reelguy said:
The bait ban is an excellent idea and when it passes it will greatly improve the wild trout population. What a lot of people do not know is that the ban will still allow bait fishing for salmon and steelhead, there will simply be a required minimum gap width for all bait hooks. This will help to prevent so many wild trout being gut hooked with small hooks. If people want to sling power bait with tiny treble hooks, they should fish somewhere where there is not a struggling population of wild trout. They haven't stocked this part of the river in three years and this is the next step with helping the trout, next they will hopefully reduce the limit and implement a slot limit for keepers. The same thing was done on the deshutes and the metolius rivers and they have both been successfully restored to the world-Class trout streams that they were. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.... I'm just giving my two cents!
Tight lines
-B
Thats a good "two cents worth!"
It still isn't hard to get into natives with bigger hooks... you just gotta WORK for them more, and when you do... you get rewarded with the big guys and them being lip hooked (with bigger hooks) I never fish little bait hooks anymore, if i am tossing bait. I go big, cuz you can still hook the smallest fish on the biggest hook.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, so o fcourse you may take some word from the people who don't support it.
I support it because, when i fish bait in this stretch of river, it's usually bait... for.... (salmon/steelhead) fishing.
The only thing that, i see would happen... is people will still fish they way they have been fishing that stretch for years. I would love to see some wardens making a long float trip down this stretch on the busy days, just to watch what people are doing for the first year's of this bait ban, simply just cause this stretch is all scenic and you can only access most of it by boat. There is no bank spots on this stretch unless you know the owners of their property on this stretch.
After they stopped stocking this stretch three years ago... the trout have made a huge come back!! There is still holdovers in there.. but they will soon vanish off. They get harder to find every year, if u find any... they will most likey be in the first few hundred yards below Hendricks bridge.
I wasn't going to share this, on this thread but w/e... cuz how could you not want a lower river fishery that holds fish like this!! I know they are doing this for the (redsides) but, there is plenty of wild trout in this stretch, and now is the time to inforce the "bait ban" on this stretch. If they don't do it now, i see all these trout bein killed at some point in time.
I fish actively... so i will stand up for the fish that i acidently kill, but 90% of the fish i hook, get lip hooked because i fish bigger hooks when fishing bait. And while i am lure fishing... I know they say it is like 20-25% mortality rate... but i am gunna stand up for my fishin method and the fish i catch that are lip hooked. I leave trebles on my lures, while slowly switching over to siwash hooks. Mosdt the fish i hook with lures are bottom lip hooked right in the point of the bottom jaw, or right through the nose, (top of jaw).
I have figured out my "own science" to fishing these lures with a less mortality rate then the chart says.
Pushin 19".... pic DOES NOT SHOW THE ACTUAL SIZE!!!
