Coos River Basin Report

Coos River - Coos Bay, OR (Coos County)


by OR Department of Fish & Wildlife Staff
8-27-2025
Website

Anglers have been catching rockfish around the jetties in the lower Coos Bay estuary, but you may need to move around to several spots to find actively biting fish. Best fishing is typically near slack tides with good fishing one day and fair fishing the next. A jig fished with a twister tail trailer is always a good option to catch bottomfish.

The 2025 daily general marine fish bag limit is 4 fish plus 2 lingcod with no retention of yelloweye or quillback rockfish. There is a one fish daily sub-bag limit for canary rockfish as part of the general marine bag limit. Anglers are allowed to harvest cabezon with a 1 fish daily sub-bag limit as part of the general marine bag limit.

The salmon daily bag limit in the Coos Basin increased from two to three fish in aggregate, one of which must be a hatchery salmon.

Anglers can harvest wild Chinook (maximum of 10 for the season), hatchery Chinook, and hatchery coho. Wild coho cannot be retained until Sept. 13, when only one wild coho will be allowed per day (up to three per season). The limit increase applies to areas currently open to salmon fishing in the Coos Basin.

Salmon anglers are reporting some success catching Chinook but the location of the fish biting in the bay has changed almost daily. Anglers have reported catching lots of coho in between the jetties but the majority of these are wild coho and can't be kept in the bay until Sept 13. Striped surfperch can be caught around the jetties and red-tail surfperch are being caught along the ocean beaches like Horsefall Beach. Anglers have the best success fishing with sand shrimp near the bottom.

Trout fishing is restricted to fishing with artificial flies and lures in streams and rivers above tidewater through August 31. The daily bag limit for trout fishing in streams is 2 trout over 8 inches per day. Water temperatures in the large rivers are warming up where fishing will be best in the mornings.