The Fishing Thread

I don't know where you would take it, but you could probably contact the manufacturer to see if you could get the part or send it in. Some companies are good with stuff like that.

I'm currently on the road to do some more salmon fishing! The weather did a big shift from hot to cool today, so hopefully that triggers a good day. I bought a nice G Loomis rod in anticipation yesterday. Got it for 25% off too which was great. Came to about $210 instead of $280. The nice thing is that if it ever breaks, I can get a replacement immediately for $75. I wouldn't have bought a nice one if I had to be paranoid about it breaking all the time. Sticking with my old Shimano reel because it's pretty great.

I need to try salmon fishing sometime. Could I use my 6000 battle ii for that?

Paleocon wrote:

I need to try salmon fishing sometime. Could I use my 6000 battle ii for that?

It just depends on the area and type of fishing, so it's hard to say.

Today was a bust. They've closed the Columbia River, so everyone crammed into a side channel to fish which was fine except the fish weren't running. Saw only 1 salmon caught the whole day. You just have to hit the right day. Gonna try going on my own quite a bit midweek since I have lots of vacation days to use up.

I'm maxed out on vaca time myself. Maybe I should be spending more time on the water.

Well, bummer. I broke one of the bolt heads in a roller pin for one of my roller guides and it turns out that my roller guide is not AFTCO or one of the industry standards like Winthrop. It is some weird Chinese knockoff and the pins may not be standard.

So I decided to replace the entire guide with a more standard Winthrop, AFTCO, or Fuji roller guide so I will have easier access to parts in the future. I can't decide if I want to replace them all or if I just want to do the one and have a mismatched set yet. If the process of replacing a guide is a production number, I might end up doing them all at once.

Just wanted to comment how much I'm enjoying reading all of this. A fishing thread was very much needed.

Paleocon wrote:

So I decided to replace the entire guide with a more standard Winthrop, AFTCO, or Fuji roller guide so I will have easier access to parts in the future. I can't decide if I want to replace them all or if I just want to do the one and have a mismatched set yet. If the process of replacing a guide is a production number, I might end up doing them all at once.

Well, I can't offer any advice other than good luck! I tend to just buy new stuff to replace rather than fix things. I'm also horrible with impulse buys and bought a G Loomis rod last week. It's fantastic. I'm sticking with the older Shimano reel I have because it's awesome.

So, I went fishing solo on Tuesday this week and didn't hook anything. It wasn't a great day, but I saw a few caught here and there. I did observe a solo guy net a salmon, so I at least know how how to do that now if I ever catch one solo.

I went again with my dad today... and... I got a strike! It's been the first time a fish has taken my bait in forever (at least two years). While my dad has gotten a few hits here and there last year and this year, I haven't been lucky. I was able to play the fish great. Everything went as it should. It took forever, but it finally tired out, and we netted it easily.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/uk8TDUtl.jpg)

We kept fishing, but our motor died (found out it was a bad spark plug as suspected this evening) and we had to quit. Everyone else was calling it a day for the most part, so it didn't sting too much. Where we're fishing, you can run two rods if you pay $20 or so for the validation which I did finally. I actually caught the fish on my main rod, so who knows if it helped, but it's nice to get 3 rods out between the two of us to maximize our chances. Totally worth the $20.

The filleting went great, but I still can't figure out how to get those pin bones out despite having pin bone tweezers. They just break off or tear up the flesh too much. I'm gonna look into some tips on how to do it, but I may just give up on fully boneless fillets.

Pictures because why not?

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We just had a fantastic dinner of wild rice, brussels sprouts, and the salmon baked in the big green egg with salt, pepper, and lemon slices. It turned out perfectly and was basically the best pure salmon I've ever had.

We're going again on Saturday, and I'll smoke the remainder of this fish on Sunday along with whatever else we may catch.

yum. It's been forever since I have actually seen that lovely orange flesh of real salmon. Around here, all you ever see is the Pepto pink, cancer fillets.

Well my wife and I went to Central Oregon for a week for spring break, it's pretty much our happy place. We only got one day to fish, but we went out and explored the middle section of the Deschutes River. We had never been there before, but we want to get back before, it's a beautiful place.

Unfortunately with high snowpack runoff and the beginning of irrigation season the water flows have been all over the place this spring. Such is the hazard of spring fishing, though. We ended up not catching anything, although I did see a medium sized rainbow swimming amongst the rocks below me, and shortly after mid-day there were a couple kinds of mayflies hatching and some sporadic surface feeding going on. It was a wonderful hike into the canyon, though, and we're both keen on getting back down there and exploring some more.

I did discover as I pulled out my waders use that I had put a 4-inch gash in the fabric last fall when I previously used them. Oops! Fortunately I never waded more than knee deep so it wasn't an issue, but it did lead to a trip back to the fly shop in Bend to take advantage of no sales tax and purchase some new breathable waders.

I thought I had left my phone in the truck and so didn't take any photos, but here are a few that my wife snapped.

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We had brilliant weather all week, mid to upper seventies and sunny the whole time. I saw a report that it snowed in bend yesterday.

Nice. When my wife moves down here, I would like to see about getting a kayak and start doing some saltwater fly fishing on the intercoastal. I understand it is a whole lot of fun.

I love that area. I've tried fly fishing a few times in central Oregon but never have had a lot of luck, and I really don't know what I'm doing. I caught a small trout once. One of these days I'm gonna just do a guided trip somewhere out in the middle of nowhere in maybe Idaho or Montana so that someone can just show me where to fish and what to use. Then I figure I can go back on my own.

Nice rod/reel! I have a Scott rod and a nice but budget Orvis reel that I need to get some use out of someday. I may get a chance to use it in a lake sometime this summer from our little boat. I think that'd be fun although I like fishing rivers better. I do have some nice waders, but I probably need to replace my wading boots. They ended up being just too small and my feet go numb after awhile which is annoying.

If you want help learning to cast, seek out an Orvis store. They regularly have beginning fly casting (and maybe an intermediate level class as well) classes for free. I am self taught for the most part, with hours and hours spent online reading and watching videos. I gear fish too (particularly for bass), but there is just something so satisfying about fly fishing.

It's been a deep rabbit hole for me, eventually I started tying my own flies, which led to building my own fly rods too. Catching fish on flies that you tied yourself is a great feeling.

fleabagmatt wrote:

If you want help learning to cast, seek out an Orvis store. They regularly have beginning fly casting (and maybe an intermediate level class as well) classes for free. I am self taught for the most part, with hours and hours spent online reading and watching videos. I gear fish too (particularly for bass), but there is just something so satisfying about fly fishing.

It's been a deep rabbit hole for me, eventually I started tying my own flies, which led to building my own fly rods too. Catching fish on flies that you tied yourself is a great feeling.

Now you just need to learn to mount the fish you caught with flies you tied!

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I love that area. I've tried fly fishing a few times in central Oregon but never have had a lot of luck, and I really don't know what I'm doing. I caught a small trout once. One of these days I'm gonna just do a guided trip somewhere out in the middle of nowhere in maybe Idaho or Montana so that someone can just show me where to fish and what to use. Then I figure I can go back on my own.

Wyoming would also be a good pick.
If you can time it to early spring or late fall, northern New Mexico (Pecos river outside of santa fe is my personal experience) has some good fishing.

Well, Saturday was a very unsuccessful salmon fishing day for us and most everyone else. We saw maybe 6 caught the whole day out of 100 boats and those were mostly in the space of 90 minutes after daybreak.

I smoked the salmon I caught on Thursday for 8 hours today. I did 2/3 in a soy sauce, ginger, brown sugar, and garlic brine and 1/3 in the same brine but with miso added. It's the best smoked salmon I've ever had and surprisingly light on the "fishy" flavor. Going for the longer smoke compared to last time was the way to go. I like the drier type of smoked salmon.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/n6Tlocal.jpg)

So, this season of spring Chinook salmon fishing in the Willamette/Columbia has been rough for us and everyone else it seems. The reports have been matching up with what we've seen, and there have never been any good days. There's just the occasional fish you'll catch with some days being a little better than others. Today's fishing report stated:

To date the catch has been disappointing considering we’re approaching the end of April with only an occasional decent bite popping up but slow fishing on most days. The lower Multnomah Channel continues to produce the best catch, mainly out of the Bayport Marina boat launch, but heading upriver the catch drops off all the way into Oregon City.

We've been fishing that lower Multnomah Channel this whole time and had managed to catch that one fish in the Columbia and the one later in the Multnomah Channel that I posted a picture of. I fished a total of 4 days since that last catch with nothing until today! It was a horrible day of fishing (we only saw 5 or so caught out of 40 boats or so), but we were one of the lucky few boats. It was kinda crazy. I had ended up with a gear tangle and had to redo everything on one of my two poles. I dropped the bait and immediately got what I assumed was a snag. Turns out it was a fish, and a big one at that. Everything went smoothly, and we carefully took our time getting it tired out, netted, and in the boat. Fortunately, it wasn't a native, so we were able to keep it. It came in at 35" and around 18 lbs, and it is easily the biggest salmon I've caught (that previous one was 33").

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We definitely made some boats jealous with that fight and catch given how little action was out there. I know that feeling. Made all those 4 fruitless days worth it. When we left and took out at the marina, the fish and wildlife person said that out of something like 16 boats that had taken out so far 6 fish had been caught (I might be a little off on those numbers, but it was close to that). Given that some of those boats were guide boats with a lot of people compared to ours, that's pretty good. She also said it was the prettiest fish she'd seen so far.

The fishing report is a little bit hopeful that there will actually be some good fishing at some point, but I'm skeptical. They keep saying that, and time for the season keeps running out. We're gonna try again on Sunday, and at the very least try weekends until the season is really over.

Edit: Oh yeah! I figured out how to get out the pin bones when filleting. You just need to catch a bigger fish with bigger pin bones. I got two perfect boneless and giant fillets. There were serious chunks of meat on that fish. I'm smoking some while working from home tomorrow, and we've got a lot of fresh as well.

I think I may actually be able to get the pin bones out of smaller fish now that I know what I'm doing a little better.

Man, I'm looking forward to getting out fishing again soon. Hoping to make a trip to a local lake this weekend to fly fish for warmwater species (bluegill, crappie, perch, and bass), it's one of my favorite places to fish.

Yum.

I hope you didn't toss out that head. Salmon heads are delish.

Paleocon wrote:

I hope you didn't toss out that head. Salmon heads are delish.

Totally threw that out after admiring it intensely. I have no idea what you would do with the head other than make a broth of sorts maybe? Got any recipes or general use cases?

Going way way back, the pinbone problem in fillets is best solved with a small pair of needle-nosed pliers. Pull them along the path the bone grows.

Another thing that would help is a proper fillet knife. With the more flexible blade you get closer to the spine so you get the full head of the pinbone and that makes it easier to find and less likely to break/tear as you pull them out. I'd recommend the one I use, but it's out of Norway and I inherited from my Gramma.

You can go all the way up your eyebrows price-wise, but it's diminishing returns as far as I can see. These are a pretty good buy for the buck. They're the ones we used in the hand-pack cannery I used to work in. Rapala has a good reputation too, with a good range of prices.

Fish heads are a great source for fish stock. But cheeks and collars are delicious as meat in and of themselves. They're cut out and grilled along with the rest of the fish, but usually end up treats for the cook.

Here's a good pictorial on how to cut them out. Then dredge in seasoned flour and saute lightly. Or anything you would use on a dainty cut of the same fish works for them. You can also boil or roast the whole head and scoop them out after.

Don't forget, it's not just salmon. Halibut, cod, big bass, you name it.

momgamer wrote:

Going way way back, the pinbone problem in fillets is best solved with a small pair of needle-nosed pliers. Pull them along the path the bone grows.

Another thing that would help is a proper fillet knife. With the more flexible blade you get closer to the spine so you get the full head of the pinbone and that makes it easier to find and less likely to break/tear as you pull them out. I'd recommend the one I use, but it's out of Norway and I inherited from my Gramma.

You can go all the way up your eyebrows price-wise, but it's diminishing returns as far as I can see. These are a pretty good buy for the buck. They're the ones we used in the hand-pack cannery I used to work in. Rapala has a good reputation too, with a good range of prices.

I've definitely got the filleting and the knives figured out which has taken some experience to figure out. Using paper towels to place on the fish halfway through the fillet cut is essential. The last two fish have been gloriously satisfying experiences with the previous being good but not getting the pin bones and the last getting everything perfect with complete pin bone removal.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/vYvkgtUl.jpg)

It has come up in other threads, but I'm using an Edge Pro knife sharpening system mainly on some Miyabi/Shun knives which works very well. My brother has a lot of experience with it, and I think I have everything figured out at this point. At any rate, I've never found my knives to be anything other than too sharp filleting a salmon. I've found using a 12" or so chef's knife to work great for the filleting part and then a trout fillet knife to work perfect for removing the rib bones (I have this really cool Finnish fillet knife from the 1960s that my brother gave to me which I've lovingly used for that purpose). After that, the made in Japan pin bone tweezers I got off Amazon ended up working perfect for those pin bones after I got a good fish to try them out on.

momgamer wrote:

Fish heads are a great source for fish stock. But cheeks and collars are delicious as meat in and of themselves. They're cut out and grilled along with the rest of the fish, but usually end up treats for the cook.

Here's a good pictorial on how to cut them out. Then dredge in seasoned flour and saute lightly. Or anything you would use on a dainty cut of the same fish works for them. You can also boil or roast the whole head and scoop them out after.

Don't forget, it's not just salmon. Halibut, cod, big bass, you name it.

Yesssssss... Thanks for the link to that. I'll be taking advantage of the cheeks and collars from now on.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I hope you didn't toss out that head. Salmon heads are delish.

Totally threw that out after admiring it intensely. I have no idea what you would do with the head other than make a broth of sorts maybe? Got any recipes or general use cases?

Went again today and I got one! This one was a beauty at 34". The last one was 35" and quite a bit heavier and gnarlier looking. The fishing wasn't good but we were one of the lucky ones. I also had a smaller one on for a few minutes, but it got off the hook somehow while I was tiring it out. There wasn't any slack involved, so I'm not sure how it happened. I don't think it was hooked well because all of the herring was left. Usually it's all chomped off. While it was a bummer not to get two, it was still the second best fish we've caught and it always feels good to have one on in a sea of boats that aren't catching any.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/RYnK9aHl.jpg)

I did cook up the cheeks this time along with our favorite way to cook salmon (cedar plank in big green egg, salt, pepper, and thin lemon slices on top. They were great! I'll definitely be cooking those up from now on.

I spent all day on Saturday taking apart and rebuilding my Penn Senator 114H. It is a little surprising how tricky it is to get the parts in all at once. Once I did and turned the final bolt, I went to function test it and it freespooled great, but also freespooled when I flipped on the retrieve. By then, I had already spent a couple hours on it and was frustrated. And my car mechanic always tells me the moment it frustrates you, you need to walk away. I went off to the neighborhood pub to clear my thoughts and sat there looking up possible causes for this on my phone, but came up empty.

When I woke up yesterday morning, I realized I had the drag all the way out.

Dumbass.

Ha!

Watching my brother go down the salmon/steelhead hole in Idaho over the past decade has me a fair bit leery of diving in myself. I'm trying to avoid getting into any more gear intensive hobbies.

That said, tuffalos photos are inspiring me. I already have a heavier weight fly rod/reel, which shouldn't involve too much to get it back up to speed for fishing. I may have to give the North Santiam a shot once I have a day to spare.

Druidpeak wrote:

Watching my brother go down the salmon/steelhead hole in Idaho over the past decade has me a fair bit leery of diving in myself. I'm trying to avoid getting into any more gear intensive hobbies.

That said, tuffalos photos are inspiring me. I already have a heavier weight fly rod/reel, which shouldn't involve too much to get it back up to speed for fishing. I may have to give the North Santiam a shot once I have a day to spare.

I don't know anything about getting steelhead/salmon out of the North Santiam. Have you managed to catch one there before? I have actually fished for trout quite a bit in the North Santiam with limited success up above the dams. The fishing report says Chinook and summer steelhead are there.

I'd be really curious how and whereish you fish the North Santiam. I know my fly rod and reel are supposed to be good enough for summer steelhead (apparently they are a little smaller), and I've always wanted to figure out how to catch one that way. I really don't know where you'd go in Oregon to fish for them, though.

I've only ever fished a total of two times in Oregon, and they were both on the Wilson River. I'd imagine that is the nearest option for a smaller channel that might be more conducive to fly fishing. Both times I was fly fishing, the first time actually pursuing winter salmon/steelhead(I believe it was in February), and then an august trip looking for cutthroat catch and release. On the salmon/steelhead trip I was with my brother who was rigged for a float and jig style, for bank fishing. He was the only one to actually hook into anything. We were definitely late for that run though.

I can ping a friend of mine in Portland who is nuts for salmon/steelheading and see what he might recommend.