Out & About

OUTMEDIA

New resource for Idaho trail

Hiking, biking, horseback riding and riding a motorcycle or ATV on the Idaho Centennial Trail should be easier to plan with the help of a new Web site and blog maintained by the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation.

The 900-mile Idaho Centennial Trail, conceived in 1990, is a combination of trails and routes that winds the length of Idaho from Murphy Hot Springs on the Idaho-Nevada border to the Upper Priest River on the Idaho-British Columbia border.

Web site: www.parksand recreation.idaho.gov.

Blog: http://idahocentennial trail.blogspot.com.

OUTRAGEOUS

Baja visit not required

Tuna angler Jim Fuller was cheered on the sportfishing boat out of Brookings, Ore., in August when he landed a dorado, a warm-water denizen more apt to be found off Baja Mexico than the Pacific Northwest.

Known also as dolphin-fish and mahi mahi, dorado are a brilliantly colored and flat-faced fish of the open Pacific. Capturing one of these dolphin-fish amid the cold-water confines of the Pacific Northwest is akin to discovering a Picasso at a garage sale.

Only one other confirmed dorado has been landed at an Oregon port. That was in July 2007.

Occasionally, as warm currents draw tuna north toward Oregon, other southern species follow. Last year alone, albacore anglers had bluefin tuna, thresher sharks, yellowtail jacks, and that lone dorado documented in their catch.

OUTEAT

Ham and egg: a conservation story

Three pigs mysteriously released last year on Lake Michigan’s Snake Island reportedly ate all 2,500 eggs produced by the island’s nesting cormorants.

If fishermen were happy there, you can imagine the elation among Columbia River anglers if such an illegal act occurred on East Sand Island in the Columbia estuary, where unnatural habitat produces cormorants that consume more than 10 million juvenile salmon smolts a year.

Combined with the 5.5 million smolts consumed by Caspian terns, the birds nip fish runs in the bud by eating 20 percent of the salmon and steelhead smolts, according to Oregon State University researchers.

OUTLOOK

Best fishing times

Lunar tables from the U.S. Naval Observatory. Be fishing at least one hour before and one hour after peak times. Applies to all time zones.

(* indicates best days.)

Through Oct. 12

* Today: 5:55 p.m., 6:20 a.m.

* Monday: 6:45 p.m., 6:55 a.m.

* Tuesday: 7:05 p.m.

Wednesday: 8:25 p.m., 8:45 a.m.

Thursday: 9:10 p.m., 9:35 p.m.

* Friday: 9:55 p.m., 10:15 a.m.

* Saturday: 10:40 p.m., 11 a.m.

Next Sunday: 11:25 p.m.

See the Hunting-Fishing Report

every Friday in Sports