It is a lot of fun to catch Dungeness Crabs and all of Oregon’s estuaries offer wonderful opportunities for a day’s adventure.

If you wish to visit Astoria and try your luck in the Columbia River estuary, consider the adventure just a part of a longer overnight coastal stay.

If you do, consider Ft Steven’s State Park your base camp for the weekend adventure. The trails and campgrounds at Ft Steven’s are quiet at this time of year. The summer crowds have disappeared and the beaches, Coffenbury Lake and the wetland areas are all yours to explore.

Ft Steven’s Park Manager, Mike Stein, explained:

“People are looking to get away from the larger crowds and we specialize in that at this time of year. We’ve got over 4,000 acres to spread across, plus miles of beachfront and 9 miles of paved trail, plus another 7 miles of nature trail.”

If you lack a trailer or an RV, no need to worry, Ft Steven’s boasts 15 yurts that make the camping easy.

“Yurts are wonderful camping opportunities, explained Stein. They offer a domed platform with canvas sides and top. They have furniture in them: a futon sofa and a bunk bed. They’ve proven to be very popular because they reach out to the visiting public that’s unable or lacks the time to invest in a tent or RV.”

It is time well spent at Ft Steven’s State Park. Stein noted that during the Fall season, it’s a parkland all yours to explore:

“That real sense of solitude is what draws people here and keeps them coming back regularly.”

Grant’s Getaways – South Slough Estuary from Travel Oregon on Vimeo.

Once you travel the Cape Arago Highway that skirts a lonesome and lovely section of the Southern Oregon coast, it may become a road once taken that you’ll never want to leave! It leads you past so many intriguing sights that you may well wonder, “Why have I never come this way before.”

Fourteen miles southwest of Coos Bay, drop in at Sunset Bay State Park and meet Oregon State Park’s Manager, Preson Phillips, who told me: “It’s one of those trails that just keeps beckoning you on – it’s just a matter of how much you want to hike or do at the time.” Make time to wander Sunset Bay State Park, a jewel of a campground that offers 139 sites for tent, trailer or R.V. – plus eight yurts. People who come to camp enjoy a spectacular beachfront that seems framed for the movies – it has been a special destination park since 1942.

If you own a spirit of adventure, you’ll no doubt relish the hiking trail that leads little more than a mile to nearby Cape Arago State Park. Many visitors are surprised to find a front row seat of sorts – a wooden balcony that overlooks Shell Island. Marty Giles, who owns an eco-tourism business called, Wavecrest Discoveries is often on hand to explain the behavior of hundreds of seals and seal lions that just plain loaf across the rocky island and Simpson Reef.

You will want to make time to travel five miles further up the Seven Devils Road to visit a piece of Oregon coastal paradise that’s been preserved since 1974. The South Slough Estuarine Research Preserve offers a visitor center that introduces you to the area with varied multi-media and hands on exhibits. There’s more than 5,000 acres in South Slough Preserve – approximately 1,000 of that is the slough itself, then the rest is protected upland forest or marshland. There is plenty of elbowroom to explore at South Slough Preserve and there are lots of trails that take you out and about.

One of my favorites is called the Hidden Creek Trail – a little over a mile in length that offers a wonderful wooden boardwalk that takes you out over a wetland area where the freshwater creek meets the sea. In addition, there are many stunning views along the trail, including those from atop a two level deck that looks across a marsh area to the Winchester Arm of the slough.

The preserve is open throughout the calendar year, but South Slough Preserve Education Director, Tom Gaskill, says some seasons offer unique surprises for the hearty traveler.

“I’m a birder, so for me this time of year in fall is the beginning of the most exciting part of the season. We have flocks of waterfowl that pass through here and a lot of the over wintering forest birds too – there are many species that we never see here during the summer, so it’s exciting in the winter months to see some of these migratory species that spend summers in Alaska and Canada but they’re here for the winter.”

Grant’s Getaways – Fishing for Kings from Travel Oregon on Vimeo.

Despite the wild and wet weather of the past few weeks October is prime time for “King Fishing.” King Chinook Salmon, that is! There is a simple reason that they are called “Kings.” – after all, the big fish can tip the scales at fifty pounds or more.

Despite downpours and sea squalls, I recently joined a fishing party on Tillamook Bay where we tried our luck for the king of the salmon. If you’re eager to catch a “King,” you arrive at the Garibaldi docks an hour before sunrise.

A longtime Oregon fishing guide, John Krauthoefer, told our huddled group of anglers: “It’s the early bird who gets the worm, men! This has become such a popular fishery that if you wait and go late, you might miss the bite.”

Krauthoefer added that it had been a long salmon fishing season. I knew exactly what he meant because we had joined John on two earlier salmon fishing trips. Our first adventure was in July – on the ocean – where the summer Coho salmon bite was awesome. We joined John again in September when the Coho and Chinook season slipped into high gear at “Buoy 10” on the Columbia River.

Now, in mid-October thousands of salmon are migrating through dozens of estuaries like Tillamook Bay and swimming into their home rivers.

As we motored out of the marina, Krauthoefer noted that it had been a wet and wild weather week and that several big storms had pumped up a huge ocean. As we approached the ocean, we watched huge swells rise and fall – sometimes fishing boats would briefly vanish as the swells passed by. The bar was closed – no one would be heading out onto the ocean today.

Birt Hansen, a longtime fishing partner, had joined John and me on Tillamook Bay where scores of other anglers had also gathered – we were excited, anxious and ready for action. After all, low tide was about to turn to flood and it might serve up the biggest of all the salmon species called “King.”

John’s a big believer that a plug-cut herring makes the best bait when fishing for Chinook. He makes a bevel cut with his razor sharp knife just behind the herring’s head to make the bait spin when it’s trolled in the water.

We dropped our lines over the side and John began a slow troll with the tide. As the tide turned to flood, signs of salmon life began to appear as nearby anglers hooked up. It happened to us too! Suddenly, I had my hands full with a hard charging king that had decided to head back to sea.

Krauthoefer put his motor in gear and followed the salmon. After a twenty-minute tug of war, the gleaming 20-pound salmon came to the net and it was scooped aboard.

It can be a he challenge to fish along the jetty – where the swells and the waves and the tide can combine to change conditions in a heartbeat. We wore our inflatable PFD’s (Personal Flotation Devices) at all times.

Sport-anglers catch more than 12,000 King salmon on the bar, the bay and the five rivers that flow into the bay on their way to the sea. So, special rules are in place to protect the Kings from over harvest. An angler can keep one King per day and five per season from Tillamook Bay or its rivers. In addition, anglers can also keep a hatchery Coho salmon.

Information on purchasing an Oregon Angling License

Sport Fishing Regulations (pdf)

Locate a fishing guide here

Information on Safe Boating Practices

This week, I head for the big, broad Columbia River in this week’s Grant’s Getaways to follow a silver rush – a silvery rush of salmon swimming up the river past a sports fishing mecca called “Buoy 10.”

It’s a trip full of tips, tactics and techniques to catch salmon safely on a stretch of river infamously called “the deadliest river bar in the world” for its number of shipwrecks, capsizes and deadly accidents.

On the Astoria dock at a coal black 4-am, it was hard to say “Good Morning” to my fellow anglers who had gathered – with their lunches, thermoses, rods and reels in hand – to enjoy a daylong fishing adventure. After all, shimmering stars and a sliver of a gleaming moon held tightly onto night. But barking sea lions and an inch of daylight squeezing just above the eastern horizon said otherwise.

So did our guide, John Krauthoefer, who told our small group, “Daylight boys – won’t be long – so let’s button things down, snap up the PFDs and get moving.” We boarded his 25-foot fishing boat and began to slowly motor across the broad-shouldered Columbia, with high hopes for a successful salmon fishing trip.

Daylight revealed that a dense fog bank had taken over the lower river. If we wished to pass through it, we had better be prepared.

“My GPS (Global Positioning System) tells me that there’s a green buoy right there – and if you peer into the fog, you can see we’re just coming up on it.”

I wondered aloud about the fishermen who didn’t have GPS on their boats. He quickly and firmly noted, “Stay on the dock until the fog clears. You’re much safer – it’s not worth a fish to risk your life – it really isn’t.” We slowly trolled and kept eye on the boat’s GPS screen, which showed our position in relation to the shipping channel and the surrounding shorelines.

This part of the Columbia River is a busy stretch for inbound and outbound ships. We certainly did not want to get caught in the middle of it on a busy morning of ship traffic. All too quickly, John’s second sense told him something was just not right.

“Ok – reel in – we’re going to move,” he ordered. He wasted little time and moved us a few hundred yards further away from the shipping lane. We heard the ship before we saw it. And what we saw was gigantic – a massive, two hundred foot long shadow of a ship that moved across the area we had just been trolling our baits.

I looked at my fishing partner, Trey Carskadon, who shared the same obvious expression of relief – then he smiled. Carskadon added, “You can just get absolutely turned around in this kind of a fog, so GPS certainly is a must, but even a compass would help. Plus, you better know how to use it. It is essential equipment and I wouldn’t come out here without it.” Carskadon is the chairman of the Oregon State Marine Board and he is a boating safety expert when it comes to the fickle Columbia River.

He told me that even in summer, the river conditions often change in a heartbeat: “Right now the danger is obviously with the fog, but when the wind comes up and you have a lot river traffic out here, it can get downright dangerous. People assume it’s like a lake out here, most days it’s anything but that.” That much was certain and we’d just experienced a good lesson of that fact – but there was another certainty on the river this fine August morning: the river is full of fish.

“Oh, it’s a big Coho,” yells John as Trey’s rod doubled down and the line screamed off the reel.

“A nice one,” noted Carskadon. “Feels all of ten or twelve pounds. A nice hatchery fish too.”

He could tell it was a hatchery Coho salmon because it was missing its adipose fin, a small half moon shaped fin that’s located behind the dorsal fin. The adipose fin is clipped off all hatchery salmon babies at the hatchery where each fish is raised.

More than a million Coho salmon are forecast to pass through the estuary over the next six to eight weeks. In fact, right now the angling daily limit is two salmon, but beginning September 1 the limit rises to three Coho salmon a day. Not all of the Coho that anglers catch from the Columbia are hatchery fish. Many are wild fish that must be released back into the river.

John said there’s a “right way” to do that. “First, don’t ever bring them in the boat and don’t ever lift them out of the water. Don’t just dump them out of your net either. If you can, try to get hold of them by the tail and let them swim out of your hand. If you just dump them out, they often die because they’re so tired from the fight, so let the fish rest in your hand and then open your hand so they swim right off.”

As the fog evaporated with the warmer morning, the flooding tide built and hundreds of anglers converged at the famous river marker called “Buoy 10.”
But boat wakes, a strong push of current and a rising wind meant that it was a bit like fishing in washing machine – and you want to definitely avoid the spin cycle.

It was a day to remember – one that began on a dance with danger, and provided lasting memories and valuable lessons of exciting times in the Oregon outdoors.

Information on purchasing an Oregon Angling License

Sport Fishing Regulations (pdf)

Locate a fishing guide here

Information on Safe Boating Practices

Day Two: Oregon Coast

As a child growing up in Oregon, I was a fisherman by default. I loved the solace and anticipation that came with the pursuit of the – very – occasional lunker trout hiding in the high lakes of Central Oregon. This love of putting bait in water has recently been rekindled, as my four-year-old son caught his first fish a few weeks ago using the very same pole and reel I wielded at his age.

Day two of On the Road with Oregon Bounty takes us out on the high seas to go fishing with charter boat skipper Lars Robison. This summer I went out of Depoe Bay with Lars in search of rockfish, and within a few hours we’d nearly limited out. A mere few hours later, I was home sautéing our catch and serving it over couscous with a roasted pepper coulis.

The fish in Lars’ blood was passed from his father, who started the family business in the early 1930s, rowing clients around Siletz bay in search of salmon and Dungeness crab. After attending school on the Oregon Coast, Lars earned his skippers license at 18, and bought his first charter boat. He’s operated Dockside Charters since the 1980s, and now runs 45-foot and 50-foot charter boats. He has the weathered face of a man who’s loves the ocean, and a quiet, friendly demeanor that erupts every time he yells “fish on!”

Lars is the fisherman mentor in our Oregon Bounty “Cuisinternship” contest, which will give seven lucky people the chance to win an all-expenses paid trip to Oregon for an ultimate foodie getaway (that’s right, you could spend a week as a winemaker, chef, brewmaster, cheesemaker and chocolatier, distiller, rancher or fisherman). Check out a video about Lars and learn how to enter the contest.

The Oregon Coast is full of culinary discoveries, like the Oregon Albacore tuna fish and chips right off the boat at Bowpicker in Astoria, the Oregon Oyster Farms east of Newport, or the Tu Tu’ Tun Lodge in Gold Beach. Go to Travel Oregon’s new culinary travel website to plan an Oregon Coast getaway.

Check back on Wednesday… “On the Road” is heading to Southern Oregon to make cheese and chocolate. Cheers!

It was the day after Thanksgiving 2004 when I decided to hunt my first geocache in the dunes. Two reasons primarily, curiosity and needing to burn some extra holiday calories! This particular geocache was a short distance off a popular trail running from Highway 101 straight to the beach. It involved leaving the open sand to climb a small “island” of trees. It was tucked away under some thick brush near a small opening among the trees and brush that had obviously been used as a primitive campsite. Here’s the note I left in the cache logbook:

Great one for walking off Thanksgiving Day indulgence! Found it okay……….I got such a good workout getting there I came home and downed another piece of pumpkin pie!

What I discovered on this trek was an ecosystem that was way more diverse that I ever imagined – who knew? I suppose the biggest surprise was how many different dune features I encountered along the three-mile round trip hike. Starting with a 1/4 mile stroll through pine thickets with a “mini-dune” in the middle I moved quickly into a large expanse of open sand staying atop the high dune ridges. After a mile and a half I approached and climbed the mountain island of trees hiding the cache. I took a slightly different route back dropping down into the low areas between the dune ridges where smaller pines, brush and hearty grasses and sedges grew. And this hike only took me half way to the beach! Many more dune features awaited discovery on future treks.

I was hooked! This was the first of many more dune hikes over the next five years. I would find something new every time: foredunes, hummocks, deflation plains, estuaries, lakes and seasonal ponds. These are a few of the features I would come to learn about with each new excursion. Who knew?

Depending on the time of year, I would encounter many kinds of flora and fauna. Spring time would showcase tiny little strawberry plants with tasty – if not sizable – treats. Budding willows and little plants with yellow flowers filled low areas. A variety of birds and critters can be seen including eagles, herons, deer, rabbits…even porcupine! I’m not even covering the half of it! If not for geocaching, I would likely have never set foot in this beautiful and complex environment.

Exploring these great coastal dunes has risen to near the very top of my favorite things to do. Strolling through Oregon’s mature conifer forests in the fall is still king, in my book! ……..Well, that’s another story. Stay tuned.

Mike Davidson is a career forester and an outdoor enthusiast who uses the high-tech treasure hunting game of geocaching to lead him to the great variety of outdoor experiences in Oregon. Keep up with his latest hiking and geocaching excursions on his Geocaching Oregon blog. You can also follow him on Twitter.

A huge rush of Silver Salmon – also known as Coho Salmon – is swimming along the Oregon coast this summer. Oregon fishery managers peg the “run” of coastal Coho at more than a million fish this year.

Licensed anglers – with rods and reels in hand – are trying their luck on the ocean waters as the best fishing of the summer season gets underway. There is an old fishing adage that goes, “You should have been here yesterday!” The assumption being – the fish are always more eager to bite – the day before you decide to go fishing.

So when I stepped aboard John Krauthoefer’s (Firefighter’s Guide Service) boat at Garibaldi Marina for a day’s adventure on the big blue Pacific Ocean and heard: “The fish are here – no doubt about it,” noted the longtime Oregon fishing guide. “Every place we went yesterday we had a bite…there were three guys in the boat and we dumped the fish in and were done 35, 40 minutes later…it was great fishing!” His report sounded fantastic and yet my heart sank a bit!

That’s because it has been my history that whenever I hear such a solid report of angling success that occurred the day before – it is usually followed by nearly the opposite when I step aboard the next day.

While Krauthoefer fishes the ocean each summer, he insisted that he hadn’t seen ocean Coho salmon fishing like the past month in a long time. As we sped across Tillamook Bay toward the ocean he was convinced that our fishing adventure would be every bit as successful as the day before.

As it turned out, our combination of tactics and techniques added up to one of my most amazing ocean Coho salmon trips ever. He added that the summer forecast for Oregon’s Coho population is pegged at more than a million fish.

Anglers are allowed to keep three hatchery Coho per day.

Fish splashed and nets flew from boats all around us as we trolled within sight of Twin Rocks, just north of the entrance to Tillamook Bay.

You can tell the Coho are hatchery fish by the missing adipose fin; that’s a half-moon shaped fin located immediately behind the dorsal fin. (The adipose fin is clipped off at the hatchery when the fish are babies.)

Not only is there a greater abundance of Coho, but the fish are bigger than usual – on average two pounds larger – for this time of year.

There were plenty of keepers to go around and we ended up with Coho limits all around.

For more information on Fishing Licenses and Regulations

Those of us “bitten by the bug” invariably come to realize that one of the most rewarding benefits of geocaching is discovering new and interesting places the search takes us. If not for geocaching, we would never find some of these places. Here is an example:

Recently, a buddy and I took a whirlwind geocaching road trip from the coast to Central Oregon, looping south to the Klamath Basin and back – in two days!

We began looking for caches in the vicinity of Trail Bridge Reservoir along the McKenzie Pass-Santiam Pass Scenic Byway. We found two caches in that quiet and serene spot. One had been placed there a few days prior and we were hoping to be the first finders – but alas, we were a day late! There were no fishermen about that morning, which made for an easier hunt. If not for geocaching we would not have known there was an access trailhead nearby to a rugged section of the McKenzie River Trail.

Later, we explored the Sisters area to look for a couple of caches in the surrounding pine forests. What a contrast to the thick, green coastal forests we left just five hours ago! One cache was placed by a forest fire fighter and had a Smokey Bear theme to it – an appropriate cache, since we are both foresters.

Over the course of the next few hours our geocaching hunts brought us to a quaint old German cemetery, the spectacular Crooked River Gorge, the Badlands OHV trails and the volcano-marred landscape of the Newberry Crater National Monument. If not for geocaching we would never have enjoyed the breath-taking views of this unique landscape from the top of a cinder cone!

Day two began early as we headed south to the Klamath Falls region. Along the way, we took a short diversion west to find a cache at Diamond Lake. There we were treated to a gorgeous view of Mt. Bailey with lingering clouds on its snow-covered peak – and nearly carried away by mosquitoes!

By early afternoon, we found caches at a wonderful viewpoint overlooking a crystal clear spring with pastoral views of snowy peaks like Mt. McLoughlin. Also in the area was the Upper Klamath National Wildlife Refuge famous for its diverse population of birds and an old logging museum at Collier State Park. If not for geocaching we would never have walked down to the headwaters of Spring Creek and seen that gorgeous blue-green water bubbling out of the ground.

The final leg of our geocaching spree brought us to the heavily timbered Lake of the Woods along Highway 140, in addition to the crossing of the Pacific Crest Trail and ending with a few quick caches in the Medford valley near the unique Table Rock mesa butte formations.

While this particular excursion allowed us to explore a large area of terrain over a short period of time, geocachers can also discover new and interesting places without leaving their hometown. In fact, many have found after geocaching a while, that they didn’t know their local area as well as they thought. I have lived in the Coos Bay area for over thirty years, but had never explored the nearby coastal dunes, until I became a geocacher. But that’s another story…..watch for it!

Mike Davidson is a career forester and an outdoor enthusiast who uses the high-tech treasure hunting game of geocaching to lead him to the great variety of outdoor experiences in Oregon. Keep up with his latest hiking and geocaching excursions on his Geocaching Oregon blog. You can also follow him on Twitter.

It is a fact of Pacific Northwest angling life that few fish species that swim in our rivers or streams can match the massive size and strength of the prehistoric fish called “sturgeon.” Sturgeon can exceed ten feet in length and weigh more than four hundred pounds, so few would argue that the fish provide a terrific angling challenge.

At this time of year, one of the best places to try your luck with hook and line to catch a sturgeon is the Columbia River estuary near Astoria. That’s the setting for this week’s “Grant’s Getaway” adventure – fishing for a dinosaur of a fish species – Columbia River sturgeon. You see, sturgeon have been swimming across the planet’s waters for more than a hundred million years – long before the age of dinosaurs.

Each Oregon licensed angler can hook and release or land and tag a legal limit of one sturgeon between 41 and 54 inches in length.

Find a Fishing Guide

Oregon Sport Fishing Regulations (pdf)

This week, we’re headed to the Columbia River Estuary near Astoria where we’ll try to catch a fish that can reach a size of 12 feet and weigh hundreds of pounds. Grab your hook and line, we’re going sturgeon fishing!