Big ones, really big, are biting

  • Wayne Kruse / Outdoor Writer
  • Wednesday, January 16, 2002 9:00pm
  • LifeGo-See-Do

You want big fish stories? We got big fish stories.

Dick Hill is applying (with all the attendant frustration over state bureaucracy) for a new state resident rainbow record from his home in Twisp. Hill got only one hit Jan. 8, while plunking with pro-cured humpy eggs on the Columbia River, but that single take turned out to be a jumbo rainbow of 25.78 pounds.

“It was even worse than football-shaped,” Hill says. “At 34 inches in length and 26 in girth, it was almost round.”

If his fish is accepted as a new record for resident ‘bows in Washington (as opposed to anadromous steelhead), it will replace the current holder, 25.45 pounds, caught in February of 1999 only a half-mile from where Hill caught his. The fishery in the Columbia, roughly from the mouth of the Okanogan River upstream for 30 or 40 miles, is a well-known one, involving excess broodstock trout released from commercial net pen operations in the area. The state Fish and Wildlife Department has designated the fish, for record purposes, as resident.

“The spot I was fishing is called the Rufus Woods Net Pens,” Hill says, “and the Colville tribal fisheries people have established a nice public fishing area there. It’s maybe seven or eight miles west of Nespelem.”

Hill lived at Lake Ketchum for 17 years, he says, fishing for “anything with fins,” until retiring from the beer biz and moving from Stanwood to Twisp about seven years ago. The Columbia rainbow fishery has not been up to its usual standard this winter, he says, and action has been slow.

Both boat and bank anglers take part in the action, Hill says, with 30 or more miles of river below the pens, all containing fish. Boaters drift or backtroll, while bank anglers plunk or cast and drift, much like steelheading.

“The fishery is pretty much year-around,” he says, “and there doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern to when it’s best and when it’s not. It just seems to turn off and on at random.”

The other big fish story is even bigger: a new state record lake (Mackinaw) trout of 35 pounds, 7 ounces, caught New Year’s Eve in Lake Chelan. John Hossack of Redmond was jigging for burbot (“freshwater ling”) in Mill Bay, in 205 feet of water, when the big mac inhaled his split-tail grub and 2-ounce jig head.

It took him 23 minutes to land the big fish on 20-pound mono and a steelhead-weight Lamiglas rod, and he knew it wasn’t any 10-pound burbot he was dragging toward daylight. When it finally surfaced, 40 inches in length and 30 1/4inches in girth, Hossack’s guide knew exactly what he had.

Terry Allan of Mountain Dew Guide Service had seen the previous state record lake trout taken from his boat on Aug. 9 last year, by Lyle Smith of Tacoma, and he knew this one was as big or bigger. The fish was weighed on a certified scale at Chelan County Hospital and verified at the Fish and Wildlife Department office in Wenatchee.

The Mackinaw was the last of eight state recreational fishing records set last year, for tiger musky, sucker, chum salmon (saltwater), coho salmon (fresh and saltwater) and pink salmon (fresh and saltwater).

Clams: The first two razor clam openings of the new year have been scheduled by the Fish and Wildlife Department, pending the usual test results for marine toxins. Openings are Jan. 29 through Feb. 1, afternoon tides only, at Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis and Kalaloch; and Feb. 27 through March 2, afternoon tides only, at Long Beach, Copalis and Mocrocks.

Mocrocks will not open during the first dig because of a scheduled harvest by Quinault Indian Nation commercial diggers. At Kalaloch, clams are large enough now, and plentiful enough, to mount a major dig. State biologist Dan Ayres said Twin Harbors will not open for the February-March dig because the beach has fewer clams remaining under its total allowable take, and he wants to save some for opportunities in the spring.

Crab: Recreational Dungeness and red rock crab fishing closed Wednesday in the Port Gardner (“Everett flats”) portion of Marine Area 8-2, because of a crab molt in progress. The closed area is inside the circle from Howarth Park to Hat Island to Camano Head to Hermosa Point.

State biologist Norm Lemberg at La Conner said all other in-Sound areas remain open seven days, but that Area 8-1 and the remainder of 8-2 will probably close in the next few weeks, for the molt.

Steelhead: River guide and Marysville resident Tom Nelson says steelheading on local streams has reached the usual doldrum period between the decline of the early, hatchery run, and the later, native run. High water conditions the past couple of weeks didn’t bring in as many fish as anglers had hoped, Nelson says.

“The Skykomish came in last Friday and since then hasn’t been bad, but not red hot, either,” Nelson says.

On the Skagit, plunkers at Mount Vernon and Sedro Woolley have been taking substantial numbers of native fish since early this week. Nelson says he hasn’t hit a hatchery steelhead on the Skagit since the high water – all natives – but he says tribal nets went into the river Tuesday, at Sedro Woolley.

Nelson says the Skagit is about a week away from top wild-stock fishing, and that the native fish don’t blast through the river like the hatchery fish do.

Fishing has been so good, generally, on southwest Washington rivers, that the limit on hatchery steelhead has been increased to three per day on the Cowlitz and Kalama. More than 800 fish were “recycled” downstream by tanker truck on the Kalama last week, and 400 so far this week, according to biologist Joe Hymer in Vancouver. The Elochoman is also a hot bet, he says.

Smelt: The recreational dipping season appears to be just starting. Hymer (above) says dippers over the weekend were taking a few smelt all the way from Gearhart Park near Highway 432 in Longview, upstream to Rocky Point, between Kelso and Lexington. The water temperature was about 46 degrees, Hymer says, and the fish were a mix of sizes and gender.

He warned, however, that it was taking even an experienced dipper three to four hours to get a 10-pound limit.

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