Chum Salmon?

Does Oregon have a decent Chum fishery? I had never even heard of them until I joined nwka. Do they taste better than they look? How do you catch them? What time of year? Any help would be awesome!
Chris-

Dogs are pretty aggressive from my experience...

I don't believe OR has any chum fisheries where retention is legal. They taste OK if you catch them in the salt and they are still very bright. The key here is Very Bright.

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The Kilchis and the Miami river (Tillamook Bay tributaries) both have chum salmon populations.  However, both populations are strictly catch and release.  If you want to fish for chum you (and the remaining chum in Oregon) will be better off if you head up to Puget Sound in the fall.

As for taste, they are generally considered inferior to both chinook and coho.

Thanks for the info. It makes sense to try and get one for my aoty score. All the chum entries are almost 200 pts and over. That couldn't hurt my chances at top 3.

Thanks for the info. It makes sense to try and get one for my aoty score. All the chum entries are almost 200 pts and over. That couldn't hurt my chances at top 3.

That brings up a good point. Either everyone who caught a chum last year got lucky and scored a monster, or the points scale for these are way off. Even the smallest chum last year was 174 points.

There was probably 3 pages of discussion on Chum points within the AOTY comittee.  The highest scoring fish was only 207.  There are several other species over 210, and even 220 points.  I'm not gonna rehash it all again, but there was discussion and reasoning in the AOTY thread as well about Chum.

Summary here:

http://www.northwestkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=9531.msg107099#msg107099

Yea, dogs tend to be kinda big but I don't know anyone who intentionally targets them...

Last year had some monster chum come through. The year before was a small fish year. Add to it that there is usually only a couple weeks of fishing so unless you catch a big fish there is no reason to keep a chum.

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Yea, dogs tend to be kinda big but I don't know anyone who intentionally targets them...

Here's a reason....

http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/regulations/fishregulations/PDFs/southcentral/2013scprincewilliamsoundregulations.pdf

You can use sport caught chums and pinks in PWS as bait.  Too bad you can't in Seward.  I believe these species are highly enhanced by hatcheries.  I may get invited out while my buddies shrimp and we were planning a run out to load the boat with chums.  Time it right and it's a blast for the kids, I like the bright ones better than coho personally. And get 300 pounds of top notch halibut and shrimp bait. Limit is 6 per person.

I don't want to have to launch a yak in a stream up north to land a chum for AOTY points so I plan to hunt them in Seward and maybe out of Whittier from my yak.


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Yea, dogs tend to be kinda big but I don't know anyone who intentionally targets them...

Hello. My name is Pam, and I confess to intentionally targeting chums.  Not to eat, but for giddy thrills on a 7 wt flyrod. Clear Creek. First week in August. Till I can't lift my arm.

Also not all chums are created equal as far as table fare goes. I have had chum that blows the doors off of coho and I would say it is even better than some short river terminal kings.

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I loooove catching chum. Pound for pound the hardest fighting salmon, and dave vedder backs me up on that one! Bham doesn't have alot in the way of unique fisheries, but we do have a couple hatcheries that crank out chum. So the water gets clogged with them around here when they return late fall. I've gotten chum close to 20lbs. If i retain, it has just been females. They seem to stay brighter longer. Decent smoked, and last year I cured alot of chum eggs. Damn good bait.

Chum also return late, so there's still excellent salmon fishing almost til Christmas.

I'm a huge fan

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Hello. My name is Pam, and I confess to intentionally targeting chums.  Not to eat, but for giddy thrills on a 7 wt flyrod. Clear Creek. First week in August. Till I can't lift my arm.


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lol
I too am on the 12 step chum program--late October on te Sooke River on flies--can't stop the grinnin...
T2