Category Outdoors

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARMY CORP OF ENGINEERS Detroit Dam creates the largest lake in the Willamette Valley, completed in 1953. It is one of 13 Army Corps dams built in the Willamette basin with no passage for migrating fish. Court-ordered changes should open miles…

FRANK ARMENDARIZ/PHOTO At low water levels, portions of the McKenzie River’s main channel can become difficult to read. If possible, stop and scout – but always wear a life jacket in or out of the boat while on the river. Cooler weather was in the…

FRANK ARMENDARIZ/CHRONICLE PHOTOAt low tide, a stairway leads to a sandy beach and shellfish flats. As Oregon begins to reopen I was intending to write up beat news and I will get to that in a bit. As I prepared this article we experienced the…

FRANK ARMENDARIZ/PHOTO Bass fishing on the dune lake near Florence picked up over the Memorial Day weekend. Although no trophy fish were caught (at least not in our boat) it was a fun and productive weekend of fishing. Author’s note: I had the opportunity to…

FRANK ARMENDARIZ/PHOTO Westlake Park at Siltcoos Lake, above, is one of the two Lane County Parks that dot the shoreline. The second is at Ada Park on the east side of Siltcoos, where camping and boat moorage are offered at Darling’s and Nightingale’s fish camps.…

FRANK ARMENDARIZ/PHOTO We spent a couple of hours fishing but with water temperatures still in the 50s the bass were somewhat disinterested. So the day was more about getting the boat ready for a long season and marking potential future fishing spots on the GPS.…

FRANK ARMENDARIZ Another one in the net for Tami Armendariz, who also tied the flies we used for our day of fly fishing for wild trout on the McKenzie. All the fish were released unharmed. It has been a wonderful spring, with mild sunny weather…

FRANK ARMENDARIZ/PHOTO Rods, reels and lines, the number of available options can be staggering. But if you follow the numbers printed on every rod and reel you can easily narrow it down and find a combination perfectly matched to what you want to fish for.…

FRANK ARMENDARIZ/PHOTO “The tug is the drug to those eternally driven (or dammed) to catch the fish of a thousand casts.” Just to be sure, on this day I made 1,001 casts … without a single tug. On some days at Smith River Falls, above,…