By Wayne Kruse
For The Herald
The Baker Lake sockeye season, which opens Saturday, is truly a win-win situation.
Catch a couple of these prime table-fare salmon and you win. If you come home with nothing more than memories of mammoth, snow-clad Mount Baker dominating the background and the sun sparkling off pristine Baker Lake — some of the most gorgeous scenery in the country — you still win.
But you can’t snooze on this one. The fishery is a morning show, and you must be fishing by daylight. Add time to find a parking spot and navigate a crowded ramp and you have yourself a really, really early drive up the Skagit Valley.
Most sockeye can be found from the surface down to about 40 feet at daylight, but the bite drops off and the fish go deeper as the morning goes by. The bulk of the fishing takes place at and above the “elbow,” where the lake bends eastward like an inverted letter “L.” But early in the season, better catch rates can sometimes be found downlake, closer to the dam.
Set your downriggers at about 15 feet to start, with your gear about 30 feet behind the clip. Any salmon or steelhead rod/reel will work, but since sockeye have soft mouths, a long, soft-action rod would be the best choice. Use 10- to 20-pound main line, a good quality swivel, a size “0” dodger in nickel, hammered nickel, or pearl, 12 inches of fluorocarbon leader, and two 2/0 red hooks with several strands of flash. Put a trimmed pink squid over the hooks, and tip each hook with a small piece of prawn, cured in pink/red Pautzke FireCure.
No downrigger? A 6- or 8-ounce crescent sinker will get you deep enough during the morning bite, with 25 to 35 strips of line.
Trolling slowly is critical, at about 1 mph. If your motor won’t throttle down that far and you don’t have an electric, it may be necessary to throw the boat in and out of gear or rig a bucket or drift sock as a drag.
When you hook a fish, leave the other lines in the water — sockeye tend to be a school fish, and double hookups are fairly common.
Obviously, a fish finder is a big help with locating schools and their depth. Sockeye display on the surface well, so watch for jumpers and for landing nets being used.
As the season goes along and more fish are transferred to the lake from the Baker Dam collection device, fishing generally improves. In fact, the last two weeks of the season have in the past provided the highest per-person catch averages of the entire fishery. That could be the result of the cumulative effect of incoming transfers, or the perseverance of hard-core, experienced fish whackers doing their thing — or both. Either way, it pays to save some of your time and resources for the late-August fishery.
State biologist Brett Barkdull said most of the fish remain in good shape through the season, and that even when a few are starting to color, they’re still dinner-worthy.
Some anglers say they don’t get too excited about Baker sockeye until at least 3,000 fish have been transferred from the trap, where the run usually peaks about mid-July. As of Tuesday, the total number trapped was 1,900, and the number transferred, 550.
To save yourself some early-morning grief, research the rules governing day use of the launch facilities, parking, fees and other regulations. Start with wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/salmon/sockeye/files/bakerlake_boaters.pdf, or call the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Mount Baker Ranger District, at 360-856-5700.
Derby
The North Sound Chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association is holding its second Baker Lake Sockeye Shootout, July 28-30. The event is limited to 100 participants. Tickets are available at Holiday Sports in Burlington (360-757-4361) or online at wwwccawashington.org/bakerlakederby. Prices are $20 for adult CCA members, $50 for non-members, $10 for under-18 non-members, and free for under-18 members.
Tickets include a barbecue at 6 p.m. July 29 at the Swift Creek picnic site, and a raffle entry. Weigh-ins are at the Swift Creek Campground.
The grand prize is $1,000 for the fish closest to the average weight of all entries; $500 for the largest sockeye; $250, and $100 for the second- and third-largest sockeye, respectively.
For information, call Tony at 360-354-0204 or Curt at 360-224-9345.
Coastal salmon
Marine Area 2, Westport, opened Saturday to less than hot fishing.
“It was slow,” said Kelly Westrick at Westport Charters. “People don’t like to hear that, but I have to be honest. It was slow.”
Chinook were running about 10 or 11 pounds, Westrick said.
Typically, charters out of Westport start looking for chinook about 10 miles offshore during the early season, but they weren’t there last weekend.
“I had ‘em running two hours, one hour, right here on the bar, everywhere, but nobody actually found many fish,” Westrick said.
It’s normal for the fleet to take a few days to locate the fish at the start of a season, Westrick said, and she looks for fishing to improve shortly. The forecast for summer chinook in the Columbia is a fairly good one, and those fish make up a substantial part of the early Westport fishery.
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