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Youngsters Skip School to Learn and Absorb Oregon's Outdoor Legacy - Hands On by Bill Monroe The Oregonian, October 19, 2013

TILLAMOOK -- Dawn glowed above a thin, 37-degree ground fog.

The sky was cloudless, the water glassy; only the hums of outboard trolling motors broke the stillness. Even blazing orange and yellow leaves couldn't rustle.

And not a single shot could be heard across the flooded Wilson River marsh as duck season neared the end of the first week.

When October gives you sunshine. . .

. . . Go fishing.

"Hunters on Alsea Bay told me they didn't do all that well on opening day," said Brandon Reishus, waterfowl biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. "Too much commotion. Too many fishermen."

Indeed, an early slug of salmon into coastal bays had everyone abuzz until the torrential rains drew the fish upriver. But with this week's strong tide series, fish are building back into bays and with clear weather (and dropping rivers) in the forecast for the foreseeable future, schooled salmon are staging again coastwide from jetty to tidewater.

"Whoa!" shouted Grant McOmie of Forest Grove Thursday as his rod doubled over. A 23-pound chinook rolled on the surface a few feet astern as he handed the rod to my granddaughter, Kayla Grant of Oregon City. Cameraman Jeff Kastner of Beaverton leaped to his feet and began filming.

Kayla, 14, and host Bob Toman's grandson, Cobey Pentecost, 13, of Milwaukie, were allowed to play hooky and help McOmie produce an outdoor-heritage-passing-it-on-legacy segment for "Grant's Getaways," his weekly television show on KGW-8. It will air Saturday (Oct. 26) at 7:30 p.m., when it also goes live online.

After several very long minutes (hours for a grandparent), Toman netted the fish. Later -- with barely minutes remaining before our noon deadline to quit and head home -- Toman hooked a second, nearly identical (but slightly larger) chinook and handed it to Cobey; then he shepherded Kayla through her first netting job as Kastner captured the day's second signature moment.

"I never get tired of this place," said Toman, who hosted yet another successful hooky player and doting grandfather on Friday. "Every day down here is different."

As Bob and I add to our years and memorable moments, I'm more and more often reminded of Bill Cosby's monologue, in which his young children berate him for not being kind to them like their grandparents. . . giving them cookies; taking them to fun places; defending them.

"Those are NOT the people I grew up with," Cosby said he told his kids (the emphasis on NOT was in his original script). "Those are old people, trying to get into heaven!"