Outdoors pick of the week: Sekiu salmon

Published 8:56 pm Wednesday, July 15, 2009

It’s a salmon cornucopia right now out of Sekiu, with anglers able to mix or match a limit of chinook, coho and humpies. All three are available, according to Chris Mohr at Van Riper’s Resort in Sekiu, and which of the three you catch depends on where you go and what you use.

“What the guys are doing,” Mohr said, “is going out at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning and fishing chinook along the kelp, or out to 80 or 100 feet of water — pretty tight to the beach, anyway — then after a couple of hours going on out a mile or two for a combination of coho and humpies.”

The limit, he said, is four salmon, no more than two chinook and no more than two coho, with a bonus of two humpies. Mohr said there’s a lot of bait in the area, so those fishing herring for chinook are doing well, along with “cop car” Coho Killer spoons and spatterback green squid.

There have been pretty good numbers of big chinook in the mix, and Mohr said he’s seen coho already to 7 or 8 pounds — large for this early in the season. Pink limits are there for the taking, he said, but he feels it’s nowhere close to the peak of the humpie season.

State Fish and Wildlife Department creel checks at Van Riper’s on Sunday showed 124 anglers with 18 chinook, 21 coho and 42 pinks.