We laugh at these little storms. Anything less than a couple of inches of rain in a twenty-four hour period will have little or no effect on coastal river levels. But these small rains are like fire drills for the Chinook. As the rain falls, the fish rally to the heads of big pools, waiting for the water to rise. A few brave fish bolt over the shallow riffles in the early morning hours, but most will go up a few hundred yards, get tired of being so exposed, and turn back for the deep.

It was during one of those teaser storms several years ago that I found myself stalking salmon along a quiet, misty riverbank. There were only a couple of pools in the river that typically held salmon before the rains. These pools are usually pretty obvious because of the giant fish hurling around in the air above them. Locals had instructed me that the fish chose different pools in different years. That was fine with me, so long as they kept jumping so I could find them.

As I approached the river, I could hear a big fish splash in the center of the lower pool. Naturally, I headed straight for it. In a few minutes I was drifting salmon eggs under a bobber through the heart of the pool. Cast after cast delivered big clusters of eggs at varied depths, producing only one good bite. That turned out to be a large sucker (hold on, that's not my big story).

After about an hour, a woman came walking down the bank from the pool above. She was holding a nice salmon.

"Look! I just caught my first salmon!" she beamed. I congratulated her and began the interrogation. "I caught it on my first cast," she said confidently. "But I quit fishing up there because it's so snaggy. And it's not very deep," she added with some distaste. "I was only set to fish six feet deep, and my bait couldn't make it though without hanging up on something. I think there are a lot of branches and things up there."

I smiled and nodded mindlessly, then caught myself. That hole she was talking about was eight to sixteen feet deep. I had fished it many times and had always commented on the smooth, unobstructed drift. As the truth dawned on me, I tried to act calm. I pretended to be tired of my spot, and could do for a change of scenery.

"They're jumping in here," I said, pointing right in front of me. She was eyeing the pool when another big buck jumped right in front of us. I silently thanked the salmon for a perfect exit, and took off upriver as slowly as I could manage.

In a couple of long minutes I stood alone at the edge of the upper pool. Could it really be? Could I be alone with a bunch of mean kings? The doubt was building in my head as I fumbled to bait the hook. Two fish rolled at opposite ends of the pool. Now my hands were shaking. The first cast landed with a splash, the bobber stood up, drifted two feet and was gone.

It is hard to be ready when it happens that quickly, but there it was. I ran up the bank and set the hook with a full body swing. The rod doubled over from the hook set and remained flattened, a sure sign I was tight to a big fish. It fought until I was nearing exhaustion. When the toothy beast (a bit too dark for the table) finally came to the beach, I cut the line and tied a new leader. The male Chinook darted back into the depths. I had to sit down for a minute.

The next cast went much like the first, and this time I could tell I had a hot fish. A minute or two later I horsed in a shiny buck, about twenty pounds. There was a loud WHACK that echoed through the valley. It was catch and release after that. The action continued with brief interruptions until two in the afternoon. After the first hour or so, a couple of friends showed up, and the day became a full-blown salmon festival. At two thirty we each decided to kill our second fish and call it a day. It was Oregon salmon fishing in its greatest glory-the kind of day some people can't hear about without doubting your character. Oh well.

The North Coast Experience
In the years since that awesome day, my friends and I have had similar experiences on other Oregon rivers. As with most worthy things in life, once a person gains the necessary information and skills, success comes with more and more ease. It also helps to have increased productivity in the ocean as we have seen over the last several seasons. Biologists like to point out that fall Chinook numbers are on the rise in Oregon. The 2002 fall Chinook return for Oregon's north coast is expected to rise above the ten year average-not bad if you consider that only three years ago some rivers saw less than fifty percent of their ten-year average.

Fall kings average twenty to twenty-five pounds on the Oregon coast. Many years produce a handful of super-fish over sixty pounds. It is undoubtedly the sheer size of Chinook that makes them Oregon's most sought after game fish. This year, biologists are anticipating a strong return of five-year-old fish. These are the twenty-five to forty-pounders. If that doesn't get your fishing motor running, you don't have one!

Anglers on the northern coast intercept migrating salmon at every turn, from the ocean, to the estuaries, to the rivers. By early October, fall Chinook are getting eager to move up the rivers. They accumulate in the tidewater reaches first. After a while they will find a few deep, cool pools in the lowest portion of the river in which to hold until the first good rains of the fall season. If enough rain falls and the river rises, the salmon will take advantage of the added water and move quickly up the river to their spawning grounds.

This is a great season of beautiful scenery, big fish, and rivers in transition from late-summer lows, to their winter highs. Most serious salmon fishers spend August and September trolling in the ocean or bays, surrounded by powerboats, motor exhaust and seagulls. The quality of the fish is excellent, but sometimes the conditions are a little more like rush hour on I-5 than your special fishing vacation. October and November are months for drifting quiet rainforest rivers, and for witnessing the changing of the seasons first-hand.

Methods for fishing this time of year rely on good quality bait and tackle. But the most important thing to remember is that different water conditions require different methods. Bobber fishing with eggs and shrimp is, by far, the best method in slow-moving water, followed by jigging and deep-fished spinners. In fast water (faster than walking speed), back-bouncing eggs or Kwikfish is best. After a rain, when river flows are up, back-trolling Kwikfish through the deeper runs is ideal. If the river is dropping from a big storm, but the water is still murky, then back-trolling your biggest Kwikfish (with sardine wraps) is unbeatable. All of these methods take considerable time to master, adding to the challenge of this exciting and legendary season.

It is important to understand that the quality of the fish themselves is highly varied by late October and November. Many fish have already spent several weeks in freshwater by then. The older fish darken up and the quality of their meat starts to decline drastically. Most sportsmen release the darker fish (hopefully with the least amount of stress on the fish) and keep only the brightest fish of the day. Even then, it is easy to be fooled. Some of the brightest, freshest specimens have poor meat, and some darker fish cut beautifully. Still other fish are genetically predisposed to have light, or even white, flesh. These "white kings" as they are called are fairly rare, and highly prized around the world (so they say) for their quality. If you find yourself with a beautiful, bright salmon that cuts light from head to tail, you've probably got a white king. On the other hand, if you find the meat around the head of the fish is red, but the tail is pale, then you have a fish that is losing its pigment-a sign that the fats and nutrients are nearly gone. That'll be one for Tony's Smokehouse (nothing a hefty dose of salt and sugar can't cure).

A Wild Fish Story
The abundance of Chinook salmon on the northern Oregon coast is nothing particularly unusual on the face of it. Most rivers in the Northwest are seeing strong returns of salmon the last few seasons. What is unusual is the near absence of hatchery supplementation. The state estimates that only ten to fifteen percent of fall Chinook returning to Oregon's north coast rivers are of hatchery origin. Compare that with the Rogue and Umpqua Rivers in the southern half of the state where hatchery fish outnumber wild fish almost ten-to-one. The two largest north-coast rivers, the Nehalem and Siletz, have no hatchery fall Chinook. These two rivers also happen to have the largest, most stable runs, year-to-year. Siletz and Nehalem fish also appear to have the widest diversity of run-timings (possibly due to preserved genetic diversity within their populations).

State biologist Robert Bradley, says the reason hatchery fall Chinook programs are nearly absent in the northern rivers is that the wild runs have generally produced enough fish to seed rivers and make anglers happy. Bradley is based in Tillamook, a town with five salmon rivers emptying into the legendary Tillamook Bay. His backyard is the very heart of Chinook salmon country.

"Since the state began compiling data in 1950," says Bradley, "North coast fall Chinook have held their own." He continues, "The state has to spend money where it's needed most, and fall Chinook hatcheries just haven't been a high priority." That says volumes about the inherent strength of fall Chinook. They are the highest priority for anglers. North coast communities rely on the annual influx of salmon fishermen. Most are drawn there specifically for the big fall kings.

What kind of fish can maintain healthy populations without any help? And even while wild coho and spring Chinook struggle? Fish biologists say that fall Chinook have a few key attributes that allow them to thrive while their cousins in the same rivers flounder. One is that they spend much less time in the freshwater environment. They enter rivers immediately before spawning, they spawn largely in the mainstems of rivers while water is high, and their juveniles head for the estuary the following spring. This allows them to avoid the rivers when their waters are least hospitable-during the long warm summers when temperatures are high, and oxygen levels are low.

In contrast to the fall Chinook success story, it should be remembered that Spring Chinook in the same northern rivers are severely depressed, except for relatively strong hatchery runs. The reasons for their decline are hotly debated, but scientists site the loss of juvenile and adult habitats as the primary factor. Unlike their fall brethren, "springers" as they are known, spend more time in freshwater as juveniles. They then return to the rivers as adults only to spend another summer in deep slow pools.

Reality Check
North coast fall Chinook are one of Oregon's most amazing gifts to humans. Some days they seem like fruits to be plucked off an overburdened tree. But there are lots more days when just seeing a salmon caught is the closest you'll get to real excitement. You have to be ready to take the bad with the good. The nasty, windy, fishless days are part of the deal.

As I write this story, the local gray-hairs here in my favorite coastal town, are kicking my butt. It is late summer, and I'm drifting with the outgoing tide, trying to figure out what went wrong. I stare at the twisted wad of swivels and monofilament that was my trolling rig. I can see the flasher in there, barely. A mild-mannered gentleman in a passing boat gives me a warm, heart-felt smile and a nod. I can tell he's feeling pity for me. He's seen me out here for a few days, and I think he's noticed that I haven't hooked a thing. Then, like someone flipped a switch, he's on his feet fighting a big fish. Sure enough, looks like another salmon hooked right under my lucky boat.

The bay around me is brimming with anchovies, and the kings are actively feeding. Twenty or thirty boats are trolling up and down a half-mile circuit. The bite turned on at 6:00am. For a couple of hours, one or two boats were busy landing fish at any given time. This lasted until about 8:00am. I think I started fishing effectively at about 7:30, and really had a good feeling about the "spin" of my herring at about 8:01. Oh well, just another day of salmon fishing. Lesson for the day: Don't get too cocky.

Sidebar:
Protecting Oregon's Nurseries
The lowest several miles of coastal rivers see the lion's share of angling pressure. These are the best miles of river to intercept migrating fish. But these stretches of river are much more than just a migration corridor. These lowest, slowest portions of river, bordered by estuaries and wetlands, are the nurseries of the northwest's rivers. Or rather, they were the nurseries. These days, the tens of thousands of happy little salmon frolicking in the lower rivers in spring will be hard pressed to survive the summer. Oxygen gets too low, temperatures get too high, and our nurseries turn into polluted bake ovens.

Today, the lowest portions of rivers are confined to a narrow channel, all but denuded of willows, alders, cottonwood and spruce (compared to the days before flood control). Without the tree cover, the water gets solar powered. In the winter, when that narrow channel fills with water, it has a tendency to rip the vegetation back a decade or two. But imagine a natural meandering river, with braided channels shifting from year to year. The low banks would flood easily, pushing the water into the vast flood plain, taking the pressure off the riparian zone, and creating side channels and off-channel pools. Scientists now have strong evidence that these braided channels and shaded, cool waters, which existed at the bottom of every river, were the places where juvenile salmon had their best shot at survival.

But I also mentioned pollution. Today's coastal rivers have a pollution problem. Bacteria abound in those rivers with dairy farms along their banks (which includes all of them). Dairy farmers are still exempt from clean-water regulations in Oregon. Since the government can't force farmers to clean up their act, it is up to the farmers themselves to take on the job, and the cost. These hard working families have been doing things in roughly the same manner for a long time. They have been offered no real incentives to stop polluting. It is easy to see why they rarely end up fixing the problem.

The truth is that our coastal estuaries and lower rivers are so polluted from dairy run-off that Tillamook area students were recently barred from participating in a bacteria survey. A researcher I ran into on the Trask River this spring told me the story. He said that when the first few Tillamook samples were analyzed for bacteria levels, the readings were off the charts. "We have a real public health issue brewing here," he said, and then scooped a cup of water right out of the river I was fishing. That'll make you think twice before eating any more hatchery-smolt sashimi (I don't think wasabi kills E.coli).

So just what am I suggesting with the long diatribe? Not that we should go back to the days of Lewis & Clark, the days of fleas and poor living conditions. But that we should, as a community, care enough about our rivers to fix the obvious problems. As anglers, we have a vested interest in helping. Where to start? Try giving money and support to groups working to make a difference. Try making your voice heard, so that people won't assume you think everything is fine. Better yet, let's get our own conservation organizations to help the farmers come up with the cash. We've got to do something.

Contact one or all of these hard-working groups to get involved in saving the future of Oregon's salmon: Lower Nehalem Watershed Council (503) 368-7424, Tillamook Bay National Estuary Project (503) 322-2222, Oregon Trout's Salmon Watch (503) 222-9091.