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Giant chinook breaks record
12/23/2002

Associated Press

When Don Shangle caught a 57 1/2-pound fall chinook salmon in the lower Rogue River this August, his catch eclipsed anything Rogue anglers had caught in at least three decades.

But the big fish-buzz only lasted a week.

Seven days later, someone caught a 65-pounder. And as the fall season progressed, the Rogue yielded so many huge chinook that Shangle's salmon of a lifetime has become just a footnote in perhaps the most incredible string of chinook catches ever recorded in salmon-happy Southern Oregon.

The recent run of fall chinook salmon here sported so many unusually huge fish that 2002 became the Year of the Chinook, that rare time when the best fish stories were not about the ones that got away.

In a five-week span, three anglers on the Rogue and nearby Chetco rivers set chinook fly-fishing world records that hadn't been touched since the 1980s. All three of those fish out-weighed record chinook caught in Alaska, the supposed big-salmon capital of North America.

In one short season, a river made famous by Zane Grey for its steelhead became the hot spot to hook a huge chinook.

"It used to be that a 40-pound fish got a lot of attention," said Sam Waller, a Gold Beach guide and a Jot's Resort tackle-shop clerk. "This year, it had to be at least 50 pounds for anyone to even notice."

Most notable of all is the 71 1/2-pound chinook that Grant Martinsen of Grants Pass caught Oct. 21 in the lower Rogue. The fish, which Martinsen almost cut into steaks before weighing on a certified scale, was one of three posted this weekend by the International Game Fish Association as pending world fly-fishing records from the Rogue and Chetco, near Brookings.

"This is all a bit more than I expected," says Martinsen, 57. "All I expected was a few good dinners, not a world record."

But why so many super-salmon in 2002?

Russ Stauff, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist in Gold Beach, said a possibility is that the New Year's flood of 1997 swept away the Rogue chinook eggs except for those laid in the deepest and most sturdy of gravel egg nests, called redds.

This higher concentration of genetic mega-salmon spent their five ocean years amid some great feeding conditions and limited chances of getting caught by sport and commercial anglers. After five years of gorging themselves in the ocean, those fat flood survivors headed upriver to spawn in 2002.

"I think it's likely that combination of factors," Stauff says. "Truthfully, though, we really don't know exactly why we're seeing these extraordinarily huge fish."

Regardless of whether sport-anglers buy Stauff's explanation, future fishermen will have to measure their successes against the 2002 chinook.

"They're going to talk about the big fish from this year for years to come," said Jim Dunlevy, a Medford-based fishing guide whose clients this year caught the seven largest fish of his 13-year guiding career. "I know I'll be telling these stories."

And these stories are not typical fish tales. They come verified by photographs, tape measures and certified scales.

hope we have a run like that again next season.

I have a friend who has a commercial fishing boat in Alaska. He told us about a world record king being caught by a commercial boat this summer that was 100+ pounds. IT WAS STOLEN BY A GAMIE!! who then took it home and ate it! I also saw this story in the paper. He actually took it off the boat later that day when nobody was around. They had weighed it onboard, but had it on ice until they could get it to some official scales and it was gone the next morning.

Anyone else heard that one?

I know something happened out of Sitka this summer along those lines ... maybe Jo-Jo can fill us in on it ...

The Sitka incident was a scenario where a commercial boat had a potential world record fish, and decided to keep it in cold storage at the facility it off loads it fish. That night two people went in and stole it out of the refer it was in. They were seen by some guy going in late at night but the guy did not see them come out, and did not think anything was going on illegal just some fisherman going to their boats. Why would you not secure that fish in a more secure location like on their boat, under the covers, in their bunk, until the morning came along???

i have a fiberglass repo of a 100 pound chinook, that was taken out of alaska this year. the rumor is that it came from a commercial boat off the kenai river. the guy i got it from doesnt have that much info on how he came up with it.