The fishing report

“Yesterday” was a nice little song written about a million years
ago by a band most people remember.  “Yesterday” is also a term
used to describe tremendous fishing, especially if you are just
arriving on the fishing grounds. In fact, the farther you travel
and the more money you spend, the more likely you will get a
“should-a-been-here-yesterday” fishing report. And “yesterday’s”
fishing is always tremendous, but for my intrepid crew that came up
to the Klamath River to fish with me that day -yesterday – the
fishing wasn’t so good. In fact, it was awful.  And what made
matters worse was that yesterday’s yesterday, the fishing was awful
too, and so it went.  Ah yesterday…NOT! 
The salmon fishing on the lower Klamath this year continues to
be terrible. Oh, there have been days, but that is the problem.
There have only been the occasional stellar days, where a boat of 5
anglers might hook 25 fish and land 15 to 20. Last Wednesday was
like that. The report of last Wednesday came out, coincidentally
just in time to get everyone jacked up for, what traditionally is,
the biggest weekend of the year outside of Labor day. But the
weekend came and went and scratch fishing by many fine anglers was
the rule.
For my group from Healdsburg, whose names will be withheld
because they had nothing to do with the poor results, tried really
hard. They came to me as a charity fund raiser and expected great
fishing based on my recommendations. They took my advice that we
get an earlier start (dark thirty) to try and beat the crowd. They
fished to the very end of the day. They kept the faith and put on
good bait time after time, cast after cast… only to be rewarded
with one lousy little jack salmon for a full day of fishing.
The pros weren’t fairing much better. Expert guides with anglers
paying as much as $250 a head for a day of fishing were getting
blanked. This should have been prime time on the lower Klamath
River. Traditionally, it has been in years past, but in the last
couple of years things have really changed. The fish just aren’t
there in the numbers we are used to. It is very disturbing to see
this fishery in such decline. The Yurok Indians commercial
fisheries have reached their quota and the subsistence certainly
has to be close to reaching theirs, but the sportsman are woefully
short on their allotted quotas. As of today, sportsmen have gotten
2,185 salmon of their 30,000 allotment. The projected run of
135,000 fish has yet to materialize. One wonders why the ocean
sportsmen weren’t given some of these fish, especially when the in
ocean count is 500,000, and why the 3-mile restriction on the mouth
of the river wasn’t lifted to allow for more in ocean take.
The American Fishing Foundation put on a fishing derby over the
weekend to benefit the Klamath River Fishery and the DFG marking
program. It was attended by 68 anglers and 22 guides that all
donated their time. It was a two-day event in which all fish were
released. There was a net division in which all salmon and
steelhead were measured by inches and given point scores for size
groups. The winning group was guided by Mike Moore and had a total
of 11 salmon for two days of fishing for 4 anglers. And that was
the winning team. Many teams had far fewer than that, which was a
real disappointment for this time of year.
So now, instead of hearing that you should have been here
yesterday, you may hear that you should have been here yesteryear.
But “Yesterday” is still a good song… just not a very good fishing
report these days.
For more information and or fishing reports, please contact
Hunt Conrad at Prospect Mortgage in Healdsburg, 431-9715.