Anglers have been catching a lot of pink salmon at Seiku, several weeks sooner they usual.
While that’s no indicator that this year will be a great run of pinks, also called humpies, it’s certainly a good sign.
State fisheries officials expect to see 6 million of the salmon in Puget Sound this year. That would be a lot less than two years ago, when there an estimated 9.8 million.
But the 2009 run was a record, and this year is looking good.
“We got two 25-pound kings and a half dozen humpies this morning,” Roy Morris told me today. Morris owns a home along the water in Seiku and fishes there regularly.
He said the kings were in the kelp beds on conventional gear fished in about 40 to 60 feet of water.
But his grandson Alex, age 6, got three humpies on a fly. The humpies have been in 220 feet of water about 40 feet deep.
“But at the tide changes they pool up around the boat about four to six feet deep like sockeye,” Morris said.
“You could catch them on a dry fly.”
Asked if he expected a good year for humpies this year, he responded: “There are all the indications of it.”
He said he normally doesn’t expect humpy fishing to get good until he starts catching coho salmon in the middle of August.
Look for Sunday’s Outdoors page in The Herald for more information on humpy fishing and for regular reports in this space.
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