Umpqua River 8/24/06

[DementedFish]

Was able to get out a little bit this morning to fish the middle section of the Umpqua river hopefully for some Smallmouths. I had my uncle drop me off at about 8:30 (the family only brought one car up, I wish I could have brought mine as well), and I started fishing from the rocks. Tied on a Pumpkinseed color Lip RipperZ Lit'l RipperZ (mini jig) and on the first cast got nailed hard and brought in a 1 pound smallmouth, which is decent sized for the part of the river I was fishing. After that I caught a few more small ones on the jig, but when things slowed up I decided to put on a yellow/red/chrome colored 1/4oz spoon. Caugh some more bass, and then out of nowhere, WHAM!, get nailed hard, and I knew this wasn't a smallie. Fought it for about a minute, and brought in a beautiful 15" Steelhead. I didn't get a pic because the camera was about 100 yards away and I didn't want to risk killing it so back he went as soon as I got the lure out.

As I was walking back to my gear from where I was fishing, I noticed a school of about five steelhead just suspended in the slow moving part of the river, and they were at least 10#'s each! Tried casting my lure at them for a few minutes, but they didn't want to have anything to do with it. What do you do in a situation like that? I don't know, maybe a speargun? lol. Anyway, my dad came at about 10:30, and we decided to move downriver a little more. Found a new spot, and casted a Thomas spinner and picked up a few more. When they didn't want that anymore, Ii started drop shotting Iridesent Red and Strawberry colored Lip RipperZ Trout WormZ which gave me good results as well.

Anyway, I ended the day with 18 Smallmouth Bass, and 1 steelhead. I'm telling you though, these smallmouth bass fight hard! They weren't huge, but some of these bass were no larger than my John-Jacob and they fought just as hard if not harder than DFG stocked fish back in CA. Anyway, pretty fun day, and the hot baits today were spoons and Lip RipperZ. I'll have pics up when I get back home on Sunday.

[Beresford13861]

good report, i heard alot of how them SMB fight, and 18 of them must be nice! once again waiting wating..for pixs

[Wahoo!]

Thanks for the report! The bigger fish are in there! Fish the deep pools with reaction type baits and see if the size increases. If not, throw a 3 inch tube in either a shad or crawdad pattern. Congrats on the steelhead! Also, how much does a fishing license cost up there for a non-resident?

[PlatinumHooks]

Good report, boy. Did you get yur britches wet? By the way, How's Ma and Pa? Pa didn't wanna fish today?? Well gotta go hitch up the horses and go into town for some chicken feed....talk to you later.. Tell all the hipsters in Oregon I said wazzzzup ni@@a!!

[MOBassman]

Nice going, Sean! 18 smallies and a steelhead make for a great days fishing. Can't wait to see the pics!

[FishSlayer]

very nice!

[NulodPBall]

[DementedFish]

Ok people here are some pictures. I forgot to mention two things in my thread, one, I used two pound test the entire time which made the fights even better. Two, there was this smallmouth I caught that inhaled one of my lures, and it spit up a whole bunch of blood, and completely died, no breathing, movement, or anything, so I tried giving it "CPR" (without the mouth to mouth) by pumping his heart underwater and forcing air into its lungs and after doing that for about a minute it came back to life and swam off which was pretty cool. Anyway, pics of my day at the umpqua:

[PlatinumHooks]

Holy cow, I've never seen the Umpqua look like that before! It's so serene. In all the parts I've visited, it's a raging beast! Nice pix.

[DementedFish]

Originally Posted by PlatinumHooks

Holy cow, I've never seen the Umpqua look like that before! It's so serene. In all the parts I've visited, it's a raging beast! Nice pix.

Yea you're prolly thinking of the upper umpqua, I've been there and yes it is raging.