Willamette River Hos.

I see that starting about 9/9 the coho have been coming over the falls. Increasing every day. Last date shown was 9/19 with 451 adult coho.

Has anyone been out yet? I am going to go on Saturday. Will also bring smallmouth stuff.

Question on regs: Can you use barbed hooks here? Our salmon regs are so hard to follow.

Been thinking about giving it a shot, however counts are lagging quite a bit behind last year.  I believe barbs are OK here.

I got one on October 1 last year out of the Santiam. There were more at that time than this year. I will give it a shot soon anyways.

I'm hoping to make it out there next week.

Upstream of the falls for coho is barbless artificial lures only.
 

Upstream of the falls for coho is barbless artificial lures only.

I can't find that restriction in the Regs.

Exceptions for Willamette river mainstem, above the falls, I'm not seeing barbless required anywhere and bait is allowed except a short stretch between 99 bridge/Harrisburg and mouth of the McKenzie. 

**edit**just now saw Roger posted basically the same thing before i hit post

I'm hoping to make it out there next week.

Upstream of the falls for coho is barbless artificial lures only.

I'm not as familiar with this area as some so I'm just trying to find the actual regs.  In the E-regs (https://www.eregulations.com/oregon/fishing/willamette-zone) I'm seeing:

Salmon above Willamette Falls: Angling is restricted to artificial flies and lures in streams. See Exceptions where use of bait is allowed.
Harvest of wild salmon is prohibited in the Willamette Zone unless noted under Exceptions.
There is no annual limit on hatchery salmon as long as the appropriate number of Hatchery Harvest Tags have been purchased to record the catch.

Then when I scroll down to the Willamette River (Mainstem) section I see:

Willamette Falls to Hwy 20 bridge in Albany

Open all year for hatchery Chinook salmon, coho salmon, and hatchery steelhead.
Open for white sturgeon 1 per day and 2 per year, 38 inch minimum and 54 inch maximum fork length.
Use of bait allowed.

So I'm either confused or not seeing where barbless + artificial only applies to this section? 

I have landed two, lost two so far this year. Last year it got pretty good in early Oct. It is two poles, barbs ok, 2 fish, any coho or wild chinook. Unless regs specifically call out barbless pretty sure they are ok.

Nice to have some peaceful time on the water after battling B10, Mouth of the Lewis and Drano. Very high quality fish. Size and condition.

As a matter of fact, I rode the Buena Vista ferry yesterday and asked the operator if he had seen any salmon rolling. Indeed he had.

I just looked at the stats for 2024 vs 2025 for this approximate date. About 30,000 coho above the falls in '24 vs about 3500 so far this year counting jacks, so about a tenth as many as last year by this date.

I have landed two, lost two so far this year. Last year it got pretty good in early Oct. It is two poles, barbs ok, 2 fish, any coho or wild chinook. Unless regs specifically call out barbless pretty sure they are ok.

Nice to have some peaceful time on the water after battling B10, Mouth of the Lewis and Drano. Very high quality fish. Size and condition.

Hatchery Chinook not wild.

I fished it last weekend.  Very few out trying and I saw no fish rolling. I will try again this weekend.

Jeezus christmas, ignore my previous response, evidently I was citing old regulations.

If ODFW can clearly outline the regs for LEO to enforce then how come it's so convoluted for fishermen, ChatGPT, and ForaFrank alike? We're smart people with the best AI tools, it should not be this difficult.

AI tools

In this case AI is the problem, not the solution.  Read the regs first, than the updates.  Easy.

I have landed two, lost two so far this year. Last year it got pretty good in early Oct. It is two poles, barbs ok, 2 fish, any coho or wild chinook. Unless regs specifically call out barbless pretty sure they are ok.

Nice to have some peaceful time on the water after battling B10, Mouth of the Lewis and Drano. Very high quality fish. Size and condition.

Hatchery Chinook not wild.


I fished it last weekend.  Very few out trying and I saw no fish rolling. I will try again this weekend.

DUH. Yup, hatchery. Was out today for 3 hours. One good take down that didn't stick. Heard of 2 caught

Thanks Beer Run. I was not even thinking about a 2nd rod. Man, there goes my plan to only bring 3 rods!

I got one at about 10:30 today.  12 oz lead, 360 flasher, pink spinfish and 25 feet of line on the counter.  Hopefully that works more than once for me this year. I marked a bunch.  It is encouraging. It must have been tired out from coming up the ladderr because it was not very feisty until it saw the net.

I trolled up and down for about 4 hours. Tried spinner, Brad's cut plug, mini cut plug. No love except a few bass. I saw one fish caught.