Spearfishing For Smallmouth?
GARY VONDEROHE TOOK a deep breath and sank below the water. As the breathing tube of his snorkel followed him into a cold, mossy hole in Oregon’s Coquille River, the weekend bass angler and weekday biologist for the state’s Department of Fish & Wildlife found himself in an unusual position: spearfishing for smallmouth bass. At the bottom of the river, along its sandy flats and beneath rocky outcrops, Vonderohe aimed a speargun with lethal intent.
As he emerged on the surface with a harpooned smallmouth in tow, the scientists at Oregon Fish & Wildlife’s Charleston district office got to work. They were examining stomach contents from the bass, newcomers to the Coquille River system, to
