Editor’s Note: Chinook salmon fishing is again off-limits in the Coquille River and estuary in 2023 due to continued low run forecasts. However, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife will allow limited harvests of wild coho salmon for a limited time and area starting September 15, thanks to an improved coho run in the forecast. See ODFW’s regulation updates here.
Southern Oregon’s Coquille River offers some of the best hatchery winter steelhead runs on this part of toast, it’s one of the few places in the state where you can catch lunker striped bass, and these days it’s loaded with smallmouth bass.
The bay at Bandon offers reasonable odds to catch perch, flounder, rockfish and Dungeness crab, among other saltwater species.
But what the Coquille River and Bay don’t offer in abundance these days is salmon. Even more than most systems along the Oregon Coast, salmon runs have plummeted in recent years.
In response, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) has been enacting emergency closures throughout the Coquille River Basin salmon fishery entirely to try to preserve the few Chinook and coho salmon that make it back.
Let’s look at some of your best fishing opportunities in the Coquille River and its bay.
Coquille River Steelhead Fishing
The Coquille River’s hatchery winter steelhead fishing may start in earnest in late December but catches tend to peak in January or February, with fair fishing sometimes continuing into March.
While a few anglers have figured out how to catch these fish in holes in the 40 miles of tidally influenced mainstem below Myrtle Point, the great majority of Coquille steelhead are landed in the forks.
The South Fork Coquille has long been the workhorse for steelhead productivity, receiving the most steelhead smolt plantings every year. As a result, anglers tag more than 2,000 adult steelhead caught in this fork during decent winter seasons.
On this fork, nearly all hatchery steelhead are landed from the forks just below Myrtle Point up to Powers, a distance of more than 20 road miles.
You’ll find much of the prime access a little farther upstream after you turn onto the Powers Highway (Highway 542). The reason is that the juvenile fish are planted at both Beaver and Woodward creeks to acclimate to the stream before heading out to sea for a couple of years to grow big and strong.
Beaver Creek is located a little over a mile upstream from the Coquille Myrtle Grove State Wayside near Gaylord.
Woodward Creek enters the Coquille almost six miles upriver near Powers. There is a launch in the Baker Creek area below Woodward Creek, but the river below that launch is more technical and potentially dangerous for non-expert drift boaters.
A better option for most drift boaters would be to launch at Beaver Creek.
Other good spots to launch or take out a drift boat are at the Myrtle Grove state wayside or at a launch known both as the 6.6 Launch or ODOT Launch, on state property located 0.6 miles up the road from Milepost 6 on the Powers Highway, ODFW officials said.
Downstream, there is a rather primitive boat access at Hoffman Wayside at the confluence of the Middle Fork Coquille.
Boaters also can make the long drift to Bryant’s Ramp in Myrtle Point, but beware that it can take a long day to get there.
Several spots are available for public bank access is available at locations on the South Fork. Among them are the previously mentioned mouths of Beaver and Woodward creeks and Myrtle Grove and Hoffman waysides.
Another worth mentioning for bank angling is the Baker Creek site. Although upstream from tricky water for boaters, this location offers plenty of access to about a mile of river bank owned by the Oregon departments of Fish and Wildlife and Transportation.
Use Baker Creek Road, just under three miles down the road from Powers, to gain access to a gravel bar where you can park and walk either direction to fish until you come to private property signs.
Other spots are near the roadway, but knock on doors to ask permission before crossing any private property to fish.
After the South Fork, the North Fork is the other reasonably good place to catch a fin-clipped hatchery winter steelhead on the Coquille River system. The North Fork joins the South Fork just downriver from Myrtle Point and can often produce hundreds of tagged steelhead in a winter season.
The best spot to fish the North Fork is typically at Laverne County Park, located on Fairview Road, more than a half hour’s drive upriver from the Myrtle Point area but a little closer to Coquille. Here you will find 2-3 miles of public access with day use and camping (fees charged).
Just as importantly, the North Fork’s entire allotment of steelhead smolts have traditionally been released in this area, so returning adults tend to make a bee-line here and then hang around.
ODFW manages the East and Middle Forks of the Coquille for wild steelhead, and there are some big natives returning here.
On the East Fork, there is an opportunity to harvest a modest number of wild steelhead, but again reports of anglers tagging fish from this fork are modest at best. Be sure to read the regulations (including wild steelhead harvest rules) before fishing.
Frona County Park provides public fishing access on the East Fork. Access is minimal on the Middle Fork unless you find a nice property owner to let you in.
Even with a limited wild harvest on the East Fork and a few hatchery fish making wrong turns, overall retention of steelhead is low in the forks that are not seeded with hatchery smolts.
Catches on the mainstem (where it’s largely tidewater) also are historically low compared to the most productive spots on the South and North forks.
Catch More Steelhead
Anglers catch steelhead with a variety of methods, including standard and side-drifting techniques, float fishing with jigs or bait, casting lures such as spoons and spinners, and back-trolling or back-bouncing with lures or bait.
Read our complete guide to steelhead fishing techniques and tips.
Find more great steelhead fishing streams in Southwest Oregon and the South Coast.
Coquille River Bass Fishing
While winter steelhead have been the biggest draw on the Coquille River, probably the easiest fish to catch here are smallmouth bass.
Someone dumped these non-native fish in the river years back, and the smallmouth bass have taken a huge liking to the river in much the same way they thrive in the Umpqua River farther north.
While the rise of smallmouths makes for easy fishing, fisheries biologists say it has come at a steep price. Salmon already face a number of challenges up and down the Oregon Coast, particularly in the form of poor ocean conditions, but the addition of salmon smolt-gulping bass has put the Coquille’s runs into far more jeopardy.
In fact, ODFW has all but declared war on the Coquille River’s smallmouth bass population, which is heaviest on the mainstem and in the lower reaches of the South Fork.
The agency, in recent years, has opened the river system up to spear-fishing and bait-fishing to help encourage people to harvest as many bass as possible. These regs have been enacted as emergency rules; the last we checked, they were put into effect from June through October, when bass fishing is at its best.
There are no limits on the number or size of bass anglers can harvest here.
Check out ODFW’s map of boat launches and bank access in the river sections with the most smallmouth bass.
Catch More Smallmouth Bass
Smallmouth bass here will fall to a variety of presentations, including soft plastic grubs, worms and creature baits, spinners, crankbaits and a plain ol’ nightcrawler.
Choose the right lures, baits and tactics to catch more smallmouth bass.
Discover the top smallmouth bass fishing rivers and lakes in Western Oregon.
Coquille River and Bay Striper Fishing
Striped bass are another non-native species in the Coquille River and Bay, but they’ve been around these parts and providing some exciting fishing for well over a century.
The Coquille, along with the lower Umpqua and Smith rivers farther north, are the major strongholds for striper fishing in Oregon. You’ll find them in a few other systems, including Coos and Siuslaw bays, on occasion. Like salmon, striped bass are anadromous, spending parts of their life cycles in both fresh and saltwater.
Striped bass start moving up into the tidal reaches of the Coquille River from early spring to early summer to spawn.
You may be able to intercept some of the largest stripers during the spawning run. These fish will spread throughout the tidewater area, which on the Coquille is especially long and stretches up to above the town of Coquille.
ODFW has reported that the area around the Rocky Point Boat Ramp (about 2 miles out N. Bank Road) and around the small community of Riverton farther up into tidewater have been good spots to try striper fishing.
Anglers continue to catch stripers throughout summer and into the fall in both the wider bay and up into tidewater. It’s also when the weather is the nicest on the famously soggy Oregon Coast.
Striped bass aggressively hunt baitfish and also eat crustaceans such as crabs and shrimp.
Casting and retrieving lures such as Rapala, Rat-L-Trap and swimbait baitfish imitations is a popular tactic. Top lure colors include silvers and blues to resemble herring or other common West Coast baitfish.
Where allowed, fishing with live baitfish, cut-baits, crabs, and other natural baits is also effective. Nightcrawlers can even do the trick upriver.
Look for stripers to be holding around structures and along banks. But also look for baitfish boiling on the surface, as the stripers may be blitzing them underneath and ready to strike a well-placed lure.
Chances are good that gulls will spot this buffet before you do, so watch for tell-tail signs of birds circling and diving and move just within casting distance before launching your lure into the melee.
Coquille River Trout Fishing
Oregon Coast streams are home to native cutthroat trout, and the Coquille River is no exception.
Resident trout may tend to be found higher up in the system during the warmer months, because the lower river tends to run a bit warmer and favors smallmouth bass.
Above Coquille River Falls, in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, there are wild cutthroat and rainbow trout in in a small-stream fishery that requires some hiking in spots.
Spring and fall are generally good times to fish for resident cutthroat trout, which readily strike smaller lures such as spinners or fly fishing. I tend to catch plenty on Rooster Tails in reddish or brownish colors because they look like crayfish skittering away, and cutthroat do like their little freshwater lobsters.
Larger sea-run cutthroat trout enter Oregon streams in mid-summer, often first being caught in tidal zones starting sometime in July or August. They will work their way back up into free-flowing parts of the river as the water cools in the fall.
Casting or trolling lures and flies can be productive for sea-run cutts.
Catch More Trout
Read our overview of simple trout-fishing techniques and other tips.
Coquille River Shad Fishing
American shad make an annual run into the Coquille River each spring and are often still biting into the early weeks of summer before the run peters out.
Drifting or casting with shad darts, small rubber jigs (like crappie jigs), and small spoons is typically effective.
The main key with catching these hard-fighting oversized cousins of the herring is finding a school of them, and those schools can move around.
I like to fish them in free-flowing sections of a river. They like a bit of current, but they don’t always venture as high up into the system as other species.
In the Coquille River, look for shad to concentrate above the town of Coquille and on up to around the Arago Boat Ramp.
Catch More Shad
Check out the best shad fishing rivers in Oregon.
Learn about the tactics and lures you’ll need for shad fishing.
Coquille Salmon
As mentioned above, at this writing, the Coquille River and Bay are entirely closed to salmon fishing.
We hope to be able to update this article later on to report better opportunities for the Pacific Northwest’s most iconic gamefish, but given current conditions we’ll keep this brief.
I checked the catch reports, and it appears the last year that fall Chinook salmon were harvested in numbers over 1,000 was 2017, and the runs declined between then and the full closures more recently. This for a river and bay that used to routinely pump out thousands of salmon for anglers.
Your opportunities for legally harvesting coho salmon (silvers) here have been even more bleak, stretching back a few more years.
If you catch a salmon incidentally while fishing for something else, you must release it.
When ocean regulations allow, boats leaving the Port of Bandon can intercept salmon outside the bay.
Ocean seasons are set seasonally and are impacted by a range of factors that stretch along the Pacific Ocean far beyond Bandon, so if you have a seaworthy boat, just be sure to check for the latest rules before fishing.
Catch More Salmon
Check out our huge variety of salmon fishing resources in Oregon, including top places to go.
Learn the top techniques that catch salmon in Oregon and beyond.
Coquille Bay Fishing
Like most Oregon estuaries, Coquille Bay offers a range of saltwater fishing and shellfishing option.
Rocky jetties are like magnets to structure-loving game fish, including various species of rockfish, greenling, perch, flatfish, and lingcod. The Coquille’s jetties aren’t long, but they can provide pretty good opportunities for shore anglers.
Greenling and perch are fairly easy to catch using smaller hooks and baits such as sandshrimp and pieces of clam meat.
There are a handful of perch species, some of which come farther into the bay to spawn or feed. Some prefer rocks and pilings while surf perch are most active in the waves.
Starry flounder and other smaller flatfish species come into the bay and are mostly found on sandy bottoms but may be caught from the jetties or fishing and crabbing docks.
Rockfish and lingcod are larger predators. Black rockfish and other closely related species are much like freshwater bass and will aggressively bite lures that look like smaller fish, including soft plastic grubs or swimbaits on jig hooks.
Gear up similar lures in larger sizes for lingcod, which are most likely to be near shore in the winter and early spring. Live or fresh dead baits such as greenling and herring can also be quite effective.
The Bandon South Jetty Park provides access to, you guessed it, the South Jetty at the west end of Bandon. Access the north jetty through Bullards Beach State Park.
Guides, charters and larger private boats head offshore for more access to lingcod and rockfish as well as seasonal opportunities for coho and Chinook salmon, Pacific halibut and albacore tuna.
Always be sure to research the open seasons and other regulations, in addition to having the appropriate knowledge and equipment to fish offshore.
Crabbing and Clamming
Coquille Bay is among the 10 best crabbing bays in Oregon.
There’s a long crabbing and fishing dock right on the waterfront in Bandon as well as plenty of room to spread out if you have (or rent) a boat. You can launch right downtown.
Crabs can be caught from the mouth up to about the Highway 101 bridge, but your best odds for success are in the lower bay right near Bandon itself. The water is saltier and more to the crabs’ liking down low.
Be careful not to set your traps too far out between the jetties. It can get rough in there, especially during outgoing tides. Better to stay from about the inland base of the jetties up to the main waterfront in Bandon for safe conditions with lots of crabs.
Crabbing is popular in the summer but actually best in the fall, when crabs are both numerous and in prime condition after recovering from their annual molt over the the spring summer.
Coquille Bay isn’t quite the bay clamming mecca you’ll find north in Coos Bay, but it has some good opportunities, mostly for softshell clams.
Popular digging spots for softshells are in the Bandon National Wildlife Refuge on the east side of the bay, off Riverside Drive NE. Another spot is around the southern end of the Hwy 101 bridge.
Be sure to have a shellfish license for crabbing and clamming.
Planning Your Trip
The Coquille River is in a beautiful stretch of the Oregon Coast, about a half hour south of Coos Bay but more than four hours from Portland.
Bandon makes an excellent base camp if you’re looking for a charming coastal town with everything from hotels to nearby camping, plus restaurants and whatever else you need. It’s right on the estuary but a farther drive to the best steelhead fishing.
Upriver, the towns of Coquille, Myrtle Point and Powers sit along the river banks and offer various supplies and services for your trip if you plan on focusing strictly on freshwater fishing.
Bullards Beach State Park just north of Bandon and Laverne County Park on the North Fork Coquille River outside of Coquille are among several campgrounds in the vicinity.
Oregon Resources
ODFW Weekly Fishing Report
ODFW Trout Stocking Schedule
Oregon Fishing Regulations
National Weather Service