I’m standing along the wall at the Walterville Grange, looking out over 40-some people gathered for a Lane Families for Farms & Forests tour up the McKenzie, focused on working forestry and ag lands and their relationship to watershed health. I hear my name and refocus to introduce the group[Read More…]
Outdoors
Anglers Log: Troubling environment for salmon
I have been working on the river and in the Oregon wilderness for better than 40 years now and I was pretty naive to a whole list of environmental changes that I remember watching happen. For instance, from 1980 to 1985 we received more than 40 inches of rain each[Read More…]
2023 Chronicle Outdoors Guide
Whether you’re new to the area or a longtime resident, the southern Willamette Valley is home to great outdoor adventures. Here’s a brief primer on a few of the summer activities in our area. River Rafting The Oregon river system is well-known for having great whitewater rafting opportunities, and Lane[Read More…]
Real and perceived outdoor dangers
Recently, I was in a conversation with several young adults about their favorite outdoor spots in Oregon. They were new to the area, and new to outdoor recreation. It was a passing-the-time kind of discussion, with no real focus, and so the group aimlessly veered toward listing some of the[Read More…]
Water levels at ‘wonderful’ stage
As I prepare this week’s Angler’s Log, the McKenzie River at the Vida gage site has fallen to about 2 feet, an ideal range for fishing and boating, and will continue to recede as we inch closer toward summer. You can also easily correlate the current conditions on the McKenzie[Read More…]
Caring for woodlands had steep learning curve
In 2019, my wife and I took retirement money to purchase 39 acres of F2 woodland in Vida. Kate was relishing a return to the PNW; I was both eagerly and anxiously anticipating our departure from my native California. To say we were unprepared to care for a woodland property[Read More…]
Heat, spring runoff slow chinook action
“Spring runoff” is a condition that merited your consideration a few years ago. But the recent unseasonable heat wave accelerated the melting of our ample statewide snowpack, causing the rivers and streams that drain the west Cascades to spike upward to levels where the probability of a quality angling experience[Read More…]
Snow pack, rain pushing up river levels
As I prepare this week’s Angler’s Log, the patter of raindrops is clearly audible on my roof and my most immediate observation of the upcoming week’s fishing conditions is that it is hard to overlook how persistent Old Man Winter has been this year. Last week’s precipitation pushed the McKenzie[Read More…]
A year with no chinook …
“Hyper-local” is not just a saying but a business model that The Chronicle has been true to, and in my biweekly fishing report I do the best I can to highlight those hyper-local fishing locations for you. I do occasionally go off the rails, bringing you narratives of some of[Read More…]
Gear up for spring trout fishing season
It’s a function of the lengthening daylight hours to chase the chill of winter and usher in the spring each year. The sunshine buds out the river’s edge foliage and, most importantly to anglers, stimulates the first of the aquatics to release their hold from the bottom of our local[Read More…]
