Good pink run expected this summer

Published 12:01 am Sunday, April 10, 2011

They won’t start showing up in Puget Sound until July and August, but since 2011 is a year for pink salmon, which run in catchable numbers every two years, we should starting talking about them.

Rich Phillips, an enforcement sergeant of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, was the guest speaker last month at the Evergreen Fly Fishing Club.
And he said his agency expects about 6 million humpies to arrive in Puget Sound rivers this year.

You may recall that 2009 was a monster humpy run, projected at 9 million fish, the best the area had seen in about 60 years. I’m not sure whether that many showed up, but it was an awesome number. And 6 million is a very good number, so let’s hope the projections are accurate.

I love catching pinks from the beaches when the run begins and in the lower stretches of the Stillaguamish and the Snohomish rivers.

When it gets a little closer to summer, we’ll talk more about flies and techniques.

Sort of off topic, but my favorite Phillips estimate was not about humpies, but about cougars. He said that at any given time in Snohomish County, there are 500 to 1,000 cougars.

Better keep your poodles indoors folks.