By Wayne Kruse
For The Herald
Decent numbers of chinook finally showed on Possession Bar late last week, bringing the marine area 9-10 hatchery king fishery closer to home. Up to that point, Port Townsend/Midchannel Bank had been about the only spot producing chinook since the July 16 opening, for those with boats capable of making the run, or even those driving to Fort Casey and kicking across Admiralty Inlet.
Action on the bar has been “pretty decent for the past week,” according to All Star Charters owner/skipper Gary Krein of Everett. He fishes the southwest corner of the bar on the flood tide, and the east side on the ebb.
Midchannel Bank remained hot, producing steady limits for Nick Kester, among a lot of others. “Nick’s still loading up at Port Townsend,” Krein said of the other All Star owner/skipper. Marine area 10, however, continues to struggle.
Kester has been using Coho Killer spoons and the 2-inch Kingfisher Lite, finding the smaller gear better imitates the heavy concentration of candlefish on Midchannel, fished right on the bottom. “Cookies ‘n cream, Irish cream, and herring aid have all been popular color patterns,” Krein said.
“The small Kingfisher is sometimes a better bet, because it’s tougher. The Coho Killers are such light stock that a good fish will often bend them out of shape, and that wastes fishing time.”
The chinook haven’t been particularly large, averaging 8 to 12 pounds with a scattering into the high teens.
A popular fishery? Oh, yeah. Over the weekend, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife creel checkers at the Port of Everett ramp tallied 843 anglers with 123 chinook and 56 coho.
After the first weekend of the fishery, state officials estimated 1,060 of area 9’s quota of 5,600 chinook had been caught. Since that time, no one in the department has made any comment as to an updated number or how much longer the fishery might last.
Humpies are coming
Checkers Sunday at Olson’s in Sekiu contacted 86 anglers with 24 chinook, three coho, and four pinks.
Sockeye
Lake Washington no, Baker Lake yes, and Lake Wenatchee maybe.
The most recent sockeye count at the Ballard locks in Seattle was about 125,000 fish, well behind the number needed to open commercial and recreational seasons. It is ahead of the run size forecast of 77,000 fish, but salmon managers need a 350,000-fish spawning escapement, plus a reasonable number above that for harvest to consider a fishery.
State biologist Travis Maitland says the status of a Lake Wenatchee recreational season is still up in the air. The latest count at Tumwater Dam early this week was about 9,000 fish, Maitland said, against a guideline of 25,000 needed for spawning and 2,000 or so for harvest.
That doesn’t sound particularly promising, but Maitland said he still has 26,000 sockeye in the Columbia, between Rock Island and Rocky Reach dams. How many of those are Wenatchee stock and how many Okanogan, however, remains to be seen.
“Can’t give up yet,” Maitland said. “Those fish could come in a bunch.”
Assuming he gets the right numbers, he would set up a season right away, like the first week or two of August.
In the meantime we wait, Maitland said.
That leaves the Baker Lake sockeye run, shaping up again as a resounding success. As of Monday, the total number trapped was 13,200 and the number transported to the lake was 6,800. That’s better than double the 3,000-fish rule of thumb for a “decent” fishery.
It’s nice to have at least one over-achieving salmon run in our back yard.
Record fish
What does a guy do the day after he retires from a 37-year career at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife? He goes fishing, of course. And of course he immediately catches a state-record fish. I mean, he’s an expert at all this, right?
Granted the fish which will put his name in the record book is not as impressive as, say, the current Washington record Halibut, a 288-pounder caught on Swiftsure Bank in 1989. Bob Everitt’s record fish is a Pacific sanddab,14 inches long and weighing 1.22 pounds. That’s a big little fish, folks, nevertheless.
Everitt, of Kirkland, was the longtime Region 4 director for WDFW, at the Mill Creek office. His Pacific sanddab is a small, left-eyed flatfish that prefers sand or mud bottoms, and usually weighs under a third of a pound. The previous record was 12.5 inches long, weighing 1 pound even, caught on Possession Bar by Juan Valero of Seattle.
Everitt and his fishing partner, biologist Danny Garrett, were mooching at Jefferson Head on July 1 when he hooked two flatfish at once on his double-hook setup. One was the left-eyed biggie.
For a photo, go to http://wdfw.wa.gov/news/attach/jul2117a_2.jpg.
WDFW has created a YouTube video on fishing, prepping and cooking flatfish that is available at https://www.youtube.com/thewdfw.
Sturgeon
The new Lake Roosevelt sturgeon fishery will close July 31, after anglers apparently learned quickly how to do it, and landed about 3,500 fish. Since that was a lot more than had been anticipated by WDFW and tribal managers, the fishery will close early “to allow for future seasons.”
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