Statesman Journal: Charters anticipate buzz for start of coho season

Charters anticipate buzz for start of coho season

Boat owners fear anglers think fishery is banned

Henry Miller
Statesman Journal

June 14, 2006

You might call it the fish that catches people.

Bookings for charter fishing trips for Saturday's ocean coho salmon opener off the central coast range from ho-hum to hot.

And that's pretty typical, said Sherry Kasper at Newport Tradewinds, because a lot of anglers hedge their bets by waiting until salmon start showing up at the cleaning tables at the dock.

Then there's a real run for one of the most popular fishing opportunities on the Oregon Coast.

"Once it happens, it's going to hit the walls," Kasper said about bookings. "This weekend we will see what happens."

Coho fishing opens Saturday between Cape Falcon, near Manzanita on the north coast, south to Humbug Mountain near Port Orford.

Only hatchery fin-clipped coho can be kept, and there is a two-salmon (chinook and coho) daily bag limit with a 16-inch minimum size on coho, 20 inches on chinook.

The season runs through July 31, or until 20,000 hatchery coho are caught.

"We're booked up," Noelie Couch at Depoe Bay Tradewinds said about opening weekend. "We're excited."

And unlike 2005 when warm ocean conditions kept the coho well offshore and just 3,582 hatchery coho (9 percent of the 40,000 season total allowed) crossed the docks before the season ran out, some incidental coho already are being caught and released while fishing for other species.

"There's coho out there," Couch said. "They're picking up some on chinook trips."

Added Kasper, "We've had coho caught here and there, incidentally, on bottomfishing trips.

"We are ready."

Another problem with bookings is the perception that people have because of the commercial troll salmon season shutdown that there is no salmon fishing at the coast, several people said.

"People think that fishing totally closed at the coast," lamented Ray Dana of Linda Sue III Charters in Garibaldi. "That and the Rose Festival are killing us.

"It's usually pretty dead in June, but this is the worst I've ever seen."

Added Corie McGranahan, the skipper of the charter Reel Nauti out of Depoe Bay: "Let 'em know that coho's open. I love coho fishing."

It's ironic that people don't know about the opportunities, because conditions are a lot better than the near-tuna ocean temperature for most of the 2005 season.

Mike Jespersen, skipper of the Sea-J out of Nalu Charters in Depoe Bay, said: "It sounds like they're out there," he said. "The bait and birds are working a lot better than it was last year."

Still, skippers are checking the weather constantly, hoping to avoid a repeat of 2005, when south winds warmed the ocean.

"What I'd like to see is two or three days with a strong north wind to get the water temperatures down," said Richard Newton, the skipper of the charter boat Kimberley out of Dockside Charters in Depoe Bay.

When asked how long he thought the 20,000 allowed catch would last, Joe Ockenfels, a skipper for Siggi-G Charters in Garibaldi, thinking about the stinko coho season last summer, laughed.

"I'll let you know in about two weeks," he said.