It is true.
The place sucks. Believe everything you've heard.
The ferry ride was expensive, no fish, traffic is bad, lots of people and the scenery is terrible.
Stay away for your own good......
SF
Speaking of space travel. Alan Shepard had a great quote. When asked what he was thinking about just prior to attempting to become the first man in space he responded, I am thinking that I "sit on top of a machine made up of several hundred thousand parts all of which were manufactured by the lowest bidder."
As someone that deals with govt agencies on a daily basis, I have come to the conclusion that - in regards to purchasing assets ranging from notepads to ships - the official policy must be "how can we spend the most money for the smallest return?"
When it comes to human resources it's a slightly different story. "Lowest bidder most important. Qualified people less important.
Nice fish. I invited this new couple to join a small outdoor dinner we're hosting tonight. No one seems to mind.
Funny story about the one in the net. I was fishing next to at least one other board member and we'd both seen each other release a few shakers and lose some bigger ones. I was in "a couple more casts" mode and turned to my right and proclaimed in my best tongue in cheek suburban sports dad pep talk voice "ok guys, we know there's some big ones out there, let's go get 'em." We both started laughing, but no sooner do I start my roll cast when this guy just demolishes the clouser at 10 feet from the rod tip.
Nice fish. I invited this new couple to join a small outdoor dinner we're hosting tonight. No one seems to mind.
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Funny story about the one in the net. I was fishing next to at least one other board member and we'd both seen each other release a few shakers and lose some bigger ones. I was in "a couple more casts" mode and turned to my right and proclaimed in my best tongue in cheek suburban sports dad pep talk voice "ok guys, we know there's some big ones out there, let's go get 'em." We both started laughing, but no sooner do I start my roll cast when this guy just demolishes the clouser at 10 feet from the rod tip.
I believe I was fishing close by you today as well. It was silly good for a bit there. Took a blown up rod to run me off that beach and back to the truck for another rod and a different beach….that also produced quite well. Fun morning.
Nice talking with you too. That was definitely the biggest fish I saw up close today. My offer to blame the attempted net job doesn't come with an expiration date .
This weekend surely did not suck. Nice weather and even with bluebird sky's, lots of fish willing to play. Like last year, off to a very solid start with lots of fish around. August and September 2020 were tough though so crossing my fingers this continues. It did slow a bit today.
A fish sample from the weekend.
Non fish indicators of success. Sore, beat up hands. Don't be like me, remember your tape boys and girls…
Puget Sound; not a bad place to spend your fishing time….
This weekend surely did not suck. Nice weather and even with bluebird sky's, lots of fish willing to play. Like last year, off to a very solid start with lots of fish around. August and September 2020 were tough though so crossing my fingers this continues. It did slow a bit today.
Funny on that last picture. I wore the same sweatshirt fishing three days in a row. I always stick my rod under my left arm to two hand strip.
When I got home, I happened to notice the big ring of underarm salt crust.
The people in Fred Meyers who saw me after this mornings beach session must have been thinking......
"That dude really needs some deodorant. He looks like a human salt block. Thankfully there aren't any deer in here".
SF
This weekend surely did not suck. Nice weather and even with bluebird sky's, lots of fish willing to play. Like last year, off to a very solid start with lots of fish around. August and September 2020 were tough though so crossing my fingers this continues. It did slow a bit today.
Nice looking fish. What fly line are you using, the only line that cuts me like that was a Airflo ridged. I thought ridge ment stiffer, but it had a cross section that looks like a gear, (ridges) with each tooth made from a razor blade. Nick May remember that day I fished it my finger was a bloody mess.
I am using a Rio OBS. I think it is a combo of long hours with salty wet hands, stripping using that same finger every time and locking down on hooked fish with that finger. It happens every salmon season. I actually just broke down and bought a 3 pack of wingo stripping guards for 9 bucks. No idea if they'll help. Tape works great too. I always forget to put it on and applying it to wet hands does not always work. It ends up not sticking well. I figure throwing a few small sleeves into my wader pockets means they'll always be there and can be applied all the time. We'll see how they work.
It's been easy pickings for feeding 2-5 lb resident coho and early pinks the past few days. Strange that so many resident coho are unclipped this year, I've only bonked one hatchery coho and released over a dozen unclipped "wild". Let's hope August brings a nice wave of big ocean coho into the mix.
Are unclipped fish naturalized hatchery or just hatchery fish that never got clipped? As I understand the entire resident Coho fishery exists for sport fishing, in which case it doesn't really make sense to not clip them
Thanks, DimeBrite. That's the way I read them. I was curious if there was any kind of exception for those unclipped hatchery coho. Of course, the seem to have little to fear from me.
Are the Squaxin or the State responsible for clipping the resi coho? An unclipped fish is a real winner for the tribe as it stops the fish from being kept by the sportsmen. Our licenses fees at work..
Nice to know that the little 8" resident coho punks I was catching all last year grew up and are somewhere else. I haven't seen any around this year when out. It's weird, where I have been fishing I'll see either Coho, or Cutthroat, but, not a at the same time. Not seeing alot of big cutthroat this year, but, managed to find a few.
Still waiting some salmon to come in for the BBQ. Went out last night nada. Wind made for a very bumpy boat ride in the 14 foot skiff.
got a fat 5/6 lb wild coho in area 10 yesterday.
wasn't sure if I could keep it (which I could have) so I played it safe and released him.
it would have been Great on the BBQ!
The regs that allow wild coho retention in MA 10 and MA 11 still seem odd to me, while MA 9 has wild coho release required.
If you just look at the Snohomish, Stilly and Hood Canal, the forecast is for a combined 117K wild fish this year.
I understand the Snohomish is the driving force behind MA 9 wild coho release.
If you take the mid and Deep South, the combined forecast is for 27K wild fish.
It isn’t like the Green, Puyallup and Nisqually have been great wild coho producers for a long time. The Puyallup being the best with a forecast of 10K wild coho. The Green is a whopping 1,500 and the Nisqually is 3,200.
I’m not advocating for wild coho harvest in MA 9, but more so interested in what drives the decision they can be harvested in MA 10 and MA 11 for that matter.
The numbers, at least to me don’t justify wild coho retention in 10 or 11.
Have they just given up on mid and south sound wild coho?
If that is the case, how about giving up on wild Stilly chinook as well.
You can also harvest wild coho in MA 12 but not in MA 13.
SF
The regs that allow wild coho retention in MA 10 and MA 11 still seem odd to me, while MA 9 has wild coho release required.
If you just look at the Snohomish, Stilly and Hood Canal, the forecast is for a combined 117K wild fish this year.
I understand the Snohomish is the driving force behind MA 9 wild coho release.
If you take the mid and Deep South, the combined forecast is for 27K wild fish.
It isn't like the Green, Puyallup and Nisqually have been great wild coho producers for a long time. The Puyallup being the best with a forecast of 10K wild coho. The Green is a whopping 1,500 and the Nisqually is 3,200.
I'm not advocating for wild coho harvest in MA 9, but more so interested in what drives the decision they can be harvested in MA 10 and MA 11 for that matter.
The numbers, at least to me don't justify wild coho retention in 10 or 11.
Have they just given up on mid and south sound wild coho?
If that is the case, how about giving up on wild Stilly chinook as well.
You can also harvest wild coho in MA 12 but not in MA 13.
SF
The answer lies with the tribes, I believe. They enjoy the wipeout coho fisheries. They also enjoy leveraging Stilly Chinook for their own benefit. It get's back to the entirety of PS permitting and the state having little to no power. Certainly confusing.
Took the boat out today MA9. Lots of little guys around. My buddy and I both got nice fish that had adipose intact, before this guy decided to take a ride home with me. Nice day on the water, no pinks were harmed.
One of the uses of coded wire tags (cwt)s to evaluate marked selective fisheries. To do so a portion of the clipped hatchery fish have code wires embedded as well as a smaller number of unclipped fish also receive code wire tags. Without those unclipped hatchery fish with code wire tags we would not have marked selective fisheries and would be fishing even less.
That center sound resident coho fishery is a classic mixed stock fishery with coho any corners of the sound showing up in the catch. In 2019 June fishery resident coho fishery the State reported 17% of the CWTs recovered were from south sound net pens, 17 % were from north Sound stocks, 1% was from Hood Canal, 1% were from BC and the rest from the Green and Puyallup basins (and associated nets). Of those north Sound tags more than half were from either the Wallace or Tulalip hatchery programs (Snohomish stock) so it wild Snohomish coho should also be contributing to the catch.
Have also heard that at some of the tribal coho hatchery production recently have not been clipped so a higher portion of the population should be unclipped hatchery fish. Also consider in an area such as MA 9 when a more or less resident population is fish under mark selective rules the portion of unmarked fish will increase over time (the regulation is working). Since MA 9 opened on the 16th my best "guess" looking at the fish checks is that between 1,500 and 2,000 hatchery coho have been harvested in 10 days.
An interesting aside in that 2019 June MA 10 resident coho fishery was that single month accounted for 11% ( 7,327 out of a total of 64,467) of the entire recreational coho Puget Sound (MA 5 through MA 13) for 2019 - from WDFW 2019 sport catch report.
Curt,
Good info.
Do you know if every hatchery facility releases unclipped coho with coded wire tags or is it select hatchery programs that they do that for?
Thanks
SF
SF-
I believe it is the case in Puget Sound that every hatchery program that is releasing adipose smolts with CWT will also release a smaller portion of unclipped fish with CWTs. For example a program of say 1.5 million might release 1.3 million clipped with CWTS and 200,000 unclipped fish with CWTs. The exact ratios may vary but if I recall correctly the release target of unclipped smolts with CWTs is in that 200,000 to 250,000. A sufficient release to assure that enough CWTS are recovered from fisheries to produce accurate run reconstruction and mark selective evaluations.
As you may recall folks are catching those resident fish from late fall/winter and through the summer. This year those fish were released as 1+ year old smolts in the spring of 2020 and are now in their third year of life and will spawn this fall as is normal for Puget Sound coho (in some wild populations there are some coho maturing as 4 year fish however those fish get that extra year from being older smolts and not extra time in the salt). Those resident coho that are not caught (hatchery or wild) will spawn this fall either returning to their hatchery of origin or in the case of some with extended rearing in nets pens there will be a mixture of fish returning to home rivers and others shot gunning to streams near their release site.
If there were no fishing on those resident fish most would reach maturity at pretty reasonable sizes (say 3 to 7#).
It has been my observation that the larger individuals in the resident population are the more aggressive/catchable fish thus our fishing tends to select for the larger fish those eliminating many of those fast growing fish and as the season progress as those small fish grow they enter the fishery at increasing rates. Two net effects of this; 1) we see few of the fish that would show the full growth potential of that life history and 2) the fishery assure that hatchery brood stocks for at least that resident life history have experienced selectivity against those faster growing fish.
I guess I don't fish enough. I don't have bloody fingers at the end of the weekend. I would like to fish more, but, slicing and dicing your hands after a long weekend doesn't sound really appealing to me. LOL
Well, apparently all it took was stripping mishaps to cause some serious thread drift here. Let's stop talking about my hands which are not pretty to look at regardless of callouses or fishing injuries (yes, I am a nail biter) and get back into the topic of the wonders of Puget Sound!
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