2022 Newport / Yaquina herring thread

I've never done the herring thing before, would ya mind if I joined ya next weekend Zach.Dennis?

I'm assuming there isn't much to it, once ya find a school. Just use a sabiki rig?

Does anyone ever use some sort of jig or swimbait, as the weight on the bottom of the rig?
I would imagine there are at least a few predatory fish hanging under or around the schools....

I have.

Caught a nice flounder on the bottom jig.

I've never done the herring thing before, would ya mind if I joined ya next weekend Zach.Dennis?

I'm assuming there isn't much to it, once ya find a school. Just use a sabiki rig?

Does anyone ever use some sort of jig or swimbait, as the weight on the bottom of the rig?
I would imagine there are at least a few predatory fish hanging under or around the schools....

If you fish near structure, you can find small rockfish and sometimes a large lingcod. I saw a guy catch a 36" ling by the embarcadero breakwater during the herring run a couple years ago, fishing a live herring.

Size 8 hooks are the way to go for most of these herring. I've seen some guys skunk out merely because they brought sabiki rigs with too large or too small of hooks, so I wouldn't deviate too much from size 8.

Great!
Thanks guys!

I will be there looking for another limit tomorrow and will be on 69 if anyone wants to say hello. The outgoing tide at the beginning of the day is probably not ideal, but I will stick around as long as it takes. Can’t really think of a better place to hide from the wife for the day 😉

It was a lot of fun to get there a couple hours before daylight and have the place to myself! I crossed the bay around 4:00am. As soon as I made it into the marina near Embarcadero the screen on my ff was lit up. There were much thicker and larger schools than last weekend. The sea lions were a lot more active too! There were large groups of them working the herring. I could hear them slapping the surface all over but it was tough to see. After a while of jigging into the thick clouds of bait and not catching much other than a single snagged fish on occasion and an adrenaline rush from the sea lions startling the hell out of me I decided to work towards the commercial boats where there was some light and hopefully less sea lions! Although there was lots of light around the commercial boats, the bait balls were smaller and it was still scratch fishing. Eventually I pedaled back up to the Embarcadero where the clouds of bait were much thicker, even though it was dark and I would be fishing with the scary pods of sea lions, lol. The fishing remained scratchy until right at daylight then it turned on like a light. My buddy Andrew was going to be coming later in the morning so I decided to be selective in order to not limit too fast. I shook off lots of smaller herring and only kept big halibut bait sized herring. The big ones seemed to only be coming in singles and doubles. After an hour or 2 I was part way to a limit so I got off the water, had breakfast, then met Andrew back at the bay. When we got back the fish had moved and it took us a while to find them down by the commercial boats. When we did find them it was again a solid screen full of bait. This  time the fish were mostly blacks and it was a none stop bite. We got our limits quickly and headed back to the launch. I am really excited to turn these beautiful shiny fish into big ugly rockfish and halibut!
Here are some photos of the night and a photo of our processed catch

Great report, appreciate it so I can live vicariously through you!

That's it! I'm going to do this next year! Looks like a LOT of fun!

Fred "True" Trujillo

Outstanding!

Think I might try to get down this week while I wait for the Willamette to get back into shape. Anyone?

Looking at weather more than 20 minutes out is a bit of a crap shoot, but I have been watching Sunday. The wind forecast is bouncing around, but it looks to be dry if not sunny.

Will the little buggers still be there to be had?

Tomorrow looks good 😁 Jigging before dawn looks like fun but I don't know if I'd trust the commercials not running me over.

Tomorrow looks good 😁 Jigging before dawn looks like fun but I don't know if I'd trust the commercials not running me over.

be ready for rain or at least showers/drizzle,  another front moving through on Wednesday, gonna be wet.

Always ready to get wet 😄

Rookie question to all of the experts out there. Sunday looks like a pretty damn nice day in Newport. Partly sunny, not cold, light wind.

Question is, will the herring still be there and will there be enough space on the water for a kayak Planning on dropping a few crab traps as well.  I think I have the drill from the great info here and the sometimes good info on YouTube. Have my Size 8 Sabiki rigs and an ice chest

Any input and or company welcome. 8-9a start.

I'll be down there with 200 of my closest friends, should be some left over  😁