Northwest Fishing Reports

Don't forget Shad which run in June usually. They are fun to catch with light gear, you can fish from the shore, there are millions of the things but it is all C&R since you cant eat them although some guys eat the roe. When I lived around Portland we fished them below Bonneville on the Oregon side....

For salmon and steelhead you are living in the promised land at least compared to the Seattle area. There is some good fishing for salmon and steelhead off the bars (beaches) along the Columbia. Just go the bars, talk to the guys and see how they fish. Maybe eventually, you can work towards a boat. ...

Looks like we are playing the information game again. Olsons website has a spread sheet that shows seasons for Chinook and Coho in Puget Sound. I don't know if this is official or what? It seems to show that MA 8 and 9 will be closed for Coho. 10 will be open on a "selective" basis. Click on the spr...

Is MA 9 (Possession, Pilot Pt, Browns Bay etc) open for Coho? Looks like MA 8 is closed for Coho which has been the rumor. I usually moor my boat at Everett in the summer and Sept/Oct but hard to tell from this news whats going on. Giving us bits and pieces of info tells me that the deal still isnt ...

According to this, this is a special opening because there are apparently a lot of hatchery Coho which didnt migrate out of Lake Sam for some reason. Not a lot of detail. Maybe they were released too late and they lost the migratory instinct? It would be interesting to know what happened. http://www...

I feel kinda guilty that I didn't even make it to the Mill Creek session. Lost track of the timing, I guess. Anybody have any news on what was said? The only thing I heard is that MA 8 will likely be closed for Coho this year. I didn't hear anything about other areas, 9, 10 etc. March 15 Puget Sound...

I've stayed at Mardons 3-4 times. I haven't been there for 10-12 years. Nothing plush for sure but we thought it was OK. Certainly convenient. But that was in Nov-Dec for duck hunting, its prob a lot noisier in the summer.

On July 2, 1979, the Supreme Court rejected a collateral attack[fn 1] on the case, largely endorsing Judge Boldt's ruling and the opinion of the Ninth Circuit. In Washington v. Washington State Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Ass'n, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that " oth sides have a right, ...

I haven't fished that far north. Back in the 80's I had an 18' GlasPly that I used to keep at a boathouse on Guemmes Channel in Anacortes. I used to fish Pt Lawrence and around Cypress Island for Blackmouth and summer Chinooks a lot. Those spots were good back then. Johns newsletters has a lot of ma...

Johns is good. I had hand crank Penns from 1980 to 2005. When I got into my 60's I got too old to crank and went electric with Scottys. Come to think of it I still have the Penns, I should sell them. If you bought the releases and stuff at Johns you should be good to go. I like using a rudder, it ke...

Herring strips. I like big, black or purple herring, let them defrost a little but not all the way, they cut easier when they are still somewhat frozen. Fillet, cut into strips with a scissors, I like fairly long strips, about as long as your little finger, triangle shape, after you cut the strips p...

10,000 missing fish! Sports get bean counted to death but not the tribes, they can claim anything and its just peachy. WDFW is part of cooking the books. I used to try to support the WDFW but I just cant do that anymore. Its all BS. Maybe we should just shut down both sports and tribal fishing in Pu...

I read somewhere that a lot of this pollution ultimately gets pushed mostly south by the tides into more stagnant, dead end bays and inlets and may get trapped there. The article said the northern/central sound and the Strait gets cleaned pretty fast by the tides. Must be some sort of research on th...

Just hard for me to buy this "encounter guideline" of 6081 "encounters' in 9 ands 6125 in 8 for a total of 12,206. I don't get it, I sure don't see those kind of numbers in the fishchecker reports even allowing for smolts caught. Besides I just noticed something. They change the numbers arbitrarily....

For years, tribal rights were abused. But, the shoe is on the other foot now. I hoped the WDFW would make progress towards transparency but it is obvious they won't. So I finally sent the powers that be an email starting my opposition to the current odious lack of openness.

Good post. Kinda like the old saying "careful what you wish for, you might get it." Like everybody, I don't like taxes, but somebody has to pay for stuff.

I don't know but I suspect the Everett Marina may need to get as much $ as they can particularly for the ramp operations. In good Coho and Pink years they could get 100, 200 even 300 rigs a day in the lot from August until the end of October even into Nov. I've seen that huge lot completely full. At...

Old age???!!! It gets worse. Wait until you get to 73! I think the SWAG must have a decidedly tribal tilt. I remember last May, one of the tribal chiefs complaining about how many winter Chinooks the sports got that winter. I stopped at the Everett ramp this morning, completely empty. I stopped at E...

I haven't done much black mouth fishing this winter mostly cause the marine weather has been so awful. I thought I would do more when/if the marine weather got a little better. Looks like that will prob not happen as 8&9 will prob get closed soon. MA 8 is at 82% of the guideline and 9 is at 75%. I'm...

Looks like the WDFW Coho numbers are screwed up. Todays Coho barchart shows a forecast of 450,000 Coho and yet the 2/28 forecast news release (see below) sez 559,000. Kind of a big difference if I'm reading it right, only 100,000 fish. Anyway, I sent them an email asking which one is right. I am sur...