The water's fine.
Byline: MIKE STAHLBERG The Register-GuardLEABURG - We stuck our bait in the muddy McKenzie about 6:15 Sunday morning. By 6:24, the first spring chinook salmon was in the boat. By 7:10, we were fighting our fourth, and nobody was complaining that the river was cloudier than normal.
At 9:50, we were ready to clean our limit catch - eight salmon, averaging about 15 pounds apiece.
But those eight springers represented only half of our morning's excitement.
The four of us in Eugene guide Todd Linklater's jet sled also boated six other salmon (including two of the day's biggest) which had to be released because they had an adipose fin on their backs. Only fish with hatchery-clipped adipose fins may be retained on the McKenzie.
Add the two other salmon that shook their hooks as they were about to be netted, plus a couple of others that broke free before we got a look at them, and it totals up to a dream-like morning.
"There's been a steady bite for almost four straight hours," Linklater said when the fish box was filled to the limit. "In 28 years of professional guiding, that's as good as it gets."
The experience was made all the sweeter by the realization that, prior to Sunday, the McKenzie River had been a nightmare for fishing guides.
In fact, only 48 hours earlier Linklater had stood at the Greenwood Drive boat ramp and called off our originally scheduled trip because the water was too high and cloudy
Turbidity caused by silt sluiced out of Cougar Reservoir on the South Fork McKenzie River already had ruined the first five weeks of the general trout season. The reservoir was drained to provide access to the site of an Army Corps of Engineers construction project at Cougar Dam.
The McKenzie got so murky that the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife virtually halted its trout stocking program there.
It was so muddy that the head of the local guides association began referring to it as the "McKenzissippi," a reference to the brackish brown waters of the Mississippi River.
But the McKenzie began to clear up after the Corps stopped draining Cougar Reservoir on May 25, thus reducing the amount of silt entering the river.
And Linklater recognized that the corner had been turned, at least for salmon fishing, as soon as he arrived at the boat ramp Sunday.
"This looks like good ol' Sixes River water now," he said, referring to a highly productive south coast fall chinook stream. "It's almost got a green tint to it ... two weeks ago it was yellow."
According to a U.S. Geological Survey gauge that measures water clarity, the South Fork McKenzie on Sunday measured 47 "turbidity units," down from about 75 on Friday and from well over 100 during the weeks leading up to May 25. The reading dropped to 35 Wednesday morning.
While the McKenzie is still a long way from its normal clarity (which measures about 4 to 6 on the turbidity scale), the amount of "color" now in the water is actually ideal for salmon and steelhead fishing, Linklater said.
In green water, the fish are less likely to see - and be "spooked" by - boats passing overhead or even by fishing line.
But they can see well enough to munch on bait - especially if they are attracted to it by the scent of roe and sand shrimp doused with various fish oils.
That combination proved lethal Sunday as we tapped weighted baits along the bottom of deep holes in a technique known as "back-bouncing."
The bite was so good that it reminded one of our number, 86-year-old Springfield resident George Lesley, of his days as a McKenzie River guide back in the 1930s.
Lesley told about being paid $8 a day by anglers who caught salmon, steelhead, Dolly Varden (bull trout) and redside trout, all on the same day. But it had been a long time since he saw action like we had Sunday, he said.
About the only thing our group found to complain about was the number of fish that had to be released due to what appeared to be either partially clipped or regenerated adipose fins. Half of the six fish we released fell into that category.
"Darn it, that makes me sick to my stomach," Linklater said after releasing a chrome-bright, 25-pound salmon that Lesley had battled to the net. The fish had a little nub of an adipose fin.
"Fish with a big adipose fin that are obviously wild, I don't mind releasing those at all," Linklater said. "But these ..."
However, area rivers are so jammed with spring chinook and summer steelhead right now that it has not been difficult for anglers to find enough fin-clipped fish to limit out
"Fishing is just flat red-hot out there right now," said Jeff Ziller, the state fish biologist for the upper Willamette watershed.
And those anglers who are not catching salmon seem to be catching summer steelhead.
"Everybody is doing well," Ziller said. "It doesn't matter what river you're on - the Middle Fork Willamette, the Santiams or the McKenzie - this is going to be probably the best Free Fishing Weekend people have ever seen for salmon and steelhead fishing." (For details on Free Fishing Weekend, see story above).
The success can be traced to the combination of ideal water conditions - at least for salmon and steelhead - and unusually large "runs" of fish returning from the Pacific Ocean.
Counts at Willamette Falls Fish Passage near Oregon City indicate 55,915 salmon and 16,662 summer steelhead had moved upriver through May 30. With salmon still heading upriver at the rate of more than 1,000 a day, this is shaping up as the biggest spring chinook run in a dozen years.
Most of the fish that pass Willamette Falls end up in the North or South Santiam rivers, the McKenzie or the Middle Fork Willamette below Dexter Dam.
"All of these rivers should fish well through June," Linklater said. "It's definitely a bonus year."
Meanwhile, the trout fishing on the McKenzie is also looking up as the water becomes less cloudy.
Trout have been observed feeding on surface insects - a good sign for fly anglers, said Ziller, who has decided to resume the regular stocking regime on the McKenzie.
"We're feeling so good about how the river looks that we're going to stock the McKenzie with 11,000 trout this week, rather than 8,000 normally scheduled," Ziller said. Some 3,000 hatchery rainbow "held back" prior to opening weekend due to the muddy conditions will be added to this week's release, he said.
Ziller said he expects very good trout catches this weekend.
"We would encourage people to try the McKenzie and tell us if it's fishable because we're putting the fish out with the expectation that people are going to be able to catch fish at a normal opening day rate," he said. "The river is still pretty high and is obviously a little off-color, but with the warming and clearing we've seen recently, I think it should be getting back to providing acceptable levels of angling experience."
Or, in the case of salmon angling, much better than acceptable.
CAPTION(S):
From left, Lesley George, Eldon Hunter, Todd Linklater and J Bonzer display spring chinook salmon they caught on the McKenzie River. River guide Todd Linklater hoists spring chinook salmon caught by Eldon Hunter. MIKE STAHLBERG / The Register-Guard The greenish color of the McKenzie River has not hampered salmon and steelhead fishermen this week. "Fishing is just flat red-hot out there right now." JEFF ZILLER State fish biologist Turbidity in the McKenzie River has dropped quite a bit over the past week.
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| Title Annotation: | McKenzie salmon and steelhead fishing is productive as river begins to clear; Recreation |
|---|---|
| Publication: | The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR) |
| Date: | Jun 6, 2002 |
| Words: | 1290 |
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