N Sound report, fortune favors the stupid

[DB]

I had planned to go fish a local lake today but with the weather being so crap and the lake in question being v. exposed to S winds I buggered about the yard getting a lot of little things done and once it was all done I decided to nip down to a local Seattle beach and give it a go. My first foray into the salt since September and I wasn't too confident but I was dying to wet a line. The wind was a pain and I'm a lefty so I did a lot of backward casting. Anyway, after about 5 minutes I see a fish jump so I know they're in, but will they take? 5 minutes later a solid pull resulted in a 16" blackie, it was wierd it pretty much ran up the beach after I hooked it so there wasn't much of a fight. Ten minutes later another solid pull and a 14" cut, my face was hurting, the wind and the rain were gone, life was great. Then I had another couple of tugs but nothing stuck so after 10 mins or so I checked my hook.....................the barb had snapped off. The fly was home tied but size 8 with a mylar body and a wing ofdark green and some white crystal flash with a few strands of herring color yak hair and of course the only one that I had. I just got some of this yak stuff and I really like it to give more body to flies but keep them still quite slim, the only wieght was a bead chain eye. Anyway a good lesson in check your hook regurly esp. when conditions are bad and your fishing a rocky beach. Had a wierd take, the line went slack when my fly was about 20 feet from me, the fish came at me, a tug strike and a really nice fish, a very fat fish of ~24 shot up right in front of me and scared the crap out of me, then threw the hook. What was strange here was that the line had actually formed a knot around the shank and my guess is the the must have been swimming at 90 degrees..........Anyway after that fished on for another hour or so but the fish had stopped jumping and probably moved on but I had on really strong pull the dragged my tip right over but the fish wasn't on. Anyway, a horrible day but a great couple of hours fishing and 5 minutes from the house, totally cool. I was using a 10 ft Echo rod for a 6wt with a 7wt slime line to get it out and the combo worked really well given the winds.

Dave

[Steve Rohrbach]

DB, nice job on the beach. This has been a very good year for black mouth on the beach. Good advise to everyone on checking your hook regularly. Glad to hear that there are fish moving North.
Thanks for the report. Steve

[chadk]

I had a heck of a time with the wind recently. After putting a massive welt on my neck from getting hit by my hook (lucky I din't get impaled..) and started roll casting. Timing the roll cast with the wind gusts really sent the line flying. I'm not a good roll caster at all, but I was able to use the wind to get the casts about as far as my normal casts - but without worrying about hooking myself.

[Kyle Smith]

I don't know why I only hit the beach about 10x a year, it is as you said, very close and you never know what or how many fish will be there. Nice report.

[Fishful Thinking]

Not to divert the direction of this thread, but I can relate to the need to check the hook, expecially when casting with a rocky shore to your back. I had the opportunity to fish the Miramachi river, famous for its Atlantic salmon. This is truely the fish of a thousand casts. My first evening on the river I was fishing a Bomber dry and this HUGE torpedo of a fish porpoised on my fly and took it down. It gave me a complete heart attack, but I was with it enough to try to set the hook. Of course, it didn't set, having lost half of it on a back cast. That was ten years ago, and I still wince every time I think about it.

[Lex]

Aren't Seattle Beaches closed right now to fishing?

[hendersonbaylocal]

Aren't Seattle Beaches closed right now to fishing?

Area 11 is open to salmon. Area 10 is closed. There are some cutts around though, so I wouldn't feel too guilty fishing around Seattle. :beer2:

[DB]

Lex,

You're right. The salmon fishing is banned in area 10 just now but trout is open all year as in all?/ most areas. I would imagine v. few folks on here have even landed one large 'keeper sized' king salmon in their forays for src's, there's a good chance your gear/leader would be smashed up. S. sound also seems to be the place to get lots of silvers at this time of yr. Anyone fishing an 8 wt for src in a no salmon area............then well yeah you'd deserve to be busted but I doubt it will ever happen (or has even ever occurred). Hooking up with a larger/different type of fish by accident is a bonus; I believe that most in this forum probably release nearly all of their fish in any case, regardless of the rules. Fishing my local beaches I rarely get shaker salmonids, it's >95% srcs and/or sometimes flounders/sculpin esp in Summer. With gear on these same beaches I caught a lot more shakers, why? I don't know, perhaps this is a good start for a discussion. Maybe smolts aren't different from kids, big and flashy is best :-) On another note, I wouldn't want to keep a black mouth or any resident fish from the sound anyway because there's good evidence it's been badly contaminated with chemicals that don't 'go away' that easily. I'm not taking offense at your comment, I think it's fair enough, I simply think by catching the odd salmon while fishing for trout is OK and obviously you should practice careful c'n'r if this happens. These rules, I think, were made more for the boat trolling/mooching folks than someone on a beach waving a stick. What may be more objectionable is some of the 'src' fishing around Camano island at some times of the year but this topic has probably been gone over several times on this site.

Dave

[Lex]

Dave,

I totally agree. I am a fly fisherman 90% of the time but to be honest, during the winter time when rivers a blown to get my fish fix I really only fish with gear from beaches (quick after work recreation - don't want to wader up, have to clean my fly line, etc..) 100% of the fish I have caught are resident Coho and Chinook and have never caught a src in the Seattle area. This supports your observation: "With gear on these same beaches I caught a lot more shakers, why? I don't know, perhaps this is a good start for a discussion. Maybe smolts aren't different from kids, big and flashy is best". So I ask that question again to anyone who might know.. why don't src's go for bigger flashier lures?

There are flyfishermen on my local beach and during the winter I'll be landing fish after fish while they are getting skunked. I think it is partially a distance thing that I can cover 200 feet with a buzz bomb but again they are frequently hitting the distance at which I get strikes. So why the discrepancy? Size of lure and presentation?

Question for ya Dave, what is the data you have that show the blackmouth are so heavily contaminated? I have landed this winter a 22inch, a 24inch and a 28 inch (shown below) hatchery fish and ate them. Why would you recommend not doing this? I was of the understanding that they travel all through Puget sound.. Is all of Puget sound (and not just obviously Elliot Bay) that polluted?

Lex

[hendersonbaylocal]

If you go back a couple of months in the Seattle Times there is an article that advised people not to eat blackmouth from Elliott Bay.

[John Hilt]

LEX,

That was funny. When I first looked at the pic I thought something was wrong with my computer (but it didn't eat a resident blackmouth) so I deducted that it was you. :rofl: :beer2:

[ChrisW]

Here is the department of health advisory: http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/oehas/fact%20sheets%20pdf/pugetsound.pdf

Note that there really isn't such thing as an "Elliott Bay Blackmouth" the warnings for salmon are Puget Sound wide. These fish are migratory and so are their food sources so just because the water you are fishing is clean it doesn't mean the meat is.

ChrisW

[DB]

Lex,

On the shaker thing, I didn't consider the distance thing, I think you're spot on about that, a lot more water is covered and so you get more fish QED. No SRCs? perhaps they're into smaller lures, the ones I've used in the salt are always 2 in or more, maybe fishing 1 in lures would get some cutts I don't know. I once tried with small Mepps spoons and still got a lots of shakers but maybe it was the area I fished, time of yr etc. I'm sure gear guys maybe know more about this. Re eating fish and levels of pollution in the Sound, it's not just Elliot Bay. It the whole sound. ChrisW pretty much nailed it for me. I have eaten and really enjoyed salmon that that I've kept from the sound, its' just when I heard there was a lot of nasty pollutants like PCBs and the likes concentrating in the larger predators (salmon and ling cod) and there were recommendations not too eat too much of them, I simply don't bother, I'm not a zealot about it. Each to their own, they tasted great like I said. I'm not from the NW USA and so I was ignorant about the levels of pollution from the 50-60s that have persisted to a fair degree in the environment. If it is a migratory salmon, and it's legit to harvest it then that's a different matter. I have 2 very young kids and I'm a biologist so I'm a little leery about what I feed them these days. There are environmental reports about the sound over the years relating to ealier damaged caused by industrial pollution and the increasing problems of poorly treated sewage etc entering the sound which doesn't get fully 'flushed' away to the Pacific. I think it's the areas of shoreline deemed suitable for shell fish growing has begun to shrink dramatically due to the water having too many E.coli and the like in there not to say the hood canal deoxygenation every summer. I can dig up the info on the shellfish beds if you're tht interested but basically there's a lot of 'shit ' out there and we should all try to something about it.

Fish on

Dave

[salt dog]

Cut off the belly from salmon to remove 90% +/- of fat soluble contaminants, enjoy the rest.