I’ve got a final day of springer fishing update to report courtesy of Big Tone and ToDD and Chris Vertopoulos: They are fishing the Multnomah Channel between Warrior Rock and the Gilbert River….with two spring chinook successfully in the box by 8:30am….
As soon as I get the pics from Tone, they’ll be up on the site! The only site you need: Allaroundangler.com.
WHAT’S NEW ON THE BLOGROLL: OVER FIFTY PICS ADDED TO THE GALLERY TODAY.
Just a reminder that all of my overstock photos from trips, past and present…..end up in my photo gallery!! With ease you can link to the gallery HERE, or simply click the link I provide for you under the ‘blogroll’ off to the left.
I recommend checking the gallery once a month or so for new batches of photos. Or, anytime after you see a trip report or video diary posted here on the website that you would like to see more of…go ahead and check it then as well.
One of the cool features once you are in the gallery, is to select the ’slideshow’ option, which will wrap you through almost 1000 pics. If you’re like me and busy at your desk or in your work area…… and you want some fishing pics in the background, this is nice feature.
…original article posted on ‘The Scotsman’..a major periodical in Scotland
SALMON may use the sun, moon and stars to navigate their way across vast ocean distances during their adult stage, according to the latest research.
Marine scientists in Scotland have gathered new evidence suggesting that the migratory species could use different celestial bodies to orientate themselves and find their way to rich ocean feeding grounds, The Scotsman has learned.
For decades it has been assumed that salmon used indicators including ocean temperature, salinity and depth to locate their desired destination. Now it appears the creatures exhibit navigational abilities that can rival man’s most sophisticated technology.
Dr Dick Shelton, the head of research for the Atlantic Salmon Trust, made the discovery while conducting a GBP 100,000 research project to unravel the mysterious and massive decline in stocks of the fish when at sea. There has been a growing consensus in recent years among both scientists and fishery managers that major declines in freshwater salmon stocks are due to poor survival rates at sea.
Working with colleagues from the Institute of Marine Research in Norway and marine laboratories of the Scottish Executive’s Fisheries Research Services, the team used new sophisticated net technology and underwater cameras to track the species for the first time while at sea without having to kill them.
They managed to follow 178 post-smolt salmon (those that have left their native river system to feed and sexually mature at sea) migrating from England, Scotland, Ireland and northern France along the continental shelf on the west coast of Britain to the Norwegian sea.
Dr Shelton told The Scotsman: ‘They use the shelf-edge current to get them to their destination in the Norwegian sea.
‘If the fish are in mid-water, there is a problem of them knowing where they are, relative to the current. These fish are sticking extremely close to the shelf-edge current, and yet we do not know how they are aware they are in it. The obvious possible cues they may use are temperature and salinity and depth.
He continued: ‘However, we know this isn’t the case because there is absolutely no correlation with any of these possible factors. They are randomly distributed throughout the water column where all these factors vary hugely.’
As a result, Dr Shelton believes they may be using other means to maintain their course. He added: ‘We think they may, by some extraordinary way, recognise they are in the shelf-edge current by referencing with celestial cues such as the sun, moon or stars.’
He also believed the salmon could have an awareness of their rate of progress by some sensitivity to the earth’s magnetic field.
Dr Shelton said: ‘The whole business of the lives of salmon at sea has really been a colossal black box for many years. It is now a matter of slowly putting the bits of the jigsaw together.’
…who said we don’t wax scientific here on allaroundangler?……….h3llcat…
So I have a new 12′4″ Echo 2 7wt with a Ross Evolution 6 and 540 compact Skagit that needs to get wet for the first time and Sunday is it. The rivers may not be in shape and there’s a good chance of getting skunked, but I’m going anyway. Not sure of the destination yet but most likely it will be closer to town, possibly in the gorge. Just thought I’d see if anyone wanted to tag along with me and make a day out of it. Let me know.
The season is starting to peak,just in time for them to shut us down…I am suffering from the worst case of cabin-fever known to man…anybody up for Thurs, Fri, or Sat. on the Willamette?
As promised, I’m posting up pics from several fish taken this month by Team Salmon members and allaroundanglers! Within this yummy fish-rich photo medley is the raw, unedited and complete fight of Big Burge’s first springer.
You might like the drama of the net job…….it was specifically requested by a preferred contributor.
Otherwise, enjoy the pretty faces in the pictures……or the fish. Whichever you prefer. Cheers!
Raw file from video diary..
Big Burge
This rocket darting herring-gobbling silver bullet saved the day!
Magicsoul tip toes another one in….
The Davenports always have been fishy……
Bookmark allaroundangler in your browser today!! Rate a video or two or ten as well! Five star ratings are looked upon favorably by your fearless leader. Tightest lines and keep your rod in the water.
Enjoy this brand new video diary for now……and by later tonight I should have reports up….including pics from Big Burge’s chinook below…..also Magicsoul and Big Tone bring some chrome to the table.
Enjoy my man Rob Swift spin some records over this Team Salmon video diary….featuring Big Burge’s first ever spring chinook! (The kid is fishy, folks…)
DON’T FORGET WHO YOUR NUMBER ONE FISHING EDUTAINMENT PROVIDER IS. LEAVE A COMMENT OR RATE THE VIDEO…..ENJOY THE REALNESS!
I fished a Southern Utah Bass Anglers tournament today at Quail Creek Reservior. This mid April tournament is usually a bed fishing big fish bonanza, but since we had a wicked cold front hit earlier this week, it dropped the water to 51 degrees at launch. This made for a very tough bite. There was 13 boats in the tourney and only one team had a limit of 5 fish. Three teams did not catch a fish either.
We actually struggled all morning without a bite until 6 hours later I hooked into our first fish. She was a prespawn female that was 4 lbs 4 0z. I caught her with a Yum Crawbug/green pumpkin with a 5/16 oz round jig head inside it. Then we went back to struggling until about 20 minutes before weigh-ins. I caught another fish off a deep ledge with the crawbug and she was 3 lbs 9 ozs. My partner hooked up into a nice fish and got it to the surface and it shook it’s head and came off. A couple casts later I hooked into another on the same ledge. A 3 lb 4 oz fat bellied largie. Then time was up. Another half hour and we might have had our limit. We finished the day in 3rd place with those 3 fish I caught and 11 lbs 1 oz. The 4 lb 4 oz fish was enough to also get me the 2nd Big Fish Award for the tournament. Tough day, but we rallied at the end to make it a nice day. Took a couple pics of the first two fish.
As I was driving into work today the rain was pouring down on the hood of my truck. I cracked the window and noticed a particular smell…..Spring. Nothing reminds me more of this time of year than Sal, dressed up in his home-made improvisational rain gear….that we coined PAR APPAREL for the homeless people (respectively) that used to live in their Homemade city called….’Dignity Village’. Just a classic photo here, folks.
The winter-long anticipation of the smell of wet trees and flowered foliage just barely in bloom…..a light breeze NOT from the East for once in a long time….and it hit me…….IT’S TIME TO BANK STURGEON FISH OUR FAVORITE SPOTS! It’s time to get Dignity Dave out on the river with a bank rod in his hands…..”Hey Sal, how about a nuther 95 incher??”
Sal aka Dignity Village Dave
With chinook season coming to a soon ending in the CR and Willamette……we have the chance to revisit some fishing that we really use to love to do. I’m not saying we abandon steelhead, because I am having one helluva year, but I would like to mix in some BIG ROD casting from the bank in search of fish 60 inches or bigger.
Plus, we have to fish for them before the California Stellar Sea Lions eat them all. If you want to get sick to your stomach, check out the article below….
BUT FIRST, CHECK OUT THE VIDEO OF THE ‘STURGEON BALL’. There is so much about these wondrous fish we don’t understand….
Sturgeon ball
Read on…..
From the Oregonian last month…….
Last month, government agencies gathered the media at Bonneville Dam to discuss the problem of sea lions eating endangered salmon.
As if on cue, a sea lion surfaced below the dam, feasting on a fish as birds circled overheard. Cameras clicked, videotape rolled.
But most missed that the sea lion wasn’t eating a salmon. It was eating a sturgeon.
Amid debate over the government’s response to salmon-eating sea lions, which includes killing the mammals with gunshots or injections, a parallel but very different predator-prey phenomenon has evolved.
Sea lions have gone from practically ignoring sturgeon at the dam to eating them by the hundreds, which could eventually threaten the fish and force wildlife experts to make some difficult choices.
“Sturgeon is now on the menu,” said John North, Columbia River program manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
In 2005, sea lions were observed eating only one white sturgeon at Bonneville. Last year they ate about 800.
“It was unheard of for a sea lion to even eat a sturgeon not that long ago,” North said. “You would have been laughed at if you suggested it.”
And though California sea lions eat most of the salmon at Bonneville, it’s their larger cousins, Stellers, that eat nearly 98 percent of the sturgeon below the dam, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.
Compounding the problem is that Stellers, unlike California sea lions, are protected under the Endangered Species Act, limiting what wildlife agencies can do to keep them from sturgeon that spawn below the dam.
“I think people are worried that, left unchecked, this could become a problem down the road,” said Robert Stansell, a corps fish biologist at Bonneville. For now, sturgeon aren’t threatened with extinction.
Sturgeon numbers collapsed at the start of the 20th century because of overfishing, but rules implemented a few decades ago on the size of fish that could be caught helped them recover. Now there may be 1 million in the river below the dam.
And white sturgeon, which can live for a century and grow as long as 10 feet, have increased in popularity in recent decades among sportfishers, who don’t look kindly on competing with sea lions for a limited catch.
“Who’s to say how many they actually take? It’s just depleting the runs more and more and more,” said Bret Dickerson, a Camas, Wash., fishing guide who first saw a sea lion catch a sturgeon about eight years ago.
State agencies allow recreational and commercial fishermen such as Dickerson and his clients to take about 40,000 sturgeon a year from the lower Columbia, though those are limited to younger fish.
And many of the fish the sea lions target at Bonneville, particularly in the spring and summer, are there to reproduce.
Sturgeon don’t usually spawn until they are about 6 feet long, beyond what’s legal for fishermen to take. They may produce an egg mass — which can weigh 20 pounds and contain hundreds of thousands of eggs — only every three or four years.
“We do quite a few things to try to protect” them, North said. “Now there’s a new player in town that’s focused on those fish.”
As the fish collect below the concrete barrier of Bonneville, they present an irresistibly easy source of food for the sea lions.
“Because we have an artificial barrier that has created something quite unnatural, we have upset the balance,” said Brian Gorman, a spokesman with the NOAA Fisheries Service in Seattle. The sea lions “just keep eating and eating and eating.”
There were no Stellers at the dam in 2002. There were 20 last month, according to the corps.
This year, as in previous years, federal and state agencies have used firecrackers, rubber bullets and other techniques to shoo away sea lions. Traps also are in place to relocate sea lions to permanent enclosures in zoos, but those facilities are few.
And this year the states have the authority to kill as many as 85 California sea lions at the dam, a step animal welfare groups deplore and are challenging in court.
The federal protection of Stellers isn’t permanent. The population from eastern Alaska to California has increased for decades and numbers more than 45,000, according to the NOAA.
“They’re getting to the point where there’ll probably be in the next year or two or three a proposal to delist them,” Gorman said.
Ah, this always makes the tempers flare both ways, doesn’t it?
