This week, and this coming weekend, should see the top end of our current pink salmon run coming through local saltwater. And the lesson, kiddies, is that if you want a few of these feisty little salmon for the table or the smoker, now’s the time to climb all over it.
They’ve obligingly moved north and south from the shipwreck area, and you can chase ’em at your convenience in humpy hollow, off Mukilteo, on up toward the mouth of the Snohomish, down past Picnic Point into Brown’s Bay, the beaches of westside Whidbey Island, and a lot of other places.
“The weekend was insane,” said All Star Charters owner Gary Krein in Everett. “Everyone with any clue at all about how to go about it should have limited easily. And I don’t think we’re past the peak, so the rest of this week and the weekend should still be excellent. With the humpy numbers holding up strongly at Sekiu, I would look for top fishing to hold up clear through Labor Day.”
The next two weeks should also offer peak opportunity to catch humpies in local rivers, Krein said, with the peak probably falling around the Labor Day weekend. He said it looks to knowledgeable observers like the pink run will meet Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife predictions, at least that portion of the run which turns toward south Sound rivers.
“A little too early to tell, yet, about our rivers up this way,” he said, “but at the very least it’s a good run.”
He said non-tribal commercials were scheduled to fish Possession Sound and/or Port Gardner one day this week, and “then they should be done.”
You can check scheduled commercial openings on the department Web site www.wdfw.wa.gov, then fishing, then commercial fishing.
State creel checks at the Port of Everett ramp Saturday and Sunday showed 1,741 anglers in 724 boats with 10 chinook, 52 coho, and 3,582 humpies. Not a bad weekend’s work.
Out at Sekiu on Sunday, checkers tallied 168 fishermen at Van Riper’s Resort with 70 coho and 295 pinks.
The humpy fishery on the Skagit River is going gunnysack, according to Anthon Steen at Holiday Sports in Burlington (360-757-4361), attracting anglers not only from this area, but from across the country and even a few foreign countries. The Skagit provides particularly good access for bank fishermen, many of them catching lots of pinks while plunking a Spin N Glo and sand shrimp, or casting and drifting marabou jigs or spoons such as the Dick Nite and Wicked Willy.
Pheasant meeting
An additional public meeting has been scheduled by the state for this evening, 7-9 p.m. at the Mount Vernon Senior Center, 1401 Cleveland Street, to discuss potential pheasant release sites in Skagit and north Snohomish counties. State staff will update participants on efforts to secure public and private lands to replace hunting opportunity lost to the controversial dike breaching projects on the Skagit and Snoqualmie wildlife Areas. The meeting follows a similar event held Tueseday in Conway.
On Leque Island west of Stanwood, 110 acres of the Stillaguamish estuary is being restored; at the “headquarters unit” of the Skagit WA, the Wiley Slough project is restoring 160 acres of estuarine habitat; and on the Spencer Island portion of the Snoqualmie WA, 150 acres.
The Mount Vernon Senior Center is located at the northeast corner of the Skagit County Fairgrounds.
Derbies
If you’re interested in competing in next month’s two major coho derbies, best be thinking of getting your tickets. The Edmonds event is up first, Sept. 12, offering $5,000, $2,000, $1,000 and $500 in cash prizes, plus lots of donated merchandise, for a $30 ticket, availablae at Bayside Marine in Everett, Sportco in Fife, Ted’s Sport Center and Ed’s Surplus in Lynnwood, All Seasons Charters in Edmonds, Outdoor Emporium in Seattle, and Three Rivers Marine in Woodinville. Tickets are limited and the derby is expected to sell out, so go for it. More info and full rules at the derby Web site, www.edmondscohoderby.com.
This derby is also the grand finale in the year-long Northwest Salmon Derby Series, in which ticket stubs from all the year’s tourneys (including this one) are put in a container and a winner drawn to receive the grand prize. This year it’s a 19.5-foot Stabi-Craft, Suzuki 4-stroke, and trailer package worth either a bundle or slightly more than a bundle, depending on who you talk to. Good stuff. Hop to it.
The second event next month, Sept. 19-20, is the Everett Coho Derby, for both salt and freshwater fishers, proposing to give out cash prizes of $3,000, $2,000, $1,000, $750, and $500, plus a grand prize raffle to award a 15-foot Alumaweld, 25 hp Merc, and EZ Loader trailer package valued at sixteen grand. Tickets are $25 (kids 12 and under free), available at almost every small business in three counties. For more information go to www.everettcohosalmonderby.com.
Columbia river
The buoy 10 fishery continues to smoke, putting out almost a fish per rod on the good days, mostly coho now. And, that record-breaking run of summer steelhead pushing upriver is making fishermen laugh and sing, to the tune of a jaw-dropping average of 1.8 fish per rod over the weekend. You won’t be lonesome there, however, as over 100 boats were reported working the fishery on Sunday.
END OF PRINT COLUMN
Blackman’s pier
Thanks to a reader for telling us that the handicapped fishing pier at Blackman’s Lake in Snohomish has been rebuilt and is operational again, as of last Wednesday.
State director search
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission has narrowed its search for a new director to two finalists, and will announce the winner during a public meeting Sept. 11-12 in Olympia. The commission, a nine-member citizen panel appointed by the governor to set policy for the state, interviewed six applicants for the position, including interim director Phil Anderson.
And no, the commission will not tell us who the two finalists are.
Thumbs down by gun owners?
Mayor Greg Nickels placed third in Seattle’s recent “top two” primary and bowed out of a chance at another term largely because of angry gun owners. Or so is the case pushed, understandably, by Alan Gottlieb of Bellevue, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
“When the mayor announced last year that he would ban legally-carried firearms from city property, knowing it would be contrary to the state’s preemption statute,” Gottlieb recalled, “it made tens of thousands of Seattle gun owners furious. Nickels insulted their intelligence by promising to ban guns by executive order, which is the height of municipal contempt for the rights of citizens under the state Constitution. He literally threw away their votes.”
For more information on the gun rights organization, go to www.ccrkba.org.
Coastal salmon
Salmon fishing on the coast, mostly coho now, continues hot, although Ilwaco has slacked off a bit and Westport has picked up. State creel checks show nearly limits around at Westport, and about a fish and a half per rod at Ilwaco.
Samish chinook
Good fishing for nice kings on the lower Samish River after recent rains — mostly limits for several days — cooled off some, but there are still fish being landed. Anthon Steen at Holiday Sports said experienced anglers are taking a fish or two each trip, mostly on marabou jigs.
Another good way to tackle these fish is by boat, jigging Point Wilson darts in the Samish channel, between the mouth of the river and Samish Island.
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