FISHING IN ZANE GREY'S SHADOW - OREGON-MONTANA

Truly one of my favorite places on earth, Oregon's nearly 363 miles of pristine, public coastline is made up of diverse terrain that changes from rugged cliffs to evergreen forests to Sahara-like dunes and boundless sandy beaches. From Astoria in the north to Brookings in the southern tip, I have followed this shoreline as my chosen route from Up North to Baja..and many times reversed the direction ... Baja to Up North. I made my first Oregon Coast trip in 1973 after returning from Baja and it has become a yearly event we look forward to with great anticipation. Never boring, one is treated to a virtual smorgasbord of one-of-a-kind attractions, including scores of quaint towns with a penchant for serving up legendary seafood, (including a fellow Nomad's cafe in Newport..Sharks!)..plus historic lighthouses, breathtaking viewpoints, stunning state parks, a cornucopia of galleries and museums and a world class aquarium. Mild temperatures, dramatic scenery and a wide range of recreational activities.

Fishing & photogrqaphy are main concerns of mine anywhere I travel and this coastline certainly offers that! Here follows some photos of our September salmon trip on the Umpqua River at Reedsport, just north of Winchester Bay on the Oregon Coast. Interrupted to make a couple of quick trips to Mulege with some flood relief supplies. I hope you enjoy the photos.

Winchester Bay early morning fog. A delightful seaside village full of fishy things...my kind of place..

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We have fished this great salmon river 5 years running in August and September. We've done very well each time and you can bet I will be there again next season. I can't imagine a better spot for your RV than Coho RV Resort in Reedsport. Launch your boat, motor into your slip at the park marina, and walk back and forth to your campsite. Anyone who has had to launch and retrieve your boat every day knows the benefits of having a boat slip closeby.
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Even your less steady fishing amigos can navigate these sturdy docks and walkways.
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Of course no fishing trip is complete until we unleash these fishpointers.
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You can easily fish any way you want, but I recommend using the packaged 'BLUE' brand name herring as these are the right size (about 5 inchers). After finding the perfect size, pack them in rock salt to make em hard..stay on the hook longer and better. When ready to rig your bait snell, you use this handy herring cutting guage which makes just the right angle cut..just behind the gills. One slice, and feed the heads to the gulls. The angled cut makes the cut bait spin just right. Using a double hook snell, hook the lower hook once through the upper cavity, down the length of the bait to exit near the tail, the top hook is just down the body cavity and up thru the backbone out the back. You use about a 2oz. drop sinker above the snell about 4 feet. We usually fish in about 19 - 30 feet. Drop the bait/sinker to the bottom while slowly trolling downstream..or with the tide. Feeling the bottom, give it a little bit more and set the drag lightly. Stand by for that king to smack it...or the silver. Of course, fishing lures are productive, too, and we caught many with a weighted salmon-egg colored spinner. Caught the biggest king on one of those. Kings are fair game, while you must release all but the farmed silver..no wild silvers may be taken. Look for the small fin on the back....the adipose fin. If it is there, you have a wild silver (coho), if not, you have a legal salmon, a fin-clipped hatchery fish. Enjoy.
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You must thoroughly inspect each fish caught and release as needed. This is a tense business!..with many wilds released in the course of a day.
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Soon you will catch some legal ones and bring them to the ablest netter in the boat. Selecting a good netter is key to a successful salmon trip.
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Just a leettle closer now...OKAY...Scoop him now!
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SUCCESS....great netting job. This was my personal best of the day. Recipe to follow..
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Fishing the Umpqua..or any salmon river..is more than just the fishing or the fish. It's about being on the water with great companions and enjoying nature together, too.

This blacktail doe and fawn came down to the riverback to critique our fishing prowness. The fawn seemed to get a kick out of our antics.
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A white egret sits patiently awaiting it's breakfast from below his perch.
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Cormorants roosting in these pines for many decades have completely denuded them...a stark reminder to not stand underneath cormorant roosts!
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Fall leaves are coming...all too quickly it seems, but welcome nevertheless. My favorite season...Autumn
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Along with one of mine, mi amigo, RANDY, caught this fine king on a trolled red spinner. There were many afternoon tide changes where we would just cast to the rising silvers. Mostly all catch-and-release.
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Back at the marina we take advantage of the handy filleting station. Here Two Dogs does the honors for that evening's dinner.
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And the place of honor ...fresh grilled salmon steaks....damn good...mmmmmmmmm, I can still taste them. (Do they look good or what, eh shari?)
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Brown sugar, butter,crushed garlic,soy sauce....melt toShari and other fish lovers, here a great salmon baste recipe from Lisa, Two Dogs esposa.. Brown sugar, butter,crushed garlic,soy sauce....melt together, cool a bit and brush on salmon Hands down...these fillets were my best salmon dinner of my life.
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And not to go hungry..we also had a huge serving of fresh Umpqua oysters! The ones made in the cast iron pan were the best in the west...and the other pan was no slouch either. What a meal we had. Plus I topped it off with a fresh marionberry pie ala mode.....it was not a dieters dinner. I'll be jogging for a month or two!
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!! ALL IN ALL, THIS WAS ONE HELLUVA GOOD TIME.





[Edited on 10-4-2009 by Pompano]

Nice photos.

Speaking of Zane Grey, we stopped by his old cabin while on a rafting trip down the Rogue River.

Haven't been able to chase salmon this year but we just bought 6 from the local "native americans" that are smoking away in the Big Chief as we speak !!

Mmm good !!


Valley of the Rogue State Park campground is a nice stop on the way south/north with free wifi !!

Have you seen this one, Roger?

It's always been one of my favorites.

I've always seen the man with that grey mane.

Today I stumbled across this: how he looked before he started writing.

Bravo Igor!

I had indeed seen those photos before, but your post prompted me to research futher. Many thanks for getting me to find these new photos and interesting facts about one of my greatest childhood heros..Zane Grey. What an inspiration he was for me and my childhood friends.

His hardscrabble books perfectly described the mythical events of the Old Wild West for us young wranglers..and I grew up in the actual old west, although not quite THAT long ago!

And then there was the fishing! Ah...the stuff of legends.

Hah..when I was a tadpole getting ready for camping trips, I would stuff my pantlegs into my weathered little boots and pull my heavy gray woolen socks up over the legs..put on my plaid woolen shirt and tuck it in..buckle my belt....just like Zane Grey in the photos.

My Dad would come upstairs to my room, never smile (but today I know he was smiling inside) and say,

"Okay, Zane, let's get going. Don't forget that hat."
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How I wished I could have been a rower and angler on the Rogue River of Zane Grey.
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THE MIGHTY ROGUE
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In 1925, he commissioned three dories for a fishing expedition down the lower Rogue River. Grey loved the Oregon wilderness so much that he purchased land on the river’s banks, built a cabin, and wrote a book there, Rogue River Feud, published in 1929.
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“… the sight of this long deep boat, sharp fore and aft, with its beautiful lines and its strong frame, brought that old forgotten joy surging back.”.

Zane Grey rowing one of the three dories that he had made for his 1925 trip down the lower Rogue.
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Following are images from the 1925 expedition and quotes from Zane Grey’s ode to the wild Rogue.
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Famous western author Zane Grey shoots the Rogue River Rapids at Lower Black Bar during a 1925 fishing excursion. He later memorialized the Oregon wilderness in his novel Rogue River Feud.
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“It was a river at its birth; and it glided away through the Oregon forest, with hurrying momentum, as if eager to begin the long leap down through the Siskiyous. The giant firs shaded it; the deer drank from it; the little black-backed trout rose greedily to floating floes.” —from Rogue River Feud
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Although Zane Grey is pictured here (twice) with salmon, and although he was an accomplished fisherman, according to family lore he never actually caught a fish on the Rogue, says his great-grandson Eric Grey.
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Pictured: Zane Grey poses with a local miner.

“He had a leathery, weather-beaten face, homely and hard, unshaven and dirty, yet despite these features and the unmistakable imprint of the bottle, somehow far from revolting. Perhaps that was due to the large, wide-open, questioning blue eyes."
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In September 1926, Zane Grey built a rustic cabin on the site with the help of local river guide Claude Bardon. It took the men three months to build the one-room log cabin, using timber from the property. Zane Grey’s cabin was built the same way that old miners had built their cabins for hundreds of years.

“And the river glided on in an endless solitude, its eternal song, low and musical, near at hand, droning sweet melody from the rapid at the bend, and filling the distant drowsy aire with its soft thunder.”
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Pictured: Zane Grey (left) and family at the Winkle Bar cabin
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Zane Grey’s rustic cabin at Winkle Bar is still standing today. The site is about half a day’s hike and nearly a day’s float from the put-in at Grave Creek, and visitors are welcome. I took a mail boat there twice.. humble and seeking inspirational thought...and it came. Bring cold beer!
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Some things I had forgotten until reading them again: Grey had built a getaway home in Avalon, Catalina Island, which now serves as the Zane Grey Pueblo Hotel, . Avid fisherman as he was, he served as president of the Catalina's exclusive fishing club, the Tuna Club. As a coincidence, the same club that an old friend belonged to, who had sold me his Baja house so many years ago. I still have his membership plaque as a keepsake in the casa after more than 40 years now.

I've kept all my original books and memorabilia...and if anyone has this book, I would love to add it to my bookcase..."Tales of Fresh Water Fishing"..a non-fiction work.

Zane Grey's saltwater adventures are well known..such as the times he had on this boat out of Miami.
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Looks a little familar..

My Gawd, holding this monster all day would wear me out...well, after a few hours of fun anyway.



Yes, even Australia was his fishing grounds..and downunder poses with these two cuties.



SALUD ZANE...LIVE LONG..LIVE WELL.

Yea, Oregon is a fantastic state! All the way from the Pacific to the Snake with the Columbia thrown in for free and lots of wild country in between. The high desert down in southeast Oregon is sorta rough.

I daresay that for a lot of us, Zane Grey was/is..good for us.

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Most of these books I had..and have..and they kept me reading late into many a night with coyotes yipping out in the breaks. There were a few other authors that could capture a kid's imagination though....My childhood buddy, Randy, and I built a kinda-raft and floated the Little Missouri River after reading this one:

"We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed—only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all—that night, nor the next, nor the next."[b/]

(Huck and Jim, Chapter 18.)


I kinda think Huck and Tom would have loved the Umpqua and the Rogue, too.
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So far, none are banned in Montana high schools, many are highly recommended and some are required. Some classes assigned Twain and I believe all students were assigned assigned To Kill A Mockingbird and watched the movie. And, being Montana, A River Runs Through It got the same treatment.

But schools are getting hacked with social/political/religious axes from all sides.

But the animal lovers are all over Hemingway now. Not a fashionable writer these days. Probably same goes for Grey.

So I won't repeat the first-hand stories an old time Rogue River angler told me about Zane. We'll leave him on his pedestal.

Hi Don

Hemmingway 'fishing' in Havana

With a Tommy gun.






[Edited on 10-2-2009 by Pompano]

Quote:

Originally posted by Pompano With a Tommy gun. [Edited on 10-2-2009 by Pompano]

Looks like he's at least waiting for the fish to jump.

He was leveling on flying fish.

On Grey and Hemingway

Another American sportsman,my father who prowled the Okanogan drainage and BC from the west to his favorvite Clark Fork river to the east and everything in between,at our place on Pend Oreille. lake Ida.

Some of my earlyest memories was trolling the mouth of the Clark Fork where it emptyed in the Pend Oreille and stream fishing,the Pack river was also a favorite being it was so close to home in those days was full of trout,dad and his buddies caught some big ass brutes, no C&R in those days we just ate them all........

Igor,

Your mention of Steinbeck's novel, 'Cannery Row' was coincidental to a sight I saw recently on the Baja Road.

I came upon these tanks and it immediately reminded me of the movie version, where the Debra Winger character built her make-shift home in the boiler tank.

I loved John Huston's narration of the wild birthday party. A pretty good movie... ...Cannery Row.
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Condos, anyone?
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