Not a Fishing Report?
If you’ve read my blog at all before you can probably tell the way my posts are formatted. I like to write about my fishing experiences, show photos, and quick reports. Some times it involves fish other times it doesn’t, i am doing a fishing blog, not a catching blog. So with all that said. This post wont be about my amazingly awesome fishing adventures, it’ll be about other cool and great stuff 
First thing id like to let y’all know about is a cool online business selling very affordable fishing flies. They have tons of flies, they’re local to Oregon, they have free shipping, usually flies are only .50 cents each. But right now they’re doing a memorial day sale until the 4th of June, Flies are only .45 cents a piece and shipping is still free! Iv made more then a few orders from them and shipping is always here in a good time. Iv only caught one fish with the flies but iv only used them a couple times. They definitely look very fishy and im sure ill be catching a lot of trout with them later in the year. So I recommend StreamFlies.com for some good affordable fishin flys!
Secondly Id like to shout out to a local business from the Rogue Valley, but don’t worry they are also online, The Reel Tech. John Strenk of The Reel Tech is the best out there in the servicing and repairing of reels in my opinion. I know what its like to have a high end reel that you expect to perform wonderfully but something happens and the reel doesn’t preform at the best of its ability’s. Salmon fishing wears and tears on reels, my friend Charlie Brown of FishingTheRogue.com can attest to this. He had his two back bouncing reel serviced with John and now the Abu Garcia Reels work great. And we’ve landed some really nice salmon since the works been done on them. Get a hold of John of The Reel Tech for your Reel needs, I’m super glad i took my my Shimano Symetre to him. PS. He gets the work done on them in a very timely manner, a big plus!
Thirdly I want to thank my friend and fishing partner Phil Trip. We haven’t been friends for a long time, but I’m glad we met and became such good fishing pals. Iv had lots and lots of good fishing memories with this guy, and most of our fish are on video and pictures, which is sweet! So do your self a favor and go over to his youtube video channel and watch this guy and his friends catch some amazing fish!! Thanks for all the boat trips we’ve done Phil, its always a good time!
Fourthly. Is the rafting stuff I briefly mentioned a couple posts back. My friend and fishing buddie Charlie Brown. As you probably know hes a fishing guide, he’s also a white water rafting guide for Rogue Klamath River Adventures. Three or four weeks back Charlie invited me to come along with all the guides that were doing a trip for fun on the Scott River in California. This trip was a blast and was only the second time that I had done white water rafting. So I got to talking with the owner of the company, and we worked out a deal where he let me attend his rafting guide school in return id do work for him at his property. Great trade on my end. I had an absolutely awesome time, learned a bunch and met great folks. Hopefully this will be something I can do for more then just fun in the future!
And another thing! Fishing Forums. A lot of my readers come from them, a link in my signature gets them here. Oregon Fishing Forum was the first one I joined. It was before I even started blogging, I mostly lurked but i did an occasional trout report. Not long after joining OFF i began blogging about my fishing trips. I mostly did it so i could post my pictures of the trips so people not from my area could see Oregon. I then over the years would join the occasional fishing forum, some i would be a regular for a bit then id drift away and stick with OFF. Now I mainly only post at OFF and give short post’s and reports on Ifish. Ifish is a bigger community and with that comes with a lot of varying opinions which is a great thing and also a not so great thing some times. But iv read a lot of great stuff on there and i continue to be a member. There’s a couple other places i post at just not very frequently, one is Small Stream Salmon Fishing and the other is North West Outdoors. Both are good forums and have things the other two don’t have. It’s a lot to take in but if your a Pacific Northwest fisherman id suggest checking out some of these forums and maybe even joining some.
Well there we have it! Ill be getting back to the fishing reports so stay tuned for the good stuff. FISH PORN!!!!!
Lunker Salmon
The next day Charlie and my self hit the Rogue River even earlier then the day before. But this time we weren’t rewarded for our early efforts like the day before. We did have a couple nice take downs on the plug rods but neither one stuck. But the weather made the fishing much more enjoyable, no rain. We seen some salmon caught, one was by Pavati Boat Rep. Steve, who is also one of Charlies friends. Steve is a very cool guy i got to meet at the boat ramp when we were done fishing. We seen him get his clients into a real nice salmon, it was a real show. It took our boat longer then we expected to get into a salmon but the one we did get into this day was a dandy! It was around 11am and we were anchored up in the pump hole. We had one rod out with a wrapped plug, and Charlie was back bouncing roe with the other rod. And this was the moment that changed my mind about that technique. He set the hook like you would see a pro bass fisherman do on TV but this wasn’t no bass. Charlie handed me the rod not long after he hooked into it and pulled anchor and got on the sticks. I fought it in the same hole for quite some time, the fish wanted to stay on the bottom. It was pretty cool to feel it finally leave the bottom but when it did the fight wasn’t even near the end. I have no idea how long i fought it for, you kinda lose sense of time when your fighting a huge fish, but id say around 6-7 minutes. It took a couple runs when it came near the boat but about the third time i brought it near Charlie was able to net it. And when it was netted the line snapped! Kinda crazy. I thought i lost it at first but Charlie said it was in the net! It was a big ole wild Chinook Salmon so we had to let it go, but after we got a couple pictures! It was the only fish of the day but it made the whole day very worth it! Book a trip with Charlie Brown of FishingTheRogue.com to catch awesome fish like this!
The biggest fish iv ever caught!
Phil’s First Rogue River Springer!
Iv been super busy lately. Also my laptops keyboard has been on the fritz. So my fishing reports have been put on the back burner. The coolest reason iv been so busy lately was the rafting guide school I took part in recently. It was 4-5 days of learning, camping, rafting on new waters, and meeting some great folks. So before i went on that adventure, i went Salmon Fishing three days in a row on the Rogue River. This report is the first day of the three, May 17th.
The day started out bright and early. Me and Phil got to the boat ramp a little after legal fishing time because we could hear the bankies on the hatchery wall catching fish and slinging lead. We were some what intimidated to launch the boat because we heard a couple splashes near us that we swore were them tossing stuff. We eventually decided to brave the bankies and when we got past the big line of them we both let out a breath of relief. From then we thought we would be in the clear to get to our spot and anchor up and fish by our self’s in peace. That changed when we floated down towards the spot and we seen headlights up on top of the cliff above the first spot to fish. We got down there just as the bankie managed to descend the cliff so we had to share the hole. We sat there with two plugs out and proceeded to watch the guy fishing on the bank rip the hole up. Its kinda weird watching a guy try to snag fish that are jumping right in front of him every two minutes. At one point he pretended he had a shot gun and said he’d rather shoot one haha. So me and Phil were waiting there for a take down to occur, when the inevitable happened. He crossed one of our plug lines. So he reeled in one of our plugs and tried to untangle the mess, while this was happening we looked over to the other rod and seen a fish was on it! Phil grabbed the other rod and proceeded to muscle in this hawg. He had 75lb Braid for the main line and 25lb mono for the leader, so this fish was landed in record time! Before I knew it the fish was near the boat and Phil was handing me the rod so he could net it, guess he didnt want me to lose it lol. The net job is very important with big fish like Salmon and Steelhead we’ve been catching lately, one little mishap and you can kiss that fish good bye with out ever laying a finger on it. So we got it in the boat and started high fiving each other we looked at each other in amazement, like “did that just happen” ? It was an awesome fishing moment that happened so quickly its hard for me to write it all down. I don’t think we had been there for more then an hour but we had a big fish in the ice chest! Other then that, the day was kinda lousy, mainly because of the weather. Id been perfectly happy if Phil only wanted to fish for 3-4 hours, but we stayed out there for well over 11. And it rained 85 percent of the time. I definitely would of hinted to Phil that i was ready to go, but in those times i just sucked it up. Mostly because i know he doesn’t get to get out to the river much with school and having a kid. So he spends more time out there then most, and i don’t want to lose my seat on his boat by complaining lol. Well thanks for reading and look forward to many more reports/stories. Tight Lines and Be Safe! PS. This fish was the only bite we had for the whole day. Salmon fishin is tough!!!
19lbs of awesome meat
Rogue River May 6th
Another old report… I know i know. Ill try to get on top of writing them the day of the trip. But an old report is better then no report, so enjoy! Today i fished with a couple cool guys who happen to both be guides. Charlie Brown from FishingTheRogue.com and Brady Rogers of Bradys Guide Service (ill get his website address soon). We all met up at Sportsmans really early almost two hours before sun rise. Brady and Charlie are good friends and you could tell by the way the jokes were flying around. Fishing was slow this day. But on the bright side I learned how to back bounce for Salmon. And it was also the first time Brady had taken his boat out with his new motor. The whole new motor thing became hairy a few times, mostly because Brady was learning how to run it. We only went into the trees a couple times and almost sank. Quite an adventure! But we made it out of all the sketchy situations unscathed. Like i said it was a slow day. We didnt get into any real fish until hours into the float. We dont count the smolts/trouts. My rod got the first steelhead of the day near Rogue Elk Park. Turned out to be a spawned out hatchery steelhead that we released so it could come back as a bigger fish in the future.
Then it died off again for another hour or two. Charlie got a nice little steelhead late into the day. Or it could of been a native trout. Who knows, i dont. Both of our fish came on plugs. Was a great day fishing with friends. A slow day of fishing wasnt that bad because we all had some great laughs. I did film a small clip of Charlies fish so ill throw that up on here and call this report good!
Thanks for reading and tight lines
My first Salmon
My laptop has been acting up so i wasn’t able to write this as soon as i would of liked. But here goes my report from May 11th on the Rogue River. My day started out at 530am two hours after my alarm went off, oops. Luckily i wasn’t meeting Charlie at the boat ramp that day, instead i met him at one of our favorite holes. We had fished the night before and he had decided to camp out on the river to save on gas and to be out in the hole bright and early. I got in the boat and he informed me that a guide had shared his same hole and pulled a salmon out of it. When i got in the boat i could see the boat down in the next hole fishing. Then we seen them hook into their second salmon of the day. Kinda disappointing for us. But then right around 8am it happened! Charlie was busy wrapping a kwik fish or something, when i noticed his rod doing something different and i told him to look at. We had two rods out, mine had a wrapped kwik fish and his had a diver with eggs. The fish had been biting it for about 10 seconds before Charlie set the hook and the fight was on!
He fought it for about 15 seconds before the fish headed down the rapid and he had to jump in the back of the boat in get on the oars, so the rest of the fight was all me. And this fish fought like no other fish iv ever had on the end of my line. We got down pass the rapid and we got the boat up on shore and Charlie got out so he could try to net it. But the salmon had other ideas. The drag wasn’t loose but it really seemed like it was, the way the salmon was pulling out 15lb line. I eventually had to say get back in the boat and lets chase this beast down, i wasn’t making any ground on it. By then it had been more then a few minutes and my arm was tired. Luckily we went down the river after it and not too long after we got it in the net. Turned out to be a small Spring Chinook Salmon, 26inches. I didn’t care though. It was my very first Salmon from a river and it was also the hardest fighting fish i ever caught! A couple other cool things about this salmon was it was the first one of the year in Charlies boat and also the first one hes got on a diver.
Turned out third day in a row chasing the salmon was the charm. I must say fishing for salmon is way more frustrating then steelhead. These fish are famous for having lock jaw. Most people say they don’t bite. Ninety percent of the bank anglers fishing for them arnt getting them to bite when they hook one. Which makes it even sweeter when we get one to bite our offerings, because every day of salmon season you’ll see the banks lined up with yankees. And by yankees i don’t mean the baseball team. People on the banks arnt fishing in my opinion well most people, id say they are harvesting the salmon instead of fishing for them. A tiny bead, hook, and some weight is all they need to get into a beast of a fish. I guess if i wanted to feel the tug and put fish on the table id be out there lined up on the banks by the hatchery with the rest of them. But that’s not my crowd, combat fishing is what its called. And i have no desire to do it. All my salmon fishing will be done from a boat away from the masses. I have nothing against those who floss the fish or line them in the mouth, what ever you want to call it. But id much rather go bass or trout fishing where i know i can convince the fish to bite. So here’s to a fish that was caught the “right” way, he was a biter! Oh and before I go id like to give major thanks to my favorite fishing guide out there! Charlie Brown of FishingTheRogue.com
Thanks for reading my little blog and tight lines!
Links and Stuff
Id like to give a little recognition to a few web sites out there. First id like to mention one of my very few sponsors. X-Factor Tackle. They are based out of Grants Pass, Oregon. Jeff runs the business and is a really nice guy! He actually made me a pro staffer. So im gonna have to catch some nice fish on the tackle he gave me. They make baits for bass and salmon/steelhead. I think im gonna really like the artificial egg clusters. Using real eggs isn’t my favorite thing. It gets messy and the eggs don’t like to stay on the hook for very long. The bass worms look really good too, cant wait to put them to more of a test. Thanks for the baits and sweater Jeff! Also thanks for donating bass worms for the prizes for the little tourney we had up north with Oregon Fishing Forum members.
The next link i want to show some love to is my friend Stevens fishing blog, Southern Oregon Fishing. Steven has been fishing the Rogue River for quite some time, and you can tell by his videos and pictures, hes quite successful! On his blog he writes about his fishing reports and also lately he’s been doing a weekly fishing report for our region which is great! So check out his blog and watch the videos they’re pretty cool! He also got a limit today of real nice big spring chinook salmon on the Rogue River. Check out the X-Factor Tackle sweater he’s wearing! We both got one yesterday and he got pictures of fish with it today! Good job Steven!
The next person i want to congratulate and give major props too, is my friend Colby Pearson. Last weekend him and his buddy drove 4 hours north to the Columbia River, a place neither had fished before. They had entered a State wide high school bass tournament. The winning duo goes onto west coast regionals, then the winner of that goes to the national finals which is held in Arkansas. Colby and his buddy Jacob got first place last Saturday. They caught some hawg small mouth bass. I think he said they won by over 2lbs which is pretty dang good! Colby also makes really awesome youtube fishing videos, and has been doing it for awhile now. So look out for this young guy on the pro circuit soon, or maybe the World Fishing Network tv channel!
The next person i want to give thanks to. Charlie Brown. Charlie is the owner and guide for FishingTheRogue.com. If you’ve been reading my blog lately you probably seen the link and name before. Charlie is an awesome guy and a pretty good fisherman, as you can tell from all the fish iv been catching lately. If you goto facebook type in FishingtheRogue.com and like the page and you can see a bunch of picture and videos! Also Charlie is giving readers of my blog a discount on fishing trips. So book a trip and mention this blog for a good deal! Here’s a picture from last time i went fishing with Charlie and his Brother Bart. 4-27-11
thanks for reading and tight lines!
April 27th Rogue River
I got that call im always looking forward too. Charlie wanted to know if I wanted to float the river again, im sure he knew my answer before he called. I met Charlie and his brother Bart at Rogue Elk Park around 515am. Bart was up from California visiting his brother, think they are doing some camping and white water rafting right about now. We got down to Sandy Bottom and were the first ones there as usual. We set up both rods with plugs and waited for the blood pumping take down that usually happens not long after you set the rod in the holder. And it happened minutes before 6am on Barts rod. This fish hit the plug then proceeded to go ape shit. Once it got hooked it performed a little dance routine for us on top of the water, it jumped over 30 times in less then a minutes time. After we watched it do its little dance, i grabbed my camera and started to get the fight on film. So here ya go, my 2nd ever youtube fishing video! The tunes are Courtesy of the band Primus.
It was a some what slow day for Steelhead. Although we did get into a few. But Bart did get his very first Steelhead this day and even got his limit of real nice chromers to take home to Cali. I got to fight and release a real big native steelhead, no pictures were taken of her though, quick release. But ill end you with the picture of Barts 2nd ever steelhead! Thanks for reading, and tight lines! Oh BTW. It’s now Salmon season on the Rogue River, and there’s still some steelhead left. So book a trip with my friend Charlie Brown contact him at FishingTheRogue.com
April 26th Rogue River
Charlie Brown, from FishingTheRogue.com gave me a call on Monday when he got back into town from visiting family for Easter. He wanted to fish the river bright and early the next day, which i was really excited about, I think the river has become my favorite place to fish. We met up at 5am and began fishing not long after. We had a couple take downs early but it took about a half hour at the first hole before one stuck, and it came on my rod! It was a real nice bright hatchery steelhead hen, so it was a keeper. Almost didnt keep it though, it was still some what dark out when we caught it, so the first time charlie tried to net he missed and i thought he was gonna rip the lure out of its mouth be it didnt and after it made a another short run we got it in the boat!
These guys came along not to long after we caught our first one of the day, there’s even one more boat you cant see at the bottom of the rapid. The boat closest in the photo stuck around right next to us for quite awhile, about an hour. It was pretty annoying bet hey what can ya do. The funny thing was about 10 minutes after they left, Charlies rod got a take down and he reeled in a really nice bright hatchery steelhead. It wasnt big but the chrome’ness made up for its lack of size. It was only 22inches but since it was hooked in the eye and was a good one to eat he tagged it, he usually releases the small ones i guess. So we had two real nice steelhead in the box from just the first hole! We gave the group of boats plenty of time to get down river before we started fishing the lower holes. But when we did get a couple holes lower one of the rods got a massive take down! It was hard to get out of the rod holder even. This fish was crazy! I fought it for a couple minutes then got it close to the boat. Then something amazing happened that ill never forget! I was pulling the fish near the boat so Charlie could net it, you could see it getting nearer and nearer. Then it jumped! A few feet out of the water, only a foot or so away from the boat. Charlie only had to move the net forward about a foot and the fish pretty much flopped right into it! If we would of had one more person in the boat we would of had some of the best fishing footage ever! But the way it happened only me and Charlie were witnesses. I know this whole thing probably seems hard to believe but ill never forget the whole event, it was incredible!
Thats the one that jumped into the net!
There’s me and my limit of real nice chrome Steelhead, 28 and 29 inches. The first one had made it to the hatchery once already this winter, because there was a hole punch on her cheek. They do that at the hatchery so they know how many times the fish has swam to the hatchery. Pretty cool to catch one that made it to the hatchery then got trucked down river and swam back up and i got her before she could return again. The rest of the float we only could use one rod because i had my limit. We still got into a bunch of fish. One Steelhead we released, and another Steelhead that was a nice sized one but got off, because charlie was anchored in the wrong spot and couldn’t go down river after him. We also released a handful of trout that hit the plugs. A pretty good day of fishing on the wonderful Rogue River. Cant complain when you go home with two real beautiful Steelhead. Thanks to Charlie Brown for inviting me to come along again. Make sure to tell him you heard about his guiding business from my blog and he’ll give you a nice discount. FishingTheRogue.com
Thanks for reading, tight lines!
Boater Exam Oregon
With Trout season just starting up and the weather finally becoming consistently good for us in Oregon, more and more boats will be out on our local lakes fishing or just having fun in the sun. So id like to remind everyone that if you intend to use your boat that has a motor that is over 10hp (if it doesn’t have a motor or is under 10hp its not a bad idea either) on our public waters, you need to get your boaters safety card. BoaterExam.com Is the place to get this card online. Boaters Exam offers a fully animated and narrated study guide, and over 300 detailed illustrations. In addition, BoaterExam is the ONLY online boating safety course where you will see visual aids in every exam question (a must for visual learners!) One cool thing about this course is you can study online before plunging into the test. Also whats really great is you dont have to pay until you’ve passed the test!
I’m not sure if this person had their boaters safety card or not. But its very important to get your card, if you dont want to end up like this person or even worse hurting other people while out boating and enjoying the water. So please help in doing your part in making sure that we’re all safe our there in the water. Its a terrible way to end a great day at the lake by having a mishap that could of been easily avoided. One last thing that isnt probably in the course, i want to point out. Id hope everyone with a real nice speedy boat would be some what courteous to boaters like my self, with inflatable boats or small kayaks. Your big wakes aren’t exactly fun for us, especially when the waves are breaking out in the middle of the lake. Fines in Oregon for not having your boats safety card is $142. So id say its definitely worth spending 30 for the Boaters Exam instead of getting a fine or even worse…
