Quote from: Clayman on March 11, 2019, 10:26:47 PM

That being said, I was out of Depoe one May afternoon last year and came into a stellar-looking color line and bait balls on the depthfinder that just screamed salmon.  Sure enough, a salmon leaped clear out of the water only thirty feet away from me!  Unfortunately, I only had bottomfish gear with me that day.

If you carry the right jigs you can catch salmon on bottomfish gear.  I still remember vividly the first time I hooked up with a salmon while fishing for rockfish.  I was dropping a 1 oz crippled herring to the bottom in 100ft of water.  About 30ft down the line goes slack.  Eleven year old me thought, "WTF I'm nowhere near bottom".  Luckily the Coho didn't spit the jig and sprinted off setting the hook on itself. 

To this day I still love the split second of anticipation between when the line goes slack and the hookset, wondering if it's going to be a swing and a miss or if I'm going to connect.

The situation you describe sounds perfect for salmon jigging.

For sure.  I've caught a handful of salmon on jigging spoons, with the last one being a nice coho right in Depoe Bay last October on a 1-ounce Laser Minnow.  On the May afternoon where I came across the salmon water, I only had my Ugly Stik Tiger, 8/0 hooks, and purple-label herring.  I've hooked salmon on that gear before, but it's clunky and they don't tend to stick very well.

Lesson learned was to always include a spinning rod with a handful of metal jigs rigged with Siwash hooks anytime salmon is open, which I've been sticking with religiously ever since  .

I only use barbless hooks in the sea, no matter what I'm targeting (just in case a nearby salmon loses it's mind) and I've never lost a fish because my hooks were barbless.

I would think it would be even harder to have one shake off a barbless hook when using jigging gear then with a wiggly fly rod, but that's just an assumption.

And the way it was explained to me includes all of the above, plus if I'm fishing for salmon or if I accidentally land a salmon, and if I'm carrying more than a single rod, all the hooks on every rod on board need to be barbless.  Is that right?

That is not right, Tinker.  I don't believe the regulations control what hooks you can have rigged up on a rod that is on your boat, but if that rod is in the water actively fishing, the gear needs to comply with all regulations (including regs that are defined by any species already retained).  So, once you have a salmon on board (that was caught with a barbless single point hook and legally retained), you had better ONLY have less than two single point barbless hooks on the rod when continuing to fish (ocean regs). 

Now that y'all got the regulation questions out of the way...

I've spent many hours over the past year perusing the iFish archives for salmon reports over the last several years.  There are some good nuggets of info in those archives when it comes to finding feeder Chinook in the spring months.  Most of it focuses on downriggers at the Rock Pile (12-13 miles west of Newport), but there are a few reports of nearshore fish.  Those nearshore fish were usually the result of skippers spotting bait/birds on their way to someplace else, then dropping their gear on them and hooking salmon.  Sometimes the 40-50 foot contour between Seal Rock and Waldport produced fish in March/April.  And I recall at least a couple decent Chinook reports out of Depoe Bay in the spring, mostly north towards Government Point.

I wouldn't expect lights-out action this early in the year, but hooking a Chinook is certainly within the realm of possibility if all the right conditions align.

Sooo you're saying there's a chance!

Saturday conditions = still a big IF.  I'll tote some salmon gear just in case.

Going to pick up my new ride Sat. but after that I'll be interested in getting out 8 days a week. Good luck

Right on, where I used to fish it was sometimes a better option than a down rigger was why I wondered.

A wise old lady (who was a hell of a fisherman) used to tell me to wait until the rhododendrons are in full bloom to go out for salmon.

That's a good way to keep from getting burned out. Run timings can be different from year to year though. But then again, so can blooms.