Record-breaking Salmon Landed

Here’s a real big fish story.

A Grants Pass man made fly-fishing history this week when hooked and landed a fall Chinook salmon that officially weighed 71-and-one-half pounds.

Grant Martinsen’s salmon – captured on the lower Rogue River – is more than 8 pounds heavier than the all-time record for fly-casters set 15 years ago on northern Oregon’s Trask River.

But Martinsen avoided the press by immediately heading on a hunting trip in northeastern Oregon.

Known more for large numbers of salmon than for their individual sizes, the lower Rogue has collected a glut of salmon in the 50-to 60-pound range this year, including a 66-pound fall Chinook caught in August by a bank angler casting a spinner.

Biologists attribute the growing Chinook to a combination of cutbacks in ocean commercial seasons and excellent feed conditions in the sea.