In addition to a bang-up run of Spring Chinook for the McKenzie & Willamette Rivers, fish managers are also forecasting a strong showing of summer steelhead for 2010 to arrive in the coming months.

As of today, February 15th 2010, most of Oregon's coastal rivers are currently at ideal water levels for both drift boat and bank fishing. While a few of the north coast streams have reported some stellar days, rivers in the south west region continue to produce the most consistent results for winter steelhead. Reports of good catches on the Chetco, Elk & Sixes, and on the Coos and Coquille systems continue to come in. We are now entering the latter part of the winter steelhead season when the big native fish comprise a higher component of the total catch.

Spring Chinook Season on the McKenzie River will close August 15. Excellent opportunities for Upper McKenzie trout fishing and Mainstem Umpqua smallmouth bass rise up to fill the gap. Even novices generally do well fly-rodding for McKenzie Rainbows. While Umpqua bass are not known for size, they make it up in sheer numbers. It is not unusual to land 200 bass on an Umpqua bass drift.

A nice catch of fish is still in the cards on the McKenzie for folks looking for salmon action

Summer Steelhead are beginning to make a show in the mix on our Salmon/Steelhead combo trips.

Good salmon fishing continued for us this past week on the Mckenzie River near Eugene, Oregon. We had numerous limits of hatchery Spring Chinook and and released some beautiful native salmon as well. Meanwhile, steelhead fishing was better over on the Willamette Middle Fork. Even so, 180 hatchery steelhead were recycled down stream this week on the McKenzie to provide more sport in the coming weeks. Currently, about 20,000 Chinook and about 7,500 Summer Steelhead are headed to the Willamette tributaries with more to come.