Hooray for herring!
Just when we were feeling sad about no smelt in the Sandy River, and falling under the ominous spell of a “blood moon” eclipse (early Tuesday morning, just before clouds came to the rescue)…
Yay!
Yaquina Bay sang the blues!
“Blues” plural – shades of sky, aqua, turquoise.
Turquoise?
From Alaska to, well, Newport Oregon, nature has magically turned much of the Pacific Coast into its own version of a neon sign of spring.
Herring are spawning.
And when they do, billions of sticky whitish eggs stir up a palette of oily water colors any artist can envy.
It doesn’t last long, but while it’s on, hundreds of critters enjoy the spectacle.
An array of sea birds, migratory and otherwise, marine mammals, fish both finned and shelled and, especially, humans, flock to Newport.
Brian Stone of Salem, an avid angler and real estate photographer by trade, gets triple-duty from these precious couple of weeks (if only it will last that long!).
He took all the shots seen here and produced a video for his Facebook page.
On Monday, after checking the weather forecast, he strategically scheduled some photo shoots on the coast Monday afternoon and launched his 19-footer in the morning for an easy bar crossing and limits of lingcod and rockfish before work.
“I had to work at noon, but noticed it (the water) was really blue on the way out,” he said. “When I got back, it was even more amazing from the air.”
Stone managed to take a few extra minutes to jig some up “I had a bucket along…68 herring…Just finished packaging them for bait,” he said Tuesday.
Here are a few more shots taken from one of Stone’s drones (he has two) on “the way to work.”
Yaquina Bay isn’t the only coastal estuary hosting the herring spawn, but it’s the most reliable and also supports a limited commercial fishery similar to those along the coasts of British Columbia and southeast Alaska.
The latter, however, while also tightly controlled, is so heavily attended it often becomes a free-for-all case of bumper boats as purse seiners rush to cash in on the popular roe.
The sticky oil and omega-3 rich eggs are marketed in many countries for human consumption, both raw and cooked.
Social media typically shows a pre-spring array of aerial footage and photos of aqua-blue coastlines between Valentine’s and St. Patrick’s days.
Yaquina Bay isn’t the only estuary attracting herring.
Coos Bay is probably the next-best spawning site, followed by Tillamook Bay near Barview and Bay City, lower Nehalem Bay and sometimes in the lower Umpqua Bay.
They all have rocks, man-made structures (piers, jetties, dolphins, etc.) for the eggs to adhere to and, especially, eel grass, a prime herring egg maternity ward. (Hear that you oyster farmers tearing up Tillamook’s submerged pastures? These herring are supporting your commercial salmon fishing neighbor’s livelihoods.)
None, however, match the kaleidoscopic blues of Yaquina, from the mouth all the way up to Sawyer’s Landing.
Anglers like Stone are especially keen about stocking up on oily herring, among the very best baits for lingcod, rockfish, halibut and crabs.
However, spawning herring aren’t particularly useful when trolling for salmon because they’re not firm and tend to fall off the hooks when fished whole or cutplug.
Packaged herring are caught in schools by purse seiners away from spawning months, then kept alive and starved in pens. Starving causes them to become firm.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Facebook page has an informative video about the brief Yaquina herring show.
Anglers flock to the bay while it lasts, both in boats and even from docks and piers where they can.
In the lead photo, you may notice the long crabbing pier extending from the south shoreline between the bridge and the marina.
Enlarge it and you’ll see people, both crabbing and jigging.
Jigged herring, typically boated in multiples, are especially exciting for youngsters
The department also warns anglers they need a license and are allowed only 25 pounds of herring, advising the use of a scale. Without a scale, use the smelt rule of thumb – a quarter of a five-gallon bucket is about 10 pounds.
For details, spawning days in the past three years and other information, click on the link and scroll down to “Shore and estuary fishing.”
Meanwhile, back at Oregon’s Blue Lagoon…