Latest Sport fish Stories

By ALLEN THOMAS Jerry Fritz of Portland holds up a coho salmon caught near Lady Island near the mouth of the Washougal River. WASHOUGAL - Chinook and coho salmon releases in the Washougal River will be reduced by 70 percent or more as part of a hatchery reprogramming effort to boost wild fish recovery in lower Columbia River tributaries. Releases of fall chinook in the Washougal will be cut from 4 million to 900,000, while coho plants will drop from 500,000 a year to 150,000. State...

By Will Elliott >Lake Erie The first solid sign of fall fishing showed up this past week with a few nice steelhead trout hitting at 65-foot depths off Cattaraugus Creek. Rick Miller at Miller's Bait & Tackle heard of a couple smaller steelies stealing into mouth-of-the-creek waters. "If we get some more cool nights, the runoff from upstream at Gowanda and Springville should cool waters down here and have trout in the creek in a week or so," he said. He also noted a much better take on...

By BRIAN GEHRING By BRIAN GEHRING Scott Hobbs remembers when there were boats lined up on both sides of Highway 200 in Pick City and his gas lanes were full. And that was before he turned the key to open his bait and tackle shop in the morning. That was more than a few years ago, when salmon fishing on Lake Sakakawea was in its heyday. But with nearly a decade of drought and dwindling water levels, the salmon fishery has suffered as much as the parched plains of the prairie. But so far...

By Bob Frye High Point Lake is the kind of place you fish only if you really mean to. Located near Mt. Davis -- the highest point in Pennsylvania -- in the mountains of Somerset County, it's far off the beaten path. Still, it gets considerable fishing pressure from anglers all across southwestern Pennsylvania. If there's one problem with the 338-acre lake, though, it's been the sometimes carpet-like cover of vegetation within it. "The weeds are really bad there," said Scott Gates of S&S...

Virginia's deep-water bottom-fishing scene seems to get increasingly interesting every year. The fishery already has produced world records for blackbelly rosefish, snowy grouper and tilefish. But it also produces pretty strange fish, some of which anglers struggle to identify. Trips in the past few weeks have produced such a fish. And two catches are under consideration as world records. The species is a Darwin's Slimehead. It looks like a giant goldfish and is sometimes referred to as an...

By DAMON TATUMDAMON TATEM BEACH, PIER AND BRIDGE FISHING Corolla to Coquina Beach Pier anglers along the northern beaches of the Outer Banks should have good luck this week catching a wide variety of small fish and possibly a few big ones. Quite a few small croaker and spot should be landed on the incoming or high tide when the water is murky. Small bottom fish tend to move inshore close to the beach from deeper water to feed when the tide is rising. Some pigfish, sand perch, a few...

By DAMON TATUMDAMON TATEM BEACH, PIER AND BRIDGE FISHING Corolla to Coquina Beach Surfcasters trying their luck in deeper sloughs along the northern beaches should catch a mixture of small bottom fish this week if the weather is good. Quite a few small spot, small croaker, mixed-sized sea mullet, sand perch and possibly a pompano or two should be easily landed on bloodworms or fresh shrimp. Fishing should be the best on the rising and high tide.If the weather is hot, seas are calm and...

By DAMON TATUMDAMON TATEM BEACH, PIER AND BRIDGE FISHING Corolla to Coquina Beach Surf fishing along the northern beaches of the Dare coast should be fairly productive this week if the weather is good. Fair numbers of small spot, pinhead croaker, sand perch and pigfish should be landed from deeper sloughs along the beach. Bloodworms and fresh shrimp should provide the best action. The best time to fish will be on the incoming and high tide. These small bottom fish move inshore close to...

California forestry officials Wednesday rejected an emergency petition to protect coho salmon in coastal streams, even though federal fisheries regulators said it would help the imperiled fish. The petition before the state Board of Forestry comes as California salmon are at historic lows, requiring regulators to suspend all salmon fishing on the coast this year -- a first. The request came from California Trout, the Sierra Club and the Environmental Protection Information Center. It targeted...

Experts are still debating the cause of the drop in tuna catches across the Indian Ocean over the last two years "” which continue to threaten the region's $6 billion industry.Conservationists blame years of unchecked exploitation while processors say climatic conditions may be driving the fish deeper away from their nets.Tuna catches in the Indian Ocean dropped by about a third last year to their lowest level for more than a decade.Tuna brings in roughly a quarter of the global...