Fishin' Magician: Dave Graybill

I have returned from a fantastic trip to the Oregon coast.

I was fishing with my friend Richard Robinson, who lives in Rockaway Beach, and was joined by my other buddy Dennis Beich, retired Director of Region 2 with the Department of Fish and Wildlife. All of us had been on the tuna fishing trip out of Westport.

I had an unusual experience this time, my fourth trip down to fish the Nehalem River-clear skies and sunshine. I have been drowned with rain on previous years, but the weather was spectacular, and so was the fishing for the first two days.

The coho are pouring into the river from the ocean and were eager to take our herring. We got fish up to 15 pounds and released many smaller fish.

In fact we got a little too ambitious the second day. We were tossing back coho of 9 or 10 pounds, figuring we would get bigger ones. Then the bite died and we came in short of our limits.

Oh well, lesson learned. The third day we tried Tillamook and although the bite started off good, the weather change, which included rain and wind, brought heavy weeds and our baits were continually fouled.

We got two nice fish, though, before we gave it up.