Eric Parliament, left, Sequoia McCall, Josh Hannan and Nate Bond all qualified for the Oregon Classic by placing in the top three spots for their weight division at the Western Oregon Qualifier in Coos Bay on Saturday. The Pilot/Jef Hatch

Divided into age groups and weight classes, the four members of the Brookings Youth Wrestling club who qualified for the tournament are Josh Hannan – intermediate, 60-pounder, first place; Sequoia McCall – schoolboy, 112-pounder, second place; Nate Bond – novice, 90-pounder – third place; and Eric Parliament – schoolboy, 95-pounder, third place.

Girls basketball coasts to victory over Vikings

In the opening quarter of the BHHS girls basketball teams game on Tuesday night, they hit four 3-point shots and held the Siuslaw Vikings offence to just two points. From the first quarter on it was all a downhill cruise on the Bruins’ way to a 49-25 victory.

Steve Moore from Visalia, Calif. was fishing with Joe Whaley of Joe Whaley's Guide Service at Riprap on the Chetco River last Tuesday when he caught this 17-pound, 14-ounce steelhead by side-drifting puffballs and row. The Pilot/Larry Ellis

It is no secret that for the last few months, the crabbing in Crescent City Harbor has been absolutely off the charts. Local-area residents in southern Oregon have been making regular pilgrimages to the popular crabbing bay and have had very little problem getting their limits of jumbo Dungeness crab.

But California needs to take a serious look at how their fishing regulations are being written. In the last two weeks, some Brookings residents expressed to me a concern that the Pineapple butterfly crab trap was declared illegal to use in California.

That prompted me to call Englund Marine in Crescent City last Thursday. When I expressed this concern to one of the attendants, he told me to turn to page 48 of the fishing regulations and take a look at “gear restrictions”.

Mallory McDonald, left, gets fouled as she goes up for two of her team-leading 21 points in Tuesday night’s loss. The Pilot/Jef Hatch

In the first quarter of the Brookings-Harbor versus Douglas girls basketball game, the Trojans’ 16 points came because they were able to knock down shots from the free-throw line and one player, senior Tori Bond (10), was on fire from behind the three-point arc. 

And while the Lady Bruins weren’t playing with their typical intensity, they held the lead 17-16 at the end of eight minutes.

Editor’s note: The fish column published on Jan. 5 was a repeat. This is the column that was meant to be published. 

The New Year is starting off on an upbeat this year, with steelhead entering the Chetco and Rogue Rivers in fair quantities and giving anglers a lot to hope for in 2013.

The Chetco continued improving on January 2 and 3, with January 3 being totally light’s out for anglers side-drifting roe. We’re talking about fresh chrome-bright steelhead. Soon the river will be too low, slow and clear to effectively drift-fish or side-drift. So when all other techniques can’t be deployed, that’s the time when back-trolling plugs come into their own glory.

Chris Castineau, of Gasquet, Calif., catches a steelhead on Jan. 1 on the Chetco River, side-drifting roe past Loeb Park. The Pilot/Larry Ellis

I’ve been thinking about writing this article for some months now, but now because I’ve heard far too many stories about people finding that their crab traps have been emptied when they had left them overnight in the ocean, I’ll address it.

Maybe the pots just didn’t catch crab — maybe they did. But be that as it may, as far as I know, it is still against the law for other people to tamper with another person’s crab trap in the ocean.

I didn’t make a big deal about this issue at first, but now I’ve heard more than 30 stories from folks who I consider to be reputable people claiming to have had their pots emptied by poachers.

On Christmas Eve, Shawn Bridges from Coquille was plunking a Spin-N-Glo from the bank just upriver from Social Security Bar on the Chetco River when he whacked this 14-pound steelhead. The Pilot/Larry Ellis

Once again, the Chetco is proving itself to be a world-class river. Every time I visited one of the local plunking spots last week, I either saw a steelhead being caught, or arrived shortly after one was landed. This kind of action is a fish photographers dream.

That is not to say that everybody on the riverbank has been hooking up, but there is enough action going on to keep people from packing it in early and heading for the barn.