recent precipitous collapse, angling pressure doesn’t help anything. Ocean conditions show signs of improving but think of this, the more smolts make it to sea, all things equal, the more adults return. If we harvest fish now, the runs won’t bounce back as quickly or as high in the next few years as we dig out of this hole.
If you do fish chinook this year, consider letting anything go that isn’t seriously chrome. Consider catch and release fishing anyway. But if you do fish and you do harvest, well, I’m not judging-it’s who we are after all.
As for me, I might take a coho trip or two somewhere where we are allowed to fish for them.
That’s as good an excuse as ever for why I don’t have any Chinook this year…