You wanna know something frustrating? We still haven’t caught a fish. We have tried. LOTS of times. And there are supposed to be steelhead and salmon here. People, who know more than us (the gas station attendant in Taft, the bartender at Shuckers etc.), have been giving us the play-by-play since spring as the Salmon were on their way down from Alaska… tracking them as they apparently hit the Colombia River… and estimating that we should have begun seeing them swimming up the Siletz late March/early April. Actually, telling us all of this in envy since along with quite limited public access, we live on one of the few rivers in this area that allows fishing during the Spring Run… supposedly due to the number of fish!
Map of public access and bank fishing areas
As you can see…. fishermen care about this river. They talk about it, they study it, they fish on it! What are we doing wrong? We are 10 miles from the ocean and we are in the tide-water. You do want to be out of the tide-water to find where the fish hang out, but during all the salmon runs up from the ocean in spring and early summer, not only should they be passing right by us…. we have read that they should be hanging out and resting right here while the tide is changing.
You may recall a few glimpses of our efforts off the dock. Before we could enjoy it, Mitch had to machete all the overgrown grass and blackberries to make way for Fred to float it down and tie it up.
As we work away at becoming experienced fishermen, we took a break last weekend (for Mitch’s birthday!) to see how the pros do it. We went out on an ocean charter with Captain’s Reel in Newport to catch rockfish and ling cod. OK… did I mention they’re pros? Captain Chad has a fish finder radar and a bunch of friends on the radio. The result being that he knew exactly where to go to be sure that all 8 of us on board could literally drop our line and pull up either one or TWO rockfish within a minute! Mitch and I fell short of our maximum daily allowed by one (with 13!). I didn’t realize how fun fishing was… catching the fish is quite a bit more exciting (to say the least). In fact, a few minutes would pass without hooking anything and Chad would tell us to pull up the lines so we could go find some more! I thought fishing required patience…
And then it’s back to our dock for another fish-less day. We’ll keep trying… letcha know if we get somethin!
Xo, K
SoWoodsy 
I. Cannot. Wait. To. Meet. Fred. (Or to be the first person to catch a fish)
I could be wrong… but I’m guessing the swimming dogs might be scaring a few fish away. 😉 Did you ask Captain Chad about your fishing spot? Are your neighbors having any luck? What a puzzle! I’m so intrigued!!