north sound report 4/2

[bhudda]

i started at lincoln beach around 1pm. fished the south side of the pool and caught/landed 3, biggest was 16". used a green tube bugger. the largest fish had parasites i think, wasnt sea lice, they were brown and looked like micro stingrays, down by the tail area.
left around 3 and headed north to carkeek, windy ass hell. worked the beach once to the creek mouth area w/ no luck, so i left
ended up at golden gardens and the point was actually semi calm. enough so that i could cast :) changed to a blue an white clouser tube and had 2 quick stikes then nothing for a lil while then a freakin herring(sp) bit the fly and i was amazed this thing was like almost a foot! ive used cut bait before and have never seen herring this big before, kinda cool. thats one more fish to add to the list. anyways thats it and thats all. lates bhudda

[Dizane]

You should start targeting those jumbo herring and selling them in Ballard.

Norskis love their pickled herring.:p

[Jon Borcherding]

Sild er bra mat det! Spekesild, sursild, sild, sild, sild. JA!

JonB

[TomB]

"brown microstingrays" sounds like a parasitic copepod to me...maybe not the same species you are used to calling "sea lice," but very similar

[bhudda]

tom, sounds like your on to something. i concur.

[cabezon]

Google the parasitic copepod Argulus.

Steve

[Jon Borcherding]

Steve, This photo sucks but I think this is one of the little boogers on a SRC that I got yesterday??
It's just aft of the dorsal.

JonB

[cabezon]

Yup, that's Argulus. I've caught some searuns with a dozen or more and their importance to the biology of searuns has come up a couple of times on this forum. It seems that we have more questions (seasonality?, potential harm?, links to pollution?), than answers.

Steve

[Jon Borcherding]

Yup, that's Argulus. I've caught some searuns with a dozen or more and their importance to the biology of searuns has come up a couple of times on this forum. It seems that we have more questions (seasonality?, potential harm?, links to pollution?), than answers.

Steve

Thanks Steve! I gogled "argulus" and found some images but I was still uncertain if it was argulus. The parasite on my little SRC was dark in color and the ones I found through google seemed to be almost transparent for the most part. Apparently the transparency of the parasite was just allowing the dark color of the fish to be seen?
Not sure if you can see it on the pic but this little SRC was also missing his adipose fin. I was kind of puzzeled by that. I thought that hatchery cutthroat were a thing of the past? Surely he can't be that old? I didn't measure the fish but my guess is about 12".

JonB

[cabezon]

I agree with you that the dark color is probably the dorsal pigmentation of the fish carrying through the relatively transparent parasite.

I don't have any answers for the missing adipose fin. The only hatchery cutts that I know of are from the Cowlitz and I believe that Tacoma Power has ceased that part of their operation (unfortunately, in my opinion). It would seem to be a long way for a little cutt to go to head down the Cowlitz to the main-stem C, go through the estuary, migrate north along the coast, head inside the Strait, take a left at the entrance to Puget Sound and then head south. Maybe someone else will chime in with more definitive info on hatchery cutt operations in the sound?

Steve

[TomB]

none to my knowledge...natural injuries do occur...i caught one about 17 inches in the nf stilly last summer that had just a hint of an adipose fin

[frankrutledge]

Tom I caught two SRC's on the NF of the stilly inside on 10minutes of each other. I thought maybe it was a good sized trout till I landed it, what a beautiful fish.
F

[Gary Thompson]

I was reading about the cutts and one out of hundreds goes to sea. That little planted (if that was what it was) cutt could have come from any high lake that has a outlet stream.
Amazing to think about.