Posts from — September 2008

No cold snap yet. Snow has come and gone once but for now its beautiful out there. The wood is for the most part cut and ready. Its time to get back to a little fishing before the ice hammer drops.

Just in case you missed the post on the Pikeminnow rewards program, here’s an update on the anglers who are cashing in.

Surprisingly enough I didn’t see KBarton from Singlebarbed’s name on the list. I know he’s been busy trying to figure out how to make his new hydration bag more palatable and keep his bro out of his favorite hooch and fly stash but I figured this was temptation that an ol’ brownliner couldn’t pass up. Wall St. woes must not have found there way to the Little Stinking and the Boa flies must be inflicting some serious damage on the finned ones.

Even more surrealistic, the pure water prince with his bamboo wand the highly acclaimed fishing  journalist Tom Chandler, at the TroutUnderground did not even send in the double in Denver’s glitzy fly fish-o-rama and show up in a Billy Carter disguise to wallow in the decadence of the brownliner’s world, a place he secretly must be yearning to go. Hey guys, look what your missing!

Ten Anglers Hit $2,000 Paydirt For Hooking Northern Pikeminnows; More Cash Available

The Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery Program paid out special awards of $2,000 to 10 lucky anglers over the past two weeks, part of a new September incentive effort designed to hook more of the salmon predators before the end of the sport reward season.

Ten more prizes of $2,000 each — a total of five chances to win per week - will continue through the month of September.

“Anglers in the region are telling us they like having this additional award incentive. We want to keep the momentum going in order to reduce the number of these juvenile salmon predators,” said Russell Porter, senior program manager for the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission. “Anglers play an important role in keeping pikeminnow numbers manageable so that young salmon have a better chance to migrate out to the sea.”

The annual pikeminnow program kicked off the week of May 5 and was going to stay open through Sept. 28 - but the season is being extended through Oct. 15 with the most productive pikeminnow registration stations remaining open (visit ww.pikeminnow.org for details on which stations will remain open during this period). Additionally, the special awards are only for the month of September.

Administered by the PSMFC and funded by the Bonneville Power Administration, the program is designed to reduce the number of, but not eradicate, northern pikeminnow. These fish are a large member of the minnow family that eat millions of young salmon and steelhead each year. Researchers believe reducing the number of these predators greatly helps salmon and steelhead survival.

Since 1991, more than 3.2 million northern pikeminnow have been removed from the Snake and Columbia rivers through the sport reward program. Last year 191,154 northern pikeminnow were turned in. As a result, northern pikeminnow predation on juvenile salmon in 2007 was cut by an estimated 37 percent.

Sept. 15 drawing special award winners:

Earl Miller (Vancouver, Wash.)

Anatoliy Mikhaylyuk (Vancouver, Wash.)

Mark Watkins (Quartzsite, Ariz.)

Paul Williams (Dallesport, Wash.)

David Sorrell (Longview, Wash.)

Sept. 8 special award winners:

Kaylee Sagat of Washougal, Wash.

Roland Maxfield Jr. of Deary, Idaho

Larry Hoyer of Lewiston, Idaho

Vasiliy Levchenkov of Salem, Ore.

Richard Ells of Starbuck, Wash.

Anglers who register and follow the rules of the program will be paid $4 per fish up to 100 pikeminnow. The bounty jumps to $5 per fish for each fish over 101 total and $8 per fish for 401 fish and above. There are hundreds of pikeminnow in the basin with special tags worth $500 each to anglers.

On top of the existing reward incentives, there will be four weekly drawings with five $2,000 prizes each week which began Aug. 30 and will conclude Sept. 26.

Under the weekly drawing rules each angler gets an entry card each day he or she checks in pikeminnow at approved registration sites, with one entry card maximum per day, per angler. There is one $2,000 prize maximum per angler per weekly drawing.

There are lots of ways to catch fish but a traditional Japanese method called Ukai is one that I have not heard of before. Its been around for awhile, 1300 years or so but has long been replaced by production fishing.

Basically you put a bunch of Cormorants on leashes, at night, light a big fire hanging off a basket on the bow of your boat to attract “sweetfish”. When the fish come to the light the Cormorants go to work.

Sounds like a good idea so far but it goes downhill for me from here.

Once the birds got a fish he of course thinks its his dinner, well is he in for a surprise because its actually going to be dinner for someone else. Its at this point that the bird is “reeled in” and after a little coaxing he disgorges his catch and its now the fishermans. Mmmm! The idea is sound but somehow forcing the Cormorant to barf up my dinner kind of kills my appetite.

This is your head on spawn.

This is your head not on spawn.

I guess we can be thankful that this is not part of our physiological makeup, at least not with the males of our species anyway.

Its pretty amazing the transformation that Salmon go through when they enter the spawning phase of their lives. We recently visited Grave Creek, a tributary of the Tobacco River in northwest Montana which feeds into Lake Kookanusa, a man made reservoir straddling the US/Canadian border to see the Kokanee in their fall colors.

Kokanee Salmon are basically a landlocked Sockeye and generally do not grow to any size although they do get big enough in some lakes to make a decent meal with three or four fish. We usually go after them through the ice in winter when there isn’t anything better to do.

I found a good article that talks about the color changes that Salmon go through by Jim Ames and Steve Schroder, at the Washington Dept. of Fish and Game site.

As far as fishing for them at this stage, they will go after flourecent stuff but they really aren’t into it. I was just wondering if there wasn’t something better following them up eating eggs, like hungry Rainbows or Cutts?