Chetco’s giant salmon spawn controversy
John Martin, left, Chad Brunick, center, and Sean Metzger, all of Klamath Falls, boat a fall chinook salmon in Chetco on Sunday. AP Photo
BROOKINGS (AP) — Despite having only a sliver of the Chetco River open to angling this month, John Martin of Klamath Falls does not lament the loss of upstream fishing access.
He drops his anchovy into the estuary between the jetties, then motors his small aluminum boat, already loaded with two friends and three adult Chinook. The fish are all around 30 pounds.
They’re trolling, though, through no more than 200 yards of the Chetco.
“Because this is where the fish are,” Martin says.
Though most of the Chetco remains closed to angling to protect a poor return of wild Chinook to this South Coast stream, anglers are finding they don’t need much space to catch fish eclipsing 50 pounds in an ongoing fishery that is as popular as it is maligned.
Estuary waters west of U.S. Highway 101 are the only part of the Chetco open under a restricted bag limit of one wild Chinook a day and no more than two this season. The low wild fall Chinook return is blamed largely on poor ocean conditions, and is expected throughout Southern Oregon streams.
But anglers are making the best of that one wild Chinook a day, hauling in some of the largest salmon seen here in two decades. Tops so far comes courtesy of Carl Johnson of Brookings, whose 58-pounder caught Sept. 30 unofficially is the largest Chinook caught in the Chetco Bay since the early 1980s.
“That was a gorgeous, gorgeous fish,” Johnson said. “I’ve caught several in that category, but none on the Chetco and not in the estuary.”
