Both sides, now!

Byline: Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

LOWELL - A double-barrelled fishery is under way downstream of Dexter Dam on the Middle Fork Willamette River.

It's a fishery in which anglers choose sides of the river based on what they hope to catch.

On the left (south) bank, spring chinook salmon dominate the action.

On the right bank, summer steelhead are the catch of the day.

This year's salmonid runs are on the smallish side, so the catching has not been rapid-fire by any means.

But the bite was good enough Thursday for anglers on both sides to use cell phones to alert friends.

Brothers Jeff and Jeremy Coleman of Springfield, who caught four salmon by mid-morning, had to share the fishing platform on the left bank with only a handful of other anglers.

The site is usually much more crowded, said Jeremy Coleman - who's fished here "since I was old enough to hold a pole."

However, he said, "the bite's been so finicky, so hit-and-miss" that many regulars stopped coming every day.

On Thursday, at least a dozen salmon were landed and several others threw the hook before being netted.

Meanwhile, on the right side of the river, about 20 steelhead anglers were lined up between the hatchery outflow and the boat ramp 300 yards downstream. Fishing was slower than it had been in previous days, but several steelhead were visible on the bank.

"That's what I'm talking about!" shouted Mike Walker of Lowell after landing a bright summer steelhead just downstream from the angling deadline 400 feet from the dam.

"That's a start - only two more to go!" Walker said "Not bad, considering I've only been here about 20 minutes."

The bag limit on the Willamette River and its tributaries is two salmon or steelhead per day, with a third fish allowed as long as it is a steelhead.

Three-fish limits have been rare. But several anglers have taken home three or more salmon - including one or more jacks (three-year-old males measuring less than 24 inches). Jacks need not be tagged; they count as trout.

The 2009 spring chinook run is better than last year's, but below the 10-year average of just over 50,000 adults per year.

As of June 9, a total of 19,394 adult salmon had been counted through Willamette Falls fish passage. In addition, 1,757 jack salmon had passed over the dam, along with 7,945 summer steelhead.

On the same date in 2008, 6,676 adult salmon, 99 jack salmon and 8,770 steelhead had been counted.

Guides report fishing has been productive in local waters since about Memorial Day.

"Salmon fishing this past week was very good," said John Gross of Roaring Fork Guide Service in Springfield. "We boated fish on every trip, with numerous limits of hatchery salmon in the mix. Both the Willamette and McKenzie have been kicking out springers."

On two days, Gross said, the number of native salmon caught and released out-numbered the hatchery catch.

Only hatchery salmon and steelhead, which have a clipped adipose fin, may be retained.

Below Dexter Dam, meanwhile, the salmon and steelhead were thick last week, because they had nowhere to go until the fish ladder into the Dexter Ponds hatchery facility was opened. That happened Friday.

"It was really slow today for as many people as were up there," veteran left-banker Bill Jordan said Friday.

With about 500 salmon and steelhead moving through the fish passage at Willamette Falls each day, however, good numbers of fresh fish will be arriving in local waters for several more weeks.

The fish, by the way, all tend to favor the right bank, where the hatchery entrance is.

Salmon anglers standing on the left bank hook most of their fish on the far side of the river - after casting their bait or lures over there, or after utilizing the eddying current below the dam to carry bait suspended beneath bobbers to the north side.

"If you can't cast clear over to the other side, you might as well not even be fishing," said Jordan, who reports catching five salmon at Dexter so far this season.

"I have to have some of them younger guys do it for me," said Jordan, who's 73. "It's 125 yards (to the concrete wing wall on the far side of the river), and you need to cast just about that far."