Fishing the Siletz River

Strome County Park and the Siletz River

Fishing the Siletz River has been on my "To Do List" for a long time.  It's a big and beautiful river AND most of it is far from people.  This spring I put it on my calendar to fish in the fall when there would be an opportunity to fish for Chinook salmon, steelhead, and cutthroat trout.  And because it would involve a long drive in the middle of nowhere, I invited Cory and his car along.

    

Cutthroat caught at Jack Morgan Park on the Siletz River

Cory met me at Strome Park early in the morning.  Driving up from saltwater, there were tons of people fishing the river - trolling for Chinook.  We tried for a little bit and saw nothing.  We didn't stay too long because the Fire Department showed up with their Search and Rescue Crew because someone had run their boat onto a log in the river and had spent the night on his boat.

Myself (above) and Cory (below) fishing at Jack Morgan Park on the Siletz River

We drove upriver to Jack Morgan Park which was just far enough inland that the fog had burned off and it was beautiful.  The river was gorgeous here too.  We saw a few Chinook salmon on their redds here and I caught a beautiful cutthroat trout.

Ojalla Bridge at Ojalla Park and the Siletz River

After a bit, we drove upriver to Ojalla Park.  Again, we saw Chinook salmon, but didn't catch anything.  From there, we drove up to the town of Siletz and had lunch at the Siletz Road House.  Upriver from there, the main road and the river go their separate ways and you find yourself on logging roads.  I drove us up to where Elk Creek enters the Siletz River and we fished there for a bit.  Cory caught a couple rainbow trout here.  I honestly didn't fish too long because the weather was just so nice and I knew that it being October, the weather wouldn't last long much longer.  Anyway, I spent most of the time at this stop sunbathing on the bedrock.

Elk Creek (above) where it flows into the Siletz River (below)

We didn't have enough time to visit the ODFW fish ladder a ways upstream from here, but we did drive the rest of the way up the Siletz River, up over the top, and dropped down the Luckiamute River to Corvallis where we were meeting Cory's dad and his dad's wife for dinner at Block 15.  All said and told, really excellent day of fishing and adventuring!