2B ❚ WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2019 ❚ APPEAL TRIBUNE
Gathering ingredients for a
nice dinner is a lot of work
Fishing
Henry Miller
Guest columnist
To mangle an aphorism, it takes a
village to catch a meal … apparently.
You might say that outdoor buddy
Phil McCorkle and I were “stumped”
during a recent mushroom foray in the
Coast Range.
Which is to say that we were greeted
by a proliferation of meaty cut-off
chanterelle stems poking out of the for-
est floor, a telltale sign of a recent wave
of recreational and/or commercial pick-
ers who had scoured one of Phil’s go-to
sites. As always, my far-ranging com-
panion did fairly well, while I stumbled
into four puny chants that I added to his
cache because, cooked, my bounty
would barely have covered a slice of
toast.
The extended walking, scrambling
and clambering meant that we were
late getting to Newport for the second
half of our combo adventure, crabbing
off the docks.
And with Phil needing to get back to
Salem for an appointment by mid-af-
ternoon, that meant just a couple of
hours of soak-and-retrieve time for our
fishing rod crab traps and Phil’s lone
crab ring. If you’ve never tried crabbing
from shore or the docks, it’s a real kick
and adds an activity to your next trip to
the coast, with usually a very tasty re-
sult.
Check out the action the next time
you visit the coast. Popular spots are
Newport on the bayfront and the beach
at Taft just south of Lincoln City.
Most of the participants, me includ-
ed, are more than happy to share what
we know and offer tips and tactics.
A Crab Max, complete with throw
rope, will set you back about $30
(http://www.crabmax.com/Crabmax-
paymentpage.html#Anchor--
CR-15812).
A fishing-pole crab trap is cheaper at
about $20 (Bi-Mart or other sporting
goods stores), but you need a rod, reel
and line.
Helpful hint: Henry, who is tight as a
tick on a dog, cruises the thrift shops
and garage sales for tackle.
Then all you need is a package of
chicken drumsticks, the preferred bait
and an annual shellfish permit ($10)
and you’re in business.
The crabbers on our stretch of the
Newport boardwalk were an interna-
tional mix, a family unit of Asian-Amer-
icans to the right of us, another of Rus-
sian-Americans to the left.
Crabbing without borders, one might
say.
I digress.
Anyway, things got off to a ripping
start when on the first pull Phil reeled
up a meaty keeper Dungeness crab, a
whopper for Yaquina Bay.
My results were somewhat more
Salmon
Continued from Page 1B
mere afterthought, a whopping 18,000
fish began returning to the Upper Wil-
lamette from 2009 to 2014.
“They’re kind of ghost fish,” McIn-
tosh said. “They disappeared for a
while, and then showed up. And it has
Phil McCorkle of Salem shows off a whopper Dungeness crab that he caught on the Newport bay front. HENRY
MILLER/STATESMAN JOURNAL
mixed.
I got crabs on every pull (which is
suggestive, I know, but not in this case a
double entendre), but all of the Dunge-
ness were either too small to keep, or
female. I did, however, catch a respect-
able red rock crab, which are not sex or
size-specific to keep.
Given our score at that point - Phil 1,
Henry 1 – it went into his bucket with
the promise to claw it back if we were
more successful in the short time that
we had left.
Phil moseyed west down the board-
walk to check out the action at his pre-
ferred crabbing spot, which had been
too crowded when he had walked down
earlier. A crabber there had told him to
come back because with one keeper in
his bucket, he’d let Phil have it if he
didn’t add to his catch.
He didn’t, so my friend scored his
third keeper from a third party.
Which made for enough crabs and
mushrooms for a successful trip for a
party of one.
As I said, sometimes it takes a village
to catch a meal.
WHOPPER ALERT! - The most-an-
ticipated (by many) trout-stocking runs
of the year started this week with a load
of 38 surplus hatchery brood rainbow
trout delivered to Walter Wirth Lake in
Cascades Gateway Park in Salem.
The massive trout that have aged out
of the peak of their productive lives will
be delivered to various Willamette Val-
ley ponds, usually on Mondays through
the end of the year.
The usual disclaimers apply. Hatch-
ery runs are dependent on the availabil-
ity of trout and trucks as well as road
and weather conditions.
The fish come from the Oregon De-
partment of Fish and Wildlife’s Roaring
River Fish Hatchery near Scio.
Bonus!
A total of 1,000 keeper-plus-size
rainbow trout also were scheduled to be
delivered to Wirth this week.
The entrance to Cascades Gateway
Park is on the north side of Turner Road
just south of the Walmart parking lot.
Henry Miller is a retired Statesman
Journal outdoor columnist and outdoor
writer. You can reach him via email at
HenryMillerSJ@gmail.com
continued that way. I wouldn’t say they
have a real self-sustaining population in
the Santiam. The runs ebb and flow. It’s
never consistent.”
Lusk said that years ago — or perhaps
decades — wildlife officials dumped co-
ho into Detroit and Big Cliff reservoirs to
see if the fish could survive going
through the turbines of the dam. Appar-
ently they did survive, he said, and
helped kick-start a population in the
North Santiam.
Lusk also heard that somebody emp-
tied a truckload of coho smolts into
Stout Creek, a small tributary of the
North Santiam between Mehama and
Stayton.
“You can see them spawning in these
little sidestreams and ditches,” Lusk
said.
The final legend — about a Robin
Hood-esque bandit stealing coho
smolts from a fish hatchery and plant-
ing them in the river — is also heard in
the canyon.
McIntosh was dubious of those sto-
ries but said he couldn’t necessarily dis-
count it.
“Back in the day we stocked pretty
much every fish everywhere,” McIntosh
said. “It was a different time, and if you
dug through the records, you never
know what you’ll find.”
He also said the agency knows some
anglers are out planting fish — or ‘John-
ny Appleseeding’ the rivers — even if it’s
against the rules.
Santiam?
Legends of the coho
McIntosh said today’s coho are es-
sentially remnants of old stocking pro-
grams, but others suggest more colorful
origin stories.
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Why are coho bad for the
The problem with having coho in the
Santiam River, McIntosh said, is they’re
technically an invasive species that
competes with native winter steelhead
and spring salmon for nutrients and
spawning ground.
When coho numbers went through
the roof a few years ago, it alarmed biol-
ogists. Since then, numbers have
bounced up and down, from just a few
fish to this year’s robust runs.
“We were definitely concerned when
they were moving into the Santiam in
particular,” McIntosh said. “If they got a
real toehold, we could have our hands
full.”
That’s why the agency would love to
see anglers on the river, targeting coho.
They’re not only good eating, but har-
vesting them is also good for the ecosys-
tem.
Think of it as public service fishing.
Zach Urness has been an outdoors re-
porter, photographer and videographer
in Oregon for 11 years. To support his
work, subscribe to the Statesman Jour-
nal.
Urness is the author of “Best Hikes
with Kids: Oregon” and “Hiking South-
ern Oregon.” He can be reached at zur-
ness@StatesmanJournal.com or (503)
399-6801. Find him on Twitter at
@ZachsORoutdoors.
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OR-SAL0009174-02^_04
Coho salmon WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE