SRC august 6th

[D3Smartie]

Good morning chasing the cuts on Hood Canal. Not as plentyful as I have seen in past years and there werent any returnign salmon which was unusual but I still had a good morning. Fished from about 7:30 to 11:30.
Landed 15 or so fish. mostly cuts but a couple small silver smolts.
The biggest cut was a very nice 18. Thick and powerful. made several jumps and runs before being released. I also landed a couple in the 15-16 inch range and a bunch of 10s.
Not as many fish as usual but still enough to make it fun and the fish were on average a little bigger than years past.

[PeteM]

Sounds like a great morning. I keep waiting for them to show up in the local rivers but I'm not seeing much yet.

Pete

[Jim Wallace]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!
I need some bad days like that!:thumb

Jimbo

edit: I'm leaving soon to put in an afternoon/evening shift on a wind-protected tidewater creek, as it is still gusting hard, although the clouds are lightening up, with some sun breaks. Seems like the front has passed here on the coast in the Twin Harbors area. See ya'll!

[Blueback]

I did OK this last August (not as well as you) out on the canal. Nice 14" fish, 4 of 'em. Two on the first day and two the next. I'm goin' back out there tommorrow to see what I can do.
Also, I was not fly fishing this summer, just throwin' Kastmasters. Now I have a fly rig and will be hitting the Canal with the fly for the first time, so needless to say, the anticipation is at a fever pitch. Wish me luck!

[D3Smartie]

man... dig into the archives.... ptyd


good luck out there. shoot me an e-mail if you want to discuss some different areas. dssmart@pepperdine.edu

[BOBLAWLESS]

August 6th? Are things getting that stale? I better write something up.

Bob, the And I thought I was old. :o

[D3Smartie]

also..... welcome to the board. :thumb:

[Uncle Jimmy]

Definitly not as many fish this summer in those places, (I'm the guy in the tan Lund). Kind of a steady decrease in numbers in many spots over the last three years. Its getting so I have real concerns about the fishery.

[D3Smartie]

tan lund..... hmmmm..... I dont usually see many people out there wheer i fish. Maybe 1 or 2 other people in a summer. Where do you launch?
I have an 11 foot whaler i used to use but have been fishing out of a 17 foot Grady White the past couple summers.

The place i have seen the worst decline in SRC numbers has been agate pass. Used to be tons there and i could run from the dock infron tof my house for about 10 minutes and be into fish. Now there are very few cutties in there. Of course they also got rid of the net pens that used to bring all the hatchery silvers in there. Man that used to be some good fun.

[Uncle Jimmy]

I don't see any one where I fish either, thats why I recognized you a few summers ago in the little whaler, I was wondering about that Grady. I run a fly fishing guide service in that area out of a 18 foot lund alaskan, used to own the fly shop in P townsend.

[D3Smartie]

.

[Sterling silver]

OH, so THAT Uncle Jimmy!

Sterling

[Uncle Jimmy]

Heh, about kings right there, I have hit some beauties on 4 to 6 weight rods but one this summer took the cake. We were fishing a 2 fly combo that has turned into a regular WMD. Maybe 5th. cast of the day we hook about a twelve inch cutt on the four weight, the water was crystal and the thing was pulling staight down so we were watchin it spin around about 6 feet under the boat. All of a sudden it freaks out as a small king, 8 or 10 pounds starts treating it like a living flasher and trying to snap the 2nd fly. Sure enough he got on there, gave one big head shake that knocked the cut right off and took off runninng, we screwed around with him for a little while before he busted off. Was really fun to watch the whole thing though.

[D3Smartie]

Nice... Do you still fish that toothpick fly? I have tried to tie up some floating candlefish but havent had a lot of success on any. Tough to beat a regular baitfish pattern for overall success.

[Uncle Jimmy]

The PICK, If they're in those little baits real well the pick will kill them, or early mornig, late evening. Problem is its gotta run mach 2 to get bit, so if your blind fishing over semi productive water its hardly worth the trouble. I just feel nothing gets the real monsters like the topwater baits. As far as regular bait fish fly's Ive never found one I can stick with season after season. Lance P has one he calls sequim bait that I go back to as a standard but thats about it.
Do you have a favorite Vanilla bait fish?

[D3Smartie]

i almost always go back to an epoxy head minnow of somesort. Small and flashy always seems to get some attention.
what kind of topwater flies are you fishing these days? do you have a favorite for blind fishing? Most spots i will just run up and quickly cover and then move on. Some deserve more time than others but i spend a lot of time running around until i find a school or concentration of fish.

[Uncle Jimmy]

Ummm, well lets just say I'm using some big ones. For a searching fly size matters. Big fish are not afraid of huge poppers, if they don't get stuck,I go back with somthin else.
I'm with you, I'd rather see some scenery than fish where its not hapenin.

[D3Smartie]

if they miss on top do you have a subsurface rod rigged to go back or do you change flies and stay on top or..... :confused:


if you have any pictures of your poppers I;d love to see them. I am stuck down here in CA in the middle of a rainstorm and nothing down here is designed for rain so it is shutting down everything. I doubt we will have classes tomorrow. Tying flies is saving me right now.

[Uncle Jimmy]

Smaller top water bait first. Sorry no pics right now, Yea I heard about your weather, people must be freakin out down there

[D3Smartie]

yeah its a mess. flooded roads and mud slides. :beathead:
but no class :beer2:

[Blueback]

Been too busy to even check my email lately. Went out on the 9th of Jan. as I had said in my previous post on this topic. I'm new to fly fishing so I took a spinning rig with me as well (I know, I know). Got out in the water (South HC) @ 0800, snowing. Absolutely beautiful. Hip waders on, fly rig in hand. Worked about a 500 yard stretch of beach for an hour or so with no luck. I was doing OK with my casting (remember I'm new) throwing sea-run woolly buggers and pink & white mini-clousers, but nothing bitting. So I grabbed my spinning rig with and 1/8 ounce chrome Kastmaster and hit a nice 17" SRC first cast. I don't feel like re-typing the whole story again, but I ended the day with 5 fish. Not bad.
I am going up to the Bellevue Orvis store on the 5th to see Les Johnson talk about fishing Puget Sound and Hood Canal beaches. Hope to see some of you up there.

[Teeg Stouffer]

Hey, Blueback. Not to be a collossal jerk or anything, but just so you're aware, it is illegal to kill any searun cutthroat caught from the salt.

It's a little screwy, because it's legal to kill them in many of the rivers that they use, if the river is open to trout harvest, under trout rules.

However, while they're out in the salt, they're in the "safe" zone, and it's a strictly C&R fishery.

Appreciate very much your ethic to catch and release as stated on your site, and to not waste any fish that you do keep. Your head's in the right place. Washington Regs are pretty complicated, but it's worth getting to know them. I noticed that you also caught a resident silver. That's a hatchery fish (assuming it had its adipose fin clipped) and those are legal to keep in some areas (incidentally, not in Hood Canal until Feb 16, and then only 1). They're tasty. Bonk one of those next time, if you gotta take something home.

No hard feelings.

[Blueback]

I knew this was going to be the first thing that came up after posting that. No hard feelings taken either. I know that all sea-runs are C&R only. What can I say. This is the first SRC I have harvested in like 9 years (I have been in Oklahoma for the better part of the last 10 years). I've caught probablly 8-10 of them in the last year and that was the only one I kept because of the regs, but really I wanted to have my wife taste what real, wild trout tastes like (she has only eaten farm raised and she absolutely loved the taste of the wild SRC). Also, the whole situation with the Canal just totally sucks right now. Besides that one trout, the only thing I have been able to harvest out of the Canal since I have been back is some oysters. The crabbing is screwed, what salmon do come in get rapped by a million people, all SRC are C&R, it's just really messed up. I grew up on the Canal and that is what I used to always do; go down to the salt and harvest enough for my family. I have never bought a trout, crab, oyster ever. I harvest what I need, never more. I guess part of my decision to keep that one was influenced just as much by my frustration with the current state of affairs as anything. Belive me, I have thought alot about that fish, especially since posting a picture of it on my blog, and I have no plans on keeping any more.
Thank you for your comments, they were very kind and you were not a jerk at all. Thanks!

[ibn]

The crabbing in the canal can be fantastic, PM me if you want some info on sweet spots to drop your pot. Of course the seasons are what limit you. I think the canal has the best crabbing in the region in terms of size and numbers (are there any more traits that count?). If you're looking for more things to harvest you should look into shrimp traps and get into some squid jigging at night. Don't forget about those clams and muscles to!

Not sure where you are on the Canal, but it's probably not too long of a drive to the Narrows or Purdy where you can catch a bunch of 16-22" resident silvers, you can keep 2 a day of these guys and they will probably ourshine your costal trout in terms of flavor. The south sound has been pretty productive since the fall and should be for a couple more months.

-I

[Florian Leischner]

I thought that the limit, right now, on resident silvers in Area 13 is 1 with no minimum limit and no ad-clip restrictions ? Am I reading the reg's incorrectly ?

[rockfish]

harvesting shakers is bad karma

[Teeg Stouffer]

I thought that the limit, right now, on resident silvers in Area 13 is 1 with no minimum limit and no ad-clip restrictions ? Am I reading the reg's incorrectly ?

The regs read, "Jan 1. - April 30 Chinook - min. size 22". Other SALMON species - no min. size. Daily limit 1. See Carr Inlet Closures Below."

(A review of Carr Inlet Closures indicates that those do not apply until April 16.)

So, Florian, you're right.

[ibn]

Yeah my bad, it changed from 2 to 1 on New Years.

Rockfish - I've never bonked a shaker. I want to, but for some reason I never take the time to stop fishing to deal with keeping a fish. *shrug*

-I

[rockfish]

i was just talkin shiat, I doubt anybody on a flyfishing forum would be filleting 14 inch salmon