November Fishing Very Good in Northeast

November Fishing Very Good in Northeast

Photo: Steve Brustein of Portland, ME caught this cod off Newport while fishing for tautog last November November is a great recreational fishing month in the Northeast. Species to target include tautog, black sea bass and, for the past two years, recreational cod fishing has been very good off Rhode Island. Cod fishing was so […]

A Time to Get Chummy

A Time to Get Chummy

Photo: Jackson Curran with a colorful Kilchis River chum salmon from October 22nd, 2016 Chum salmon remain the big question mark in my opinion. As you’ve likely heard me gripe about before, when I first entered the professional field of pursuing fish (I’m a 20-year fishing guide), chum salmon were one of the first wild […]

Beef Up the Bunker Numbers

Beef Up the Bunker Numbers

Photo: Teresa Gibson and Justin Rieger holding a spotted seatrout Prioritize the Food Web and Menhaden Will Recover Coast-Wide While we drift-fished for spotted seatrout, the sound came from astern, not unlike the tearing of newsprint. I cocked my head in time to watch hundreds of beefy bunker (Atlantic menhaden) arch from the glassy surface […]

Celebrate Outdoors

Celebrate Outdoors

Photo: Elkhorn Mountains in Eastern Oregon, October 2016 It may not happen every year, but when it does, it’s pretty special. Some sort of unique opportunity for me to go to a different part of the state or a different part of the country to recreate. Good fortune this week sent me east, about as […]

Bounty on the Bay

Bounty on the Bay

Photo: 68 crab joined this 10 fish limit (eight coho, two Chinook) from the waters adjacent to Tillamook Bay on September 14, 2016. This is the time of year when I get to write a little bit about how lucky I am to live on the West Coast, let alone Oregon. It’s the time of […]

The Fishing Season is A-Changin’

The Fishing Season is A-Changin’

Breaching humpback whale in front of the Hammond Boat Basin in mid-August of 2016. How ironic is it that this was the site where Free Willy was filmed, jumping over the very jetty seen in the background here? It’s been over a year now since the Marine Fish Conservation Network began broadcasting our blog posts […]

The Future of Our Fisheries is Us

The Future of Our Fisheries is Us

Photo: Melissa Peterson & Bob Rees with a Chinook salmon Soon after I started guiding professionally, I noticed a new level of consciousness come over me, particularly about what was going on around me in the natural world, where I suddenly became a much bigger player in the direct interaction with and impact on the […]