I started fishing for resident coho in mid Nov. with excellent success for 12 to 14 inch fish. IMHO since the end of Dec. the fishing has been slowing down. The last couple of weeks I have been seeing a lot fewer fish. In Nov. to mid Dec. there were large numbers of sea gulls actively feeding on preferred food of resident coho. In the last month or so there has been a big decrease in sea gull activity. Last Fri. I saw only a handful of jumping resident coho and landed just one fish in a couple of hours. Just as I was heading back to the boat ramp, I got lucky and spotted a couple of large schools of active resident coho. For 10 to 15 minutes it was a hook up almost every cast. I kept one fish that had krill and amphipods in it's stomach. In mid Jan. the resident coho started being reluctant to strike an olive or chartruese/white clouser minnow. I switched to a Delia conehead squid pattern which the resident coho would aggressively strike. Sometimes they were hooked deep in their throat. Since I almost aways use tube patterns, it was possible to slide the Delia conehead squid pattern up the leader and snip the leader near the Gamakatsu SC-15 #4 hook. Doing such minimized harm to a released fish. With the resident coho fishing slowing down and a change of pace I decided to fish an estuary yesterday for sea-run cutthroat and was rewarded with some nice sized dolly varden. The largest fish approximalely 4 lbs. is shown in the photo. There were no sea-run cutthroat as of yet around. I am looking forward to early March to spend much time chasing after sea-run cutthroat. Roger
Great report Roger, I agree it's slowed down for me as well. I picked up two on Monday (MA13) and one nice cutt, the coho were still in the 13" range and were loners, no sign of a pod anywhere. I've had to go down to a small (size 12 scud) euphausid pattern to have much luck consistently for cutts as well as coho. Speaking of the Delia squid, I did get one of a white squimp, maybe squids are more on the menu than we think. Oh well, the cutts will be more plentiful pretty soon.
