The chinook is king in north Puget Sound this week, with the opening of the very popular selective sport fishery in marine areas 9 and 10 on Friday.
The opportunity to catch and keep up to two fin-clipped kings in our backyard will almost certainly draw a big crowd to spots from Port Townsend to Jefferson Head, and across to Possession Bar. The season will run daily through the end of August, assuming catch guidelines are not exceeded.
This will be the fourth year for the fishery. The first year was gangbusters at most all of the usual chinook hot spots, but the ’08 and ’09 seasons, while reasonably productive, changed venue and tended to lean much more strongly to the Port Townsend/Point No Point/Pilot Point/Jeff Head side of the Sound, pretty much skipping Possession Bar.
One theory making the rounds says that in years of poor returns to the northern salmon rivers, fish from south Sound provide most of the harvest and they tend to migrate down the far side of Admiralty Inlet and north Sound.
Whether or not that’s true, said Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Puget Sound recreational salmon manager Steve Thiesfeld, conditions this year appear likely to produce a copy of the past two seasons.
“We’re cautiously optimistic that we’ll have a fishery much like last year’s pretty good one,” Thiesfeld said.
The success rate on chinook in areas 5 and 6 has been good so far, he said, on fish coming down the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and that bodes well for Friday and the weekend at Midchannel Bank, near Port Townsend.
All Star Charters owner/skipper Gary Krein in Everett said Midchannel pencils out as the top opportunity, and that Possession Bar will probably not be a major player this summer, at least for this selective, adult chinook opportunity.
Launch at the Fort Casey ramp, next to the Keystone ferry terminal on Whidbey Island, and kick across Admiralty Inlet almost to Port Townsend. Midchannel Bank runs in a straight line from the northwest tip of Marrowstone Island directly toward the Point Wilson light, just west of Port Townsend. Most anglers troll the 90-foot line, Krein said, going with the tidal run, then picking up and running back to do it again. The most popular part of the bar is from Marrowstone northwest to about the ferry line.
Krein said staying right on bottom is critical here, because that’s where the candlefish are, and thus the chinook. The presence of candlefish also make it a good jigging area for those bouncing Point Wilson darts and other jigs.
The number one lure last year, Krein said, was the small, light, needlefish-imitating Coho Killer spoon in “white lightning,” “army truck,” green/white, or “cookies ’n cream.” Needlefish squid also work well on Midchannel, Krein said, in the greens or mother of pearl white. He likes to troll both lures 40 to 43 inches behind a green flasher with red stripe.
“Guys use the same gear at Point No Point and Pilot Point, too,” Krein said, “but they usually move out to the 120-foot line once they’re out of that heavy tidal run along Midchannel Bank.”
Krein said that about 70 or 80 percent of the kings his parties have been hooking incidentally have been fin-clipped.
State personnel checked 19 boats with 29 chinook last week at the Ediz Hook ramp in Port Angeles, and 26 boats with 20 chinook at Olson’s Resort in Sekiu.
The ‘Outlaw’ Robbie Tobeck
Regular listeners to The Outdoor Line, a live talk show 6-8:30 a.m. Saturday mornings on ESPN Radio 710, already know this story. If not, it’s a real hoot.
Seems that co-host Rob Tobeck, local athlete made good/ex-Pro Bowl lineman/avid angler/recreational fishing activist and all-around good guy, was set up by his friend and the show’s other host, TJ Nelson of Lake Stevens, to take a live and very public fall for being an “illegal fisherman.”
Tobeck lives on Lake Washington and often puts out crawdad pots, saying they’re as good on the table as spot prawns. One morning, all four of his pots were gone, buoys and all, and he made the usual noises, on air, about what would befall the guy who took his traps if they ever met up.
The guy who took his traps, of course, was a state Fish and Wildlife Department enforcement officer, confiscating the gear for not having the proper degradable cotton-cord releases.
Sergeant Kim Chandler and Nelson conspired to confront an unknowing Tobeck with his sins, on live radio, two Saturdays ago, before returning his crawdad pots. The confrontation was priceless, as the officer made the point both that the state does indeed have a sense of humor, and that cotton-cord escapes are, indeed, the law for freshwater as well as certain saltwater, gear. Tobeck got both a warning citation and embarrassed. But he took it all with a certain aplomb.
Nelson told me later on the phone that he hoped Tobeck would let him live, and added that the only place he, Nelson, was able to find the correct weight cotton cord was at Harbor Marine, 1402 West Marine View Drive, on the Everett waterfront, 425-259-3285
Read the whole story at http://blog.theoutdoorline.com/post/2010/07/05/The-Outlaw-Robbie-Tobeck.aspx.
Skagit sockeye
The state has announced the opening of a recreational sockeye season on the lower end of the Baker River and a portion of the adjacent Skagit River at Concrete, effective Friday morning. Legal water will include the Baker below the Highway 20 bridge, and the Skagit from the Dalles Bridge upstream to a point 200 feet above the east bank of the Baker. Tribal fisheries will also be opened, according to WDFW biologist Brett Barkdull.
Wenatchee sockeye
Counting has started on sockeye passing the Tumwater Dam on the Wenatchee River, according to state biologist Jeff Korth in Ephrata, but only a couple of hundred fish had been tallied as of Wednesday. The Tumwater count is a necessary precursor to the possibility of a recreational sockeye season on Lake Wenatchee.
“We should know by the end of the month whether or not we have enough fish in excess of escapement needs to open a season,” Korth said.
Hopes are high for a fishery this year because of the strength of a record sockeye run in the Columbia, even though the majority of those fish are headed for the Okanogan River system.
Korth said a small segment of the Wenatchee sockeye stock is made up of hatchery fish, and that a relatively high number of those, tagged, fish were counted over Bonneville Dam earlier. That’s a positive sign, he said, because the hatchery segment is a minor portion of the entire Wenatchee run.
Hoodsport Chinook
The beach fishery for adult chinook returning to the Hoodsport Hatchery on Hood Canal, much like the better-known one for chums in the fall, can provide some outstanding fishing. It’s close to time, said a state hatchery spokesman Wednesday, but not quite yet.
“I look for enough chinook by the end of the month to support a fishery,” the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, he added, a few fish were showing already at the Purdy Creek Hatchery on the Skokomish system, farther down the Canal, a similar situation.
Text a poacher
Reporting fish and wildlife violations just got easier with the announcement by the state that the agency has added a new text-messaging option for reporting possible illegal activity. Reports should be sent to 847411 (Tip411), starting with the letters WDFWTIP, followed by a space, and a brief description of the violation and location.
The Minnesota-based contract vendor of the system removes the texter’s name and replaces it with an alias before the message arrives at the state’s communication center.
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