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Features: White crappie are often confused with black crappie. White crappie have silvery bodies with blackish-green mottling forming narrow vertical bars on the sides. The forehead is more dished than in the black crappie. The dorsal fin has five or six spines and its length is less than the distance between the dorsal fin and eye. Habitat: White crappie do best in larger lakes and reservoirs and are more tolerant of turbidity and less dependent on aquatic vegetation than black crappie. They congregate around pilings, sunken logs, underwater brush, weed beds and rocks. White crappie begin life feeding primarily on
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Features: While their coloration can be variable, bull trout are generally gray infused with green. The body is covered with small white or pale yellow spots. Some spots along the side may be deep orange to red. The leading edges of the fins along their bellies are white. Bull trout, despite the common name, is not actually a trout but a member of the closely related char group. Habitat: Bull trout need cold, clean water to survive and are typically found in the headwaters of Oregon rivers. Spawning occurs in the fall when water temperatures drop below 50F. Techniques: Anglers
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Features: Plankton eaters, the American shad is the biggest of the herring species and averages 3 to 5 pounds. They are silver on the sides, and green to blue on top, with green shading on their fins. Habitat: Like other anadromous fish species, they spend most of their lives at sea and return to fresh water to spawn. Females release free-floating eggs that will be fertilized by later-arriving male, called buck shad, in a spawning frenzy. Eggs hatch in eight days and fry spend four to five years in salt water before returning to spawn. Shad often survive to spawn
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Features: California halibut are usually solid brown to black or mottled with light and dark patches on the eyed side and white underneath. They have the ability to change skin color patterns to blend in with the ocean floor. The eyes on a California halibut are most commonly on the left side but may be on the right side as they are on a Pacific halibut. The upper jaw in a California halibut extends to the rear of the lower eye, while on a Pacific halibut the upper jaw only extends to the front of the lower eye. In both
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Features: There's no mistaking a sturgeon. This primitive looking fish has large bony plates running down its back, a long flat snout, and a deeply-forked tail. It's also covered in rough, scale-less skin, similar to a shark. Though they can reach lengths of 20 feet, most white sturgeon rarely get over 10-feet long, which seems plenty long to us. Some populations migrate between the ocean and freshwater, but not necessarily with the same consistency as salmon or steelhead. These prehistoric fish may live well over 100 years, and may not mature until they are 25-years-old. Habitat: White sturgeon are primarily
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Features: Olive brown to red on back, silvery-red to pink on sides. Lower jaw is long and extends at least to the eye socket. Short second anal fin spine. These fish can grow up to 3 feet long. Habitat: Most common between 160 and 820 feet deep. Adults show a preference to stay close to their home swatch of rocky bottoms or outcrops. Technique: Their diet consists of invertebrates and small fishes – try a lure that mimics these sea creatures.
Features: Herring are silver with large scales. They are an important food source for larger fishes, sea birds and marine mammals. Habitat: Herring are frequently offshore in large schools but can be caught inshore in harbors and large estuaries during spawning. Technique: Herring are a schooling fish, and anglers can target them from docks, piers or boats in the bays. The most popular rig is a multiple-hook herring jig. Header photo by Steve, Flickr
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Features: These fish are olive green to dusky-brown with some light mottling towards their top sides. Their fin membranes are yellow. Habitat: Yellowtail rockfish will usually be found in offshore waters and often suspended over deep reefs and rocky habitat to as deep as 900 feet. Technique: Best success will be by first locating suspended schools of yellowtail rockfish in offshore areas during periods open for fishing offshore, and then working rubber tail jigs or shrimp flies through the schools.
![yellowtail_rockfish_noaa.jpg Thumbnail](/sites/default/files/styles/232x139/public/yellowtail_rockfish_noaa.jpg?itok=Px1-MkDO)
Features: Opah are also known as moonfish due to their round, laterally compressed bodies. These fish are very beautiful with pale red colored and lighter spots throughout resembling the craters on the moon, and orange-red fins. Opah grow to an average of 3-feet long and 100 pounds. Habitat: Opah can be found in temperate and tropical waters. They tend to be at depths of 300- to 1,000-feet during the day and come above 300-feet at night. Technique: These fish are rare in Oregon's waters and are difficult to catch by rod and reel, though they are occasionally brought in.
![opah_noaa.jpg Thumbnail](/sites/default/files/styles/232x139/public/opah_noaa.jpg?itok=4tuamMrS)
Features: These fish are dark green, gray or brown on top with an off-white belly and silver or tan sides. The underside of the head and fins can be pinkish. Long second anal fin spine. Silvergrays can be confused with bocaccio rockfish which have a short second anal fin spine. Habitat: Most commonly found between 330 and 990 feet though subadults have been found in kelp beds only 56 feet deep. Adults live over various rocky-bottom habitats. Technique: Work rubber tail jigs or shrimp flies through the schools containing these fish.
Features: These fish are dark blue or black with a light belly. In fact, they are closely related to blue rockfish, which are similar in appearance. The easiest way to identify a deacon rockfish is by the lower jaw that extends forward creating a significant underbite. Habitat: Like all rockfish, these fish use rocky reefs as habitat, but commonly suspend well up off the bottom. They are common down to 300 feet or more. Technique: They readily take both bait and lures. Deacon rockfish have smaller mouths than the black rockfish and are more likely to take smaller jigs and
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Features: These fish are dark blue or black with a light belly, a blotchy pattern on the sides, and no spots in the dorsal fin. The easiest way to distinguish a blue rockfish from a deacon rockfish is that the blues have jaws that meet together when closed. Habitat: Like all rockfish, these fish use rocky reefs as habitat. They are common down to 500 feet or more, but also come in to shallow areas. Blue rockfish will often suspend in large schools well off the bottom over rocky areas. Technique: They readily take both bait and lures. Blue rockfish
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Features: Green sturgeon have olive to dark green backs and a yellowish, green-white belly. They also have a green strip down the middle of their stomachs. This fish will grow to 7-feet long and, as with white sturgeon, have bony body armor along their backs and are covered in sandpaper-like skin. Habitat: Green sturgeon are bottom dwellers, travelling all along the Pacific coast of North America. They spawn in deep pools in turbulent freshwater from March to July. Technique: Green Sturgeon may not be targeted for retention or catch-and-release angling. Any Green Sturgeon caught incidentally, for instance during White Sturgeon
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![an image of two wading anglers holding nice rainbow trout from the Fall River](/sites/default/files/styles/232x139/public/2020-12/2660_fall_river_rainbows.jpg?itok=M6RhFu9M)
Features: Before spawning, sockeye salmon are silvery on their sides, white on their bellies, and dark blue on their backs. When spawning, their heads turn green with black on the snout and upper jaw, and their bodies turn red. They can be 24- to 33- inches long and weight between 5 and 15 pounds. Habitat: Many sockeye populations require a lake for part of their life cycle. Spawning may occur along lake shorelines or in stream gravels, but fry usually migrate to lake environments soon after emergence and occupy this habitat during their stay in fresh water. Technique: Sockeye salmon
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Features: Pacific cod are brown to gray on the back with brown spots or pale areas on the back and sides. They are lighter on their bellies. They have an elongated body with a square caudal fin, three dorsal fins, a chin barbel, and two anal fins. The anal fins are usually white-edged. Habitat: They are widely distributed in cooler regions of Pacific and adjacent seas- Japan to the Bering Sea and south to Santa Monica, California. They range in water 7- to 300-fathoms deep, but tend to hang out near the bottom of the water column, regardless of water
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Features: The Pacific sanddab is left-eyed, meaning both eyes are on the left side of the body. The eyed-side is dull light brown, mottled with brown or black, and sometimes yellow or orange. The blind-side is off-white to tan. They have an oval shaped body with large scales. They can grow to be 16-inches long and up to 2 pounds, though most weigh less than 1/3 pound. Habitat: As you probably guessed, sanddabs like to hang out on sandy bottoms. They are most abundant at depths of 20-50 fathoms, and are common in shallow coastal waters from British Columbia to
Features: These fish are silver when young, but darken and develop black spots on their tails and backs as they age. In fresh water, the males are red on their sides and develop a hump on their backs earning this species the common name humpback salmon. Females in fresh water are green on the sides with dark bars. Pink salmon are an average of 20- to 25-inches long and rarely weigh over 5 pounds. Habitat: Pink salmon spawn on odd numbered years and do so very close to saltwater, never going very far upriver. In fact, some pink salmon will
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![image of a cutthroat trout](/sites/default/files/styles/232x139/public/2019-12/cutthroat%20trout.jpg?itok=Xb2r-aCt)
Features: These fish have a dark blue or black body, mottled with yellow and with a broad yellow stripe running along their side. Habitat: The China rockfish dwells in relatively shallow water, 10- to 400-feet deep, on rocky reefs. Technique: They readily take both bait and lures. China rockfish will be caught in areas with lots of rocks and crevasses, and by keeping the bait or lure very close to the bottom.
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