World Class Bass Bustin’ On The Umpqua
Sight-fishing for submarine smallmouth
that attack like wolves on the Big K Loop
and
power up the local economy
By Terry W. Sheely
A smallmouth bass disguised as a green submarine, a monster among river monsters
is backed into a basaltic cave in the black rocks under the drift boat.
Every detail of the fish pops out of the impossibly clear water, the big eye, softly waving pectoral fins, tiger stripes, black lines of war paint streaming down the face, gills working.
And then it’s gone. Just gone!
When my heart restarts and my dropped jaw finally closes, I glance at Scott Wolfe, who dips the oars, peers through his Polaroid’s and says simply, “some really big bass in this section.”
Of that I am certain. For a few miles now we have caught bass, crackered bass and watched bass swimming along the bottom of the lower Umpqua River that would stop hearts in most areas of the country. And we’ll do it again tomorrow with Scott’s twin brother Richard.
I’ve fished the Elkton stretch of western Oregon’s Umpqua several times for smallmouth bass and I’m more convinced than ever that on a national scale it rates a top rung for numbers and size of bass and for scenery that comes at you like calendar art, a new page unfolding around every bend. Long glides of quiet, amazingly clear stillwater fall into quick chutes and minor rapids. Rounded boulders arch through the surface like billiard balls and hummocks sporting sprouted crowns of tall green grass.
In late summer the bottom of the river is clearly visible in all but a few mysteriously green and seemingly bottomless pools. The boat seems suspended in a nether world somewhere between water and air hanging above a puzzle of rock formations boulder gardens, pea gravel, sand, ledges, holes, undercuts, and the hills rise into dark green trees that hide flocks of wild turkeys and roosts for ospreys, kingfishers and vultures.
This is where anglers who have never fished for bass will morph into smallmouth addicts.
I gave in to my addiction again last September fishing with my wife Natalie and if anything the river is even more generous than I remembered. Or perhaps the improvement is because this time I’m fishing with a pair of savvy guides who grew up fishing the river, who seem to know every rock and the bass that lives there. “Cast just above the shade line and drift down to the ledge where the rock sticks out; a couple of 15s and a 17 incher hang out there,” –that kind of familiarity.
Identical twins Richard and Scott Wolfe are partners in Wolfe Brothers Guide Service (www.wolfefishing.com) which coordinates the guiding operation for the Big K Guest Ranch which occupies 2,200 acres in the heart of this choice piece of water.
We’re staying in Cabin Eight at the Big K, (www.big-k.com) surrounded by flower beds, enjoying the A/C in upscale lodge accommodations that are light years above rustic. The main lodge sits on a hill overlooking bottomland pastures where wild turkeys and deer feed, above ranch ponds that can be fished for crappies, largemouth bass and trout.
A mountainous river rock fireplace fills a wall with fishing and hunting paintings and prints, game mounts are pinned to wallpaper with outdoor scenes and the dining room overlooks a post-card view where evening mists hang in swatches. A pair of Labrador retrievers stares off the veranda.
The menu offers possibly the only opportunity in west Oregon to sample Delicate Quail or we could rough it with a New York Steak for $24, Lemon crusted dill salmon, Mom’s BBQ ribs with the requisite “secret recipe,” Savory pork loin and possibly the most explosively flavorful garlic/cheese bread I’ve ever eaten. The driveway is 5 miles east of Elkton off Highway 138 a two-mile long two track to the ranch-lodge which sits in the center of the Umpqua Loop, surrounded by eight miles of choice river.
I’m surprised by the high level of quality, comfort and service at this fish camp and I don’t know why. The ranch is designed to cater to fishermen and hunters and that it feels like home should not have been a surprise.
In the river we’re facing tiger-striped smallmouth from 10 inches to 8 pounds. Five
thousand bass per mile the biologist says, roughly one bass for every foot of river and that figure may be an underestimate.
It’s sight fishing for tigers and often the biggest challenge is getting a fly, plastic worm, grub or tube lure past the aggressive foot-long youngsters and into the face of a submarine. A few miles west at Florence, Outlaw Baits produces a bunch of plastic lures that were designed and tested specifically to match top bass foods on the nearby Umpqua. Tingler and Ripple worms, Firetail, Gitter and Slim Slam tubes and Vibra Tail grubs are the ones I favor, especially in any dark pumpkin, rootbeer, crayfish or leech color.
Scott’s personal Umpqua best is a 7½ pound smallmouth that taped 23 inches. “There are definitely bigger fish in here,” he says.
To put the Umpqua in national perspective consider that the International Game Fish Association world record on the fly rod is a Minnesota smallie that weighed 6 pounds, 12 ounces.
We’re fishing from a drift boat floating the Loop and its eight miles of smallmouth Nirvana (plus in-season salmon and steelhead) that wraps like a watery horseshoe around the Big K Guest Ranch. The loop like the rest of the mainstem Umpqua is open to public fishing, but the ranch land is private. Drift boats, pontoons or rafts are the best way to fish the river through the Loop, and public bank fishing is available above and below the ranch.
While both brothers would rather point out big smallmouth, ospreys and wild turkeys than promote scorekeeping, both acknowledge that clients sometimes hook upwards of 200 bass a day. That kind of wild-eyed aggression is rare, and well above an average day, but what sets that number apart from almost all other smallmouth rivers is the size of those bass—lots of 12 to 18 inchers. Scott has been guiding on the ranch water for 15 years and running the guide operation for 13 and he still looks around in respect and awe at the hills and wildlife. “What a neat fishery this is,” he says, out loud but almost to himself.
We fish with him on the first afternoon, kicking the drift boat off a skid-in bank upstream from the lodge. Swimming in the launch pool are smallmouth bass, lots of smallmouth bass some that must push 4 pounds. But they’ve already been worked over and although several of the large ones are aggressively “lit up” with their tiger stripes black and flaring—they won’t bite.
We slip downstream, Nat and I in the bow seats, Scott on the oars and within minutes Nat is into a 15-inch bass that simply inhaled one of Outlaw Bait’s green and black “gitter” tubes, a 3 ½ inch plastic that represents a lot of scurrying bass foods.
“The neat thing about this river,” Scott says, “is the large variety of food for the fish: crayfish, damsels, dragonflies, stoneflies, leeches. There’s always something coming off to feed the bass. They also eat the shad fry coming downriver in September and I’ve got a shimmy lure to imitate the fry,” he says, showing me a two inch gelatinous white wiggle. “It just kills them.”
The bass also eat a few steelhead and salmon fry, Scott admits, but adds, “the window when the fry are in the area is very small and the impact almost negligible.
We see schools of big bass—three, four, five fish at a time. Two fish move into the windowpane under the boat, streamers of green moss waving around them. I hook the smallest and it tapes 16 inches. “That other one must have been pushing 20 inches,” the guide says.
We anchor on ledges and drop plastic worms to tumble and wiggle along the bottom. Scott hands me a hot pink Senko worm, single hooked dead center and I catch nine smallmouth on nine casts.
We catch a lot of bass 10 to 15 inches, all stone cold beautiful and aggressive.
The most fun is sight fishing specifically for the big ones that we can see sifting through the rocks, rooting for crayfish and lampreys and nymphs. The boat doesn’t bother the fish and in fact when the sun is high we see the bass move into the shade of the shadow under the drifting boat.
In the clear water we see some fish on the bottom that make our hearts stop. Huge smallies. The trick is to get the lure to them before a lesser fish can streak in an inhale it.
It’s suspenseful fishing. Nat spots a big bass, 4 pounds maybe bigger, throws a 5-inch Ripple worm at it. The line tightens, she sets the hook and another 12 incher comes rocketing to the surface. The smaller fish simply outraced the behemoth.
Several times we spot big fish that won’t bite, and Richard has an explanation.
“Every three days the bass get super aggressive. They bite everything. Then it tapers off slowly for the next three days before it takes off again,” he says.
As we drop through a long riffle we pass Richard and a couple in another drift boat. She’s grinning like she’s just caught a chinook salmon on a plastic worm, which she just did.
The next morning, after a monstrous breakfast at a decent hour we’re at the Fern Creek launch by 8:30 a.m. River smallmouth are civilized fish and the higher the sun gets the better the bite. The boat slides downhill with Richard skidding above it, holding the rope, leaving tracks in the dust. A rock bar sticks out into the Umpqua and provides a loading dock.
Nat is using a 4-inch Tingler worm in green-pumpkin on a spinning rod with 6-pound test and a small split shot 20 inches above it. I have on an unweighted Senko, a cigar-shaped floppy which turns out to be the big fish lure. The smaller worms catch more fish, but the bigger bass want the Senko. Hooked mid-section and floppy on both ends the garish Senko consistently provokes the biggest smallmouth. Fewer but bigger—a good bargain.
We drift past a break line and Richard points at a ridge of rocks that tapers into the
pool with barely a whisper of surface disturbance. “Cast right against the point, there’s a ledge starts there and a couple of big fish lay in there under the ledge.” Gotta love river know-how.
At another ledge he tells me to cast so the Senko glides under the ledge. There’s a
cutout in the reef, like a doorway, that goes through to the other side. “The really big fish lay in there.” We pick up a couple of 12s and 14 and see two much bigger bass…follow my lure. One pokes at it with its nose but passes and swings away letting the Senko wiggle downriver.
An osprey plunges into the river ahead of and emerges with a “key chain,” Richard’s nickname for bass so small they’ll fit on a keychain. Key chains grow into Thespians—fish that act like they’re big but turn out to be small.
Chinook are rolling in an eddy. Richard knots a Rattletrap plug onto a light bass rod,
casts and immediately hits a salmon. The king blasts a geyser of tail spray across the river, turns down river, shrugs and pops the 10-pound monofilament taking one of Richard’s favorite lures with it.
The drift is slow, spectacular and geared to sight fishing. We spot the ledges that Richard tells us to watch for, drop our plastics where he says to cast and play the bass we came to find. It’s a pattern that continues until late afternoon when we have to beat feet for a dinner in Florence.
I didn’t keep track of the bass we caught, but it was a lot and still our day was short of the 215 bass caught by three guys on an earlier trip with Scott. Their two buddies in Richard’s boat caught 180 bass that same float.
We fish the plastics with jiggles and wiggles letting them sort along the bottom in the surprisingly strong current.
When a bass takes the Senko I open the bail, feed line while the fish feeds up from the end, to the center where the single hook is pinned to the worm with a rubber band. When the slack line tightens I set the hook.
It’s a season of black berries and bass among the thorns. Smallmouth are on the prod, sea-run cutthroat are coming in behind the fall kings, which will be followed by silvers.
“Always something to catch. Something good,”” Richard says..
We see schools of big and small bass and rivet on the big fish. A group of four mini-submarines appears in the windowpane under the boat, including a fish that will be in the 20-inch range.
Green moss streaming in the pool around the fish I pitch the Senko, watch if drift toward the 20-incher and see it get inhaled by a scrappy 15-incher.
A little further downriver I tie into a slug, big fish of the trip. It wallows on the surface, runs, and wallows and runs again. The little rod is bent hard, the light line streams off the spinning reel. The bass reverses and rockets past the boat. Richard reaches for the net, the fish jumps, shakes its head and flares its gills violently and the hook flies free. “I knew I shouldn’t have reached for the net yet,” he says.
That was our picture fish. “It was a great one,” Richard says, with a head shake and an apology, “but there will be more.”
My wife lays her rod down, leans back in her seat and relaxes. Great just to be here, she says. Eighty degrees, blue sky, impossibly clear water, fish under every rock, ospreys, wildlife, scenery. She’s right.
I cast again and hook another fish. “Let Richard quit,” my wife says, “we’ve gotta get going and he wants to get home to his son’s birthday.”
We are quitting, I reply, we’re fishing our way out. She shakes her head—heard it before. Richard slowly strokes the water. Water drips off the oars.
Later, back in Cabin Eight she tells me, “Now that’s how fishing should be. That’s fishing.” No, I say, that’s catching, and that’s how fishing should be!
While we floated both Richard and Scott slid in gentle sermons preaching the salvation of smallmouth, and why ODFW should promote the fishery not condemn it.
And I know the guides have got it right. ODFW needs to rethink smallmouth in theUmpqua.
“There’s a huge misconception that people have that these smallmouth are feeding on salmon and steelhead smolts all year and that’s just not true. They’re not. They take a few, sure, but compared to the number of squawfish smolts they eat, it’s negligible,” Scott says.
“These smallmouth definitely have a positive impact on the economy of the area,”
Richard adds scoffing at critics who claim the bass are gorging on salmon and steelhead fry. “Not so,” Scott says, “they take a few, but mostly they eat shad fry and the state (fish and wildlife department) would like to see fewer shad in here anyway. We need these bass,” Scott says, “it’s a world-class sport fishery that does a lot for this valley, keeps a lot of people in business, and these fish deserve more respect.”
The Elkton stretch of the mainstem Umpqua seems specifically designed for smallmouth to thrive.
Rocks and boulders grow hummocks of long green grass, pools are deep and shadowed by ledges and reefs of basalt. Summer water temperatures are in the 70s and the air temperatures climb into the 90s, engorging the river with bass food: crayfish, damsels, dragonflies, stoneflies, and leeches. Imitative patterns of any one of those will draw strikes during the best of the bass months from May through September when the river will catch its first solid run of fall kings and silvers.
Experienced Umpqua smallmouth anglers wade wet, wear big hats with sun block and Polarized glasses, carry 4 to 6 weight flyrods with sink tips and floating lines and pack boxes of weighted girdle bugs with their dancing rubber legs, big woolly buggers, woolly worms, and brown or green crayfish patterns. Conventional fishermen use light to medium weight spinning rods, 6 pound line and carry buckets of plastic grubs, worms and tubes. In mid-summer, when the water is right, these red-eyed tigers will explode under surface poppers and the rest of the time they want their eels, crayfish and nymphs dredging bottom.
At the beginning of the season, when shad fry are riding the currents downstream, Scott favors imitative streamers; white patterns packed with Flashabou, tinsel and
plenty of shimmy. “Just kills them,” he says with a grin.
The Wolfe Brothers base their guiding operation our of the Big K, which also offers pond fishing, horseback riding, winery trips, hunting for big game and turkey, and probably any other outdoor recreation you can request. As a “fish camp” the Big K has got a lot going for it.
General tackle, other guides, camping, RV parks and other road-trip necessities are also available in the river communities of Elkton, Scottsburg and Roseburg. While good bank fishing is available along Highways 138 and 38 the best action by far falls to floaters in drift boats, pontoons, rafts and kayaks set up for overnight drifts between the multiple public ramps that open up this section between I-5 and Scottsburg on Hwy. 38.
Public launch sites are mapped in the reference book, Oregon River Maps & Fishing Guide, (www.amatobooks.com). Camp below the high water line, act civilized, appreciate the river and there’s rarely a problem.
Just before takeout we float past a camp where three one-man pontoon boats are hauled out and three tents are popped open. We shadowed the trio on much of the float and watched them play fish after fish with their fly rods.
One man is stringing a rod; another is digging into the cooler for dinner. It’s been a
long day…..dozens of bass, sun, grassy hummocks, two does with four spotted fawns, eagles, ospreys, buzzards, windowpane water.
My wife is right--this is what a world-class smallmouth bass fishery should be.
Other Fish:
Smallmouth may own the limelight on the lower Umpqua but they are far from the only gamefish in town.
Here’s when to try for everything:
Smallmouth bass: May-Sept.
Winter steelhead: Dec. –Apr.
Summer steelhead: June-Sept.
Spring chinook:Apr-June
Fall chinook: Sept-Dec.
Shad: Apr-June
Coho: Sept.-Nov.
Who To Contact:
Wolfe Brothers Guide Service
PO Box 171,
Camas Valley, OR 97416
(541) 445-2254
fishon@rosenet.net
www.wolfefishing.com
Big K Guest Ranch
20029 Hwy 138 W
Elkton, OR 97436
(800) 390-2445
big-k.com
www.Big-k.com
A smallmouth bass disguised as a green submarine, a monster among river monsters
is backed into a basaltic cave in the black rocks under the drift boat.
Every detail of the fish pops out of the impossibly clear water, the big eye, softly waving pectoral fins, tiger stripes, black lines of war paint streaming down the face, gills working.
And then it’s gone. Just gone!
When my heart restarts and my dropped jaw finally closes, I glance at Scott Wolfe, who dips the oars, peers through his Polaroid’s and says simply, “some really big bass in this section.”
Of that I am certain. For a few miles now we have caught bass, crackered bass and watched bass swimming along the bottom of the lower Umpqua River that would stop hearts in most areas of the country. And we’ll do it again tomorrow with Scott’s twin brother Richard.
I’ve fished the Elkton stretch of western Oregon’s Umpqua several times for smallmouth bass and I’m more convinced than ever that on a national scale it rates a top rung for numbers and size of bass and for scenery that comes at you like calendar art, a new page unfolding around every bend. Long glides of quiet, amazingly clear stillwater fall into quick chutes and minor rapids. Rounded boulders arch through the surface like billiard balls and hummocks sporting sprouted crowns of tall green grass.
In late summer the bottom of the river is clearly visible in all but a few mysteriously green and seemingly bottomless pools. The boat seems suspended in a nether world somewhere between water and air hanging above a puzzle of rock formations boulder gardens, pea gravel, sand, ledges, holes, undercuts, and the hills rise into dark green trees that hide flocks of wild turkeys and roosts for ospreys, kingfishers and vultures.
This is where anglers who have never fished for bass will morph into smallmouth addicts.
I gave in to my addiction again last September fishing with my wife Natalie and if anything the river is even more generous than I remembered. Or perhaps the improvement is because this time I’m fishing with a pair of savvy guides who grew up fishing the river, who seem to know every rock and the bass that lives there. “Cast just above the shade line and drift down to the ledge where the rock sticks out; a couple of 15s and a 17 incher hang out there,” –that kind of familiarity.
Identical twins Richard and Scott Wolfe are partners in Wolfe Brothers Guide Service (www.wolfefishing.com) which coordinates the guiding operation for the Big K Guest Ranch which occupies 2,200 acres in the heart of this choice piece of water.
We’re staying in Cabin Eight at the Big K, (www.big-k.com) surrounded by flower beds, enjoying the A/C in upscale lodge accommodations that are light years above rustic. The main lodge sits on a hill overlooking bottomland pastures where wild turkeys and deer feed, above ranch ponds that can be fished for crappies, largemouth bass and trout.
A mountainous river rock fireplace fills a wall with fishing and hunting paintings and prints, game mounts are pinned to wallpaper with outdoor scenes and the dining room overlooks a post-card view where evening mists hang in swatches. A pair of Labrador retrievers stares off the veranda.
The menu offers possibly the only opportunity in west Oregon to sample Delicate Quail or we could rough it with a New York Steak for $24, Lemon crusted dill salmon, Mom’s BBQ ribs with the requisite “secret recipe,” Savory pork loin and possibly the most explosively flavorful garlic/cheese bread I’ve ever eaten. The driveway is 5 miles east of Elkton off Highway 138 a two-mile long two track to the ranch-lodge which sits in the center of the Umpqua Loop, surrounded by eight miles of choice river.
I’m surprised by the high level of quality, comfort and service at this fish camp and I don’t know why. The ranch is designed to cater to fishermen and hunters and that it feels like home should not have been a surprise.
In the river we’re facing tiger-striped smallmouth from 10 inches to 8 pounds. Five
thousand bass per mile the biologist says, roughly one bass for every foot of river and that figure may be an underestimate.
It’s sight fishing for tigers and often the biggest challenge is getting a fly, plastic worm, grub or tube lure past the aggressive foot-long youngsters and into the face of a submarine. A few miles west at Florence, Outlaw Baits produces a bunch of plastic lures that were designed and tested specifically to match top bass foods on the nearby Umpqua. Tingler and Ripple worms, Firetail, Gitter and Slim Slam tubes and Vibra Tail grubs are the ones I favor, especially in any dark pumpkin, rootbeer, crayfish or leech color.
Scott’s personal Umpqua best is a 7½ pound smallmouth that taped 23 inches. “There are definitely bigger fish in here,” he says.
To put the Umpqua in national perspective consider that the International Game Fish Association world record on the fly rod is a Minnesota smallie that weighed 6 pounds, 12 ounces.
We’re fishing from a drift boat floating the Loop and its eight miles of smallmouth Nirvana (plus in-season salmon and steelhead) that wraps like a watery horseshoe around the Big K Guest Ranch. The loop like the rest of the mainstem Umpqua is open to public fishing, but the ranch land is private. Drift boats, pontoons or rafts are the best way to fish the river through the Loop, and public bank fishing is available above and below the ranch.
While both brothers would rather point out big smallmouth, ospreys and wild turkeys than promote scorekeeping, both acknowledge that clients sometimes hook upwards of 200 bass a day. That kind of wild-eyed aggression is rare, and well above an average day, but what sets that number apart from almost all other smallmouth rivers is the size of those bass—lots of 12 to 18 inchers. Scott has been guiding on the ranch water for 15 years and running the guide operation for 13 and he still looks around in respect and awe at the hills and wildlife. “What a neat fishery this is,” he says, out loud but almost to himself.
We fish with him on the first afternoon, kicking the drift boat off a skid-in bank upstream from the lodge. Swimming in the launch pool are smallmouth bass, lots of smallmouth bass some that must push 4 pounds. But they’ve already been worked over and although several of the large ones are aggressively “lit up” with their tiger stripes black and flaring—they won’t bite.
We slip downstream, Nat and I in the bow seats, Scott on the oars and within minutes Nat is into a 15-inch bass that simply inhaled one of Outlaw Bait’s green and black “gitter” tubes, a 3 ½ inch plastic that represents a lot of scurrying bass foods.
“The neat thing about this river,” Scott says, “is the large variety of food for the fish: crayfish, damsels, dragonflies, stoneflies, leeches. There’s always something coming off to feed the bass. They also eat the shad fry coming downriver in September and I’ve got a shimmy lure to imitate the fry,” he says, showing me a two inch gelatinous white wiggle. “It just kills them.”
The bass also eat a few steelhead and salmon fry, Scott admits, but adds, “the window when the fry are in the area is very small and the impact almost negligible.
We see schools of big bass—three, four, five fish at a time. Two fish move into the windowpane under the boat, streamers of green moss waving around them. I hook the smallest and it tapes 16 inches. “That other one must have been pushing 20 inches,” the guide says.
We anchor on ledges and drop plastic worms to tumble and wiggle along the bottom. Scott hands me a hot pink Senko worm, single hooked dead center and I catch nine smallmouth on nine casts.
We catch a lot of bass 10 to 15 inches, all stone cold beautiful and aggressive.
The most fun is sight fishing specifically for the big ones that we can see sifting through the rocks, rooting for crayfish and lampreys and nymphs. The boat doesn’t bother the fish and in fact when the sun is high we see the bass move into the shade of the shadow under the drifting boat.
In the clear water we see some fish on the bottom that make our hearts stop. Huge smallies. The trick is to get the lure to them before a lesser fish can streak in an inhale it.
It’s suspenseful fishing. Nat spots a big bass, 4 pounds maybe bigger, throws a 5-inch Ripple worm at it. The line tightens, she sets the hook and another 12 incher comes rocketing to the surface. The smaller fish simply outraced the behemoth.
Several times we spot big fish that won’t bite, and Richard has an explanation.
“Every three days the bass get super aggressive. They bite everything. Then it tapers off slowly for the next three days before it takes off again,” he says.
As we drop through a long riffle we pass Richard and a couple in another drift boat. She’s grinning like she’s just caught a chinook salmon on a plastic worm, which she just did.
The next morning, after a monstrous breakfast at a decent hour we’re at the Fern Creek launch by 8:30 a.m. River smallmouth are civilized fish and the higher the sun gets the better the bite. The boat slides downhill with Richard skidding above it, holding the rope, leaving tracks in the dust. A rock bar sticks out into the Umpqua and provides a loading dock.
Nat is using a 4-inch Tingler worm in green-pumpkin on a spinning rod with 6-pound test and a small split shot 20 inches above it. I have on an unweighted Senko, a cigar-shaped floppy which turns out to be the big fish lure. The smaller worms catch more fish, but the bigger bass want the Senko. Hooked mid-section and floppy on both ends the garish Senko consistently provokes the biggest smallmouth. Fewer but bigger—a good bargain.
We drift past a break line and Richard points at a ridge of rocks that tapers into the
pool with barely a whisper of surface disturbance. “Cast right against the point, there’s a ledge starts there and a couple of big fish lay in there under the ledge.” Gotta love river know-how.
At another ledge he tells me to cast so the Senko glides under the ledge. There’s a
cutout in the reef, like a doorway, that goes through to the other side. “The really big fish lay in there.” We pick up a couple of 12s and 14 and see two much bigger bass…follow my lure. One pokes at it with its nose but passes and swings away letting the Senko wiggle downriver.
An osprey plunges into the river ahead of and emerges with a “key chain,” Richard’s nickname for bass so small they’ll fit on a keychain. Key chains grow into Thespians—fish that act like they’re big but turn out to be small.
Chinook are rolling in an eddy. Richard knots a Rattletrap plug onto a light bass rod,
casts and immediately hits a salmon. The king blasts a geyser of tail spray across the river, turns down river, shrugs and pops the 10-pound monofilament taking one of Richard’s favorite lures with it.
The drift is slow, spectacular and geared to sight fishing. We spot the ledges that Richard tells us to watch for, drop our plastics where he says to cast and play the bass we came to find. It’s a pattern that continues until late afternoon when we have to beat feet for a dinner in Florence.
I didn’t keep track of the bass we caught, but it was a lot and still our day was short of the 215 bass caught by three guys on an earlier trip with Scott. Their two buddies in Richard’s boat caught 180 bass that same float.
We fish the plastics with jiggles and wiggles letting them sort along the bottom in the surprisingly strong current.
When a bass takes the Senko I open the bail, feed line while the fish feeds up from the end, to the center where the single hook is pinned to the worm with a rubber band. When the slack line tightens I set the hook.
It’s a season of black berries and bass among the thorns. Smallmouth are on the prod, sea-run cutthroat are coming in behind the fall kings, which will be followed by silvers.
“Always something to catch. Something good,”” Richard says..
We see schools of big and small bass and rivet on the big fish. A group of four mini-submarines appears in the windowpane under the boat, including a fish that will be in the 20-inch range.
Green moss streaming in the pool around the fish I pitch the Senko, watch if drift toward the 20-incher and see it get inhaled by a scrappy 15-incher.
A little further downriver I tie into a slug, big fish of the trip. It wallows on the surface, runs, and wallows and runs again. The little rod is bent hard, the light line streams off the spinning reel. The bass reverses and rockets past the boat. Richard reaches for the net, the fish jumps, shakes its head and flares its gills violently and the hook flies free. “I knew I shouldn’t have reached for the net yet,” he says.
That was our picture fish. “It was a great one,” Richard says, with a head shake and an apology, “but there will be more.”
My wife lays her rod down, leans back in her seat and relaxes. Great just to be here, she says. Eighty degrees, blue sky, impossibly clear water, fish under every rock, ospreys, wildlife, scenery. She’s right.
I cast again and hook another fish. “Let Richard quit,” my wife says, “we’ve gotta get going and he wants to get home to his son’s birthday.”
We are quitting, I reply, we’re fishing our way out. She shakes her head—heard it before. Richard slowly strokes the water. Water drips off the oars.
Later, back in Cabin Eight she tells me, “Now that’s how fishing should be. That’s fishing.” No, I say, that’s catching, and that’s how fishing should be!
While we floated both Richard and Scott slid in gentle sermons preaching the salvation of smallmouth, and why ODFW should promote the fishery not condemn it.
And I know the guides have got it right. ODFW needs to rethink smallmouth in theUmpqua.
“There’s a huge misconception that people have that these smallmouth are feeding on salmon and steelhead smolts all year and that’s just not true. They’re not. They take a few, sure, but compared to the number of squawfish smolts they eat, it’s negligible,” Scott says.
“These smallmouth definitely have a positive impact on the economy of the area,”
Richard adds scoffing at critics who claim the bass are gorging on salmon and steelhead fry. “Not so,” Scott says, “they take a few, but mostly they eat shad fry and the state (fish and wildlife department) would like to see fewer shad in here anyway. We need these bass,” Scott says, “it’s a world-class sport fishery that does a lot for this valley, keeps a lot of people in business, and these fish deserve more respect.”
The Elkton stretch of the mainstem Umpqua seems specifically designed for smallmouth to thrive.
Rocks and boulders grow hummocks of long green grass, pools are deep and shadowed by ledges and reefs of basalt. Summer water temperatures are in the 70s and the air temperatures climb into the 90s, engorging the river with bass food: crayfish, damsels, dragonflies, stoneflies, and leeches. Imitative patterns of any one of those will draw strikes during the best of the bass months from May through September when the river will catch its first solid run of fall kings and silvers.
Experienced Umpqua smallmouth anglers wade wet, wear big hats with sun block and Polarized glasses, carry 4 to 6 weight flyrods with sink tips and floating lines and pack boxes of weighted girdle bugs with their dancing rubber legs, big woolly buggers, woolly worms, and brown or green crayfish patterns. Conventional fishermen use light to medium weight spinning rods, 6 pound line and carry buckets of plastic grubs, worms and tubes. In mid-summer, when the water is right, these red-eyed tigers will explode under surface poppers and the rest of the time they want their eels, crayfish and nymphs dredging bottom.
At the beginning of the season, when shad fry are riding the currents downstream, Scott favors imitative streamers; white patterns packed with Flashabou, tinsel and
plenty of shimmy. “Just kills them,” he says with a grin.
The Wolfe Brothers base their guiding operation our of the Big K, which also offers pond fishing, horseback riding, winery trips, hunting for big game and turkey, and probably any other outdoor recreation you can request. As a “fish camp” the Big K has got a lot going for it.
General tackle, other guides, camping, RV parks and other road-trip necessities are also available in the river communities of Elkton, Scottsburg and Roseburg. While good bank fishing is available along Highways 138 and 38 the best action by far falls to floaters in drift boats, pontoons, rafts and kayaks set up for overnight drifts between the multiple public ramps that open up this section between I-5 and Scottsburg on Hwy. 38.
Public launch sites are mapped in the reference book, Oregon River Maps & Fishing Guide, (www.amatobooks.com). Camp below the high water line, act civilized, appreciate the river and there’s rarely a problem.
Just before takeout we float past a camp where three one-man pontoon boats are hauled out and three tents are popped open. We shadowed the trio on much of the float and watched them play fish after fish with their fly rods.
One man is stringing a rod; another is digging into the cooler for dinner. It’s been a
long day…..dozens of bass, sun, grassy hummocks, two does with four spotted fawns, eagles, ospreys, buzzards, windowpane water.
My wife is right--this is what a world-class smallmouth bass fishery should be.
Other Fish:
Smallmouth may own the limelight on the lower Umpqua but they are far from the only gamefish in town.
Here’s when to try for everything:
Smallmouth bass: May-Sept.
Winter steelhead: Dec. –Apr.
Summer steelhead: June-Sept.
Spring chinook:Apr-June
Fall chinook: Sept-Dec.
Shad: Apr-June
Coho: Sept.-Nov.
Who To Contact:
Wolfe Brothers Guide Service
PO Box 171,
Camas Valley, OR 97416
(541) 445-2254
fishon@rosenet.net
www.wolfefishing.com
Big K Guest Ranch
20029 Hwy 138 W
Elkton, OR 97436
(800) 390-2445
big-k.com
www.Big-k.com
