PORT ORFORD — Jerry Stoopes sits in his waders on the open tailgate of his pickup truck, munching a candy bar and lamenting the loss of one of Oregon’s best fall public-fishing opportunities.

Stoopes, a 78-year-old wood carver, normally trades his chisels for a fly rod and goes after the Elk River’s fall chinook salmon from late October through November.

Most days he can be found among the scores of anglers lining the sandy bottom of the Elk River mouth, intercepting salmon as they fin over the river’s shallow bar and into a series of beach holes.

But not today.

"The fish should be there, but they’re not," Stoopes says.

Advertisement

That’s why Stoopes is on the nearby Sixes River, doing his best to salvage his fall.

What nature has giveth Stoopes and dozens of other Elk River faithful, it has taketh away this year.

A rare early rainstorm coupled with a series of strong tides has completely altered the lower Elk and abruptly changed Stoopes’ Thanksgiving fishing as well.

The river now pours into the Pacific more than a half-mile farther south than before, bypassing the series of public fishing holes favored by Elk River faithful each fall. Now, the chinook don’t stop their upriver surge until they hit private lands not accessible to most anglers.

That leaves Stoopes no choice but to hike up his waders and walk into what few out-of-tidewater holes he can fish on the Elk or the nearby Sixes River, which is one ridge to the north. And he needs to refuel with nuts and candy to withstand the enormous tug-of-war it takes to land a big chinook on a fly rod.

"You know, this is my season," says Stoopes, a 20-year Elk River resident. "This is when I do all my fishing. And with the mouth of the elk effectively gone, there’s not much else to do but try upriver in holes before the driftboats come."

Like a boom town after a gold discovery, the first sign of chinook at the mouth of the Elk historically reverberates its own Eureka scream among anglers throughout the West. They travel to the westernmost tip of Oregon, park their rigs at Cape Blanco State Park and either march or drive ATVs south about two miles down the publicly owned beach to the Elk bar.

The mix of wild and hatchery-bred chinook create a legendary fishery here, when the salmon are present. And the Veteran’s Day week is one when the fish almost universally show up.

Regardless of water conditions, A series of high tides around Veteran’s Day create a false freshet that triggers a mass rush of chinook upstream after high tide.

These set-your-watch-to-it conditions have drawn fly-casters from as far away as Oklahoma, meeting up with other fly-fishermen from around the West to form an old friend’s week.

But it’s not just a fly-casters’ show.

Because of the chinook’s presence and relative aggressiveness, bait-casters free-floating anchovies often out-fish the streamer flies. Even neophytes with a stout rod and a flashy spinner can hook 30-plus pound chinook, making it truly one of those few egalitarian angling offerings the West Coast can muster these days.

"Brighter fish, fresh fish and more fish. That was the draw," says Paul Garratt, an Elk River angling veteran from Port Orford. "And anybody could go there, whether you hoofed it or drove it. You could go there."

In recent years, three holding holes for fresh chinook have given ample casting areas for all comers, especially during the peak of the run that typically occurs around Thanksgiving week.

But free-flowing rivers like the Elk, which are banked by ever-changing dunes, are as dynamic as they are dramatic.

Historically, the Elk mouth of the elk was as hard to pin down as a shifty politician. Almost every year, the soft Elk River Spit sands would give way in a different location, changing the look and feel of the estuary.

"Historically, it changed pretty often," says Todd Confer, a fisheries biologist at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Gold Beach office. "That was before Oregon beach grass helped stabilize the dunes."

Roots of the introduced beach grasses helped forge a stronger wall against the rain-swelled Elk, and a more predictable tidewater ensued.

For almost a decade, the Elk waters have flowed west to the beach, then turning north when they hit a sandy dune merely 20 yards from the sea. After flowing close to a mile due north, they would hit a clay bluff and take an immediate left turn into the Pacific.

But that changed Nov. 2, when a combination high flows from a heavy rain and a hefty tidal surge eroded that 20 yards of sand. The river no longer turns north once it hits the beach. It now flows straight west into the Pacific.

"If you get that combination of all that water on one day then, bam, it’s out," Garratt says.

Conventional wisdom says, well, just head farther south and start fishing the new mouth.

But the new mouth is flat, shallow and rip-roaring fast for more than 250 yards inland.

There’s no place for the in-coming fish to pause.

"If they don’t stop, there’s no reason to fish them," Stoopes says.

But whether this marks a one-year blip in the Elk River mouth’s story remains to be seen.

After a similar blow-out during the December 1996 flood, the river returned to its old self the following fall.

Summer surf surges could rebuild the dune in time for the next Veteran’s Day. And all could be well.

Until then, anglers like Stoopes will all be forced to elbow each other for room in the thin upstream holes, lamenting the great open-air fishing the Elk River mouth no longer offers.

Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com.