Homesick Looking for reports from Milwaukee

[Dan K.]

With the salmon season here on the northern Oregon coast a disaster at best was looking to drown my sorrows with a few reports from the old homestead.  Anyone fishing McKinley, Jones Island etc.?

[phishtix]

Welcome Dan,

can't help you with the WI reports. MI hasn't been exactly awesome.  Could be worse.

Gosh would have thought Oregon would be like heaven.  

[Dan K.]

It can be but with the bad ocean and poor instream conditions the past several seasons (amongst many other reasons) our runs have been dismal.  This years run for this area of the coast was predicted to be at best 25% of normal but even that didn't materialize since we have had very little rain to raise the rivers and get the fish to the spawning beds.  My home river usually runs between 5-8 feet on the river gauge this time of year with a couple of flood events.  It has been above 3 only twice since last May.  With no water and even fewer fish ODFW enacted emergency restrictions and shut down all the rivers to the fishing for Kings above various landmarks most way low in tidewater. We are supposed to get our first major storm of the year over thanksgiving so keeping my fingers crossed it kickstarts the winter steelhead season.

[gmfishon]

Don’t know about the spots you asked about . Are they normally late season spots ? Fishing 2 and 3 year old fish ? Here in Michigan it was a very good year with a ton of over 20 lb and lots in the 30 lb plus club. With few exceptions the big water was mostly done around Labor Day (for this years mature fish ) I don’t river fish but saw multiple reports and talk to some who reported excellent river fishing well into October.

Edited November 20, 2018 by gmfishon
Forgot lb

[Dan K.]

When I lived there these spots especially Jones Island and under the Hoan Bridge along with the power plant in Port Washington tended to produce a few late salmon that were still in good condition into December.  But pretty much from November through the winter (as long as it wasn't frozen over) were and I have read still are great producers of winter Browns and Rainbows and from what I understand whitefish and Burbot show up regularly.

[syonker]

Trolled Summer Fest lagoon on 11-29-18 & managed 1 buck brown at the lagoon entrance that went 10lbs on a Flicker Shad crank bait. Had another hit in front of the stage but it came unbuttoned during the rod hand off.

On the 30th we launched from McKinley & had a nice brown come unbuttoned along the jetty. Landed a small gator passing by end of the Vet’s docks. Both hits on a flicker shad 

Heard that the main gap & south gap were giving up a few lakers but due to an outboard engine fuel line issue we didn’t make the run to those areas.

Pretty slow overall.