Posts Tagged ‘Salmon fishing Washington State’
If you have fished around the Gig Harbor area for very long you know about Chambers Creek Hatchery. August is by far the best month to fish salmon around here and most of those fish come from Chambers Creek hatchery.
There is a dam at Chambers that was built a long time ago to provide water for the old paper mill that was closed in 2000. In the last couple years Pierce County and the Puyallup Tribe have spent over $13 million on upstream habitat restoration but as I have said a million times habitat means nothing if the fish can’t get to it. There has been one fish ladder in operation and the other was abandoned thirty years ago.
Enter the Chambers Creek Restoration Team. This is a group of volunteers that, with grant funding and technical assistance from the Puyallup tribe, have restored the second fish ladder and christened it on September 27th. While the hatchery kings will still be intercepted and the eggs used to replenish the hatchery, the new ladder will assist runs of coho and chum to get upstream to the habitat that has been restored. Which should mean increased runs of these species and that is great news for those of us that like to fish them in September and October.
Good Fishin' To Ya'
Kerry W Allen
Yes boys and girls it’s that time of year again. The time when everyone with anything that can float gets out there and catches a few king salmon as they come by on their way to the river. Some guys will catch these in 60 or 8- feet of water and with anything from a 4 oz. banana weight and a herring to downriggers and hoochies.
I like to fish these in about 90 to 100 feet of water. There is a run that comes through at 75 feet and another around 90. My favorite is to run a green sonic edge spoon 56 inches behind a green hotspot flasher, 100 feet on the downrigger in 90 feet of water. I also go a little faster than some at 2.5 to 3 mph through the water. Recently the cookies and cream kingfisher spoon has worked very well for all these fish. I like to run this 35 inches behind a green flasher. These are especially deadly in the morning.
Plea for help:
If anything I have shared here has helped you, or entertained you, in some small way please consider donating a couple dollars to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Everyone knows someone with diabetes. If you don’t your kids certainly do. Donating is easier than catching local kings. you just click on the link and enter your info. you can even give anonymously if you want.
Thanks you and Good Fishin’ To Ya’
Capt. Kerry
Good Fishin' To Ya'
Kerry W Allen
We are a little ahead of schedule.
It turns out the decision to rent a garage for the project was a good one. I have been able to dry out some old holes and patch them. Got rid of some old hardware and filled the holes from that also. I have learned to apply gel coat and fiberglass, both of which will be useful skills in the future.
We installed a new satellite ready am/fm radio and speakers, a new Garmin 400c fish finder for the cockpit (this will use the existing p66 transducer from the old Furuno), a through hull (B60) transducer with a 12 degree tilt. This last required me to drill a 2 3/8 inch hole in the bottom of my boat. SCARRY!!! The big brain behind all this is a Garmin 740S touch screen GPS/Fishfinder combo unit. All this stuff is ready t plug in turn on and go. I am still awaiting a fuel flow sensor and an adapter for the 400c so it will talk to the transducer.
As soon as the fiberglass patch on the top is complete (outer layer on the bottom)
we can mount the 10 hole rocket launcher and the led deck light. Patch should be done Tuesday and the rocket launcher will go on this weekend. Then it’s wash and wax and let go fishing!!!!!!!
Good Fishin' To Ya'
Kerry W Allen
I don’t know if others experience this but I seem to have a lot of smarty pants type people around me. I was supposed to go crabbing with my friend YT (pronounced whitee) on Sunday but I worked a little overtime so I didn’t get the boat back in the water. We were going to drop some pots at Quartermaster Harbor and troll around for a couple hours get some fat winter crab and go home.
Today is monday and I see YT and he says “we only got three crab” in that “ask me what else happened” kinda voice. So I say “but they were big fat nice ones, yes?”. He couldn’t hold it any more and told me he caught a nice 23lb Blackmouth while soaking the pots. Needless to say it didn’t take much prompting to get the rest of the story. 
He was fishing on the west side of Point Dalco, in about 100 feet of water. he was running a hot spot on the downrigger ball, with about a 4 foot leader, and a coyote spoon about three feet behind that off the release. I will try to post a pic of this rig in the future.
Good Job YT
Good Fishin' To Ya'
Kerry W Allen
It’s the end of October and that means some great fall fishing is coming to a close and with it goes the retention of wild kings and the ability to keep two Chinook. The good news is blackmouth season is upon us. My personal favorite Puget Sound fishery is blackmouth, or local kings, so I get very excited about this time of year. We are back to releasing wild Chinook (adipose fin in tact) and only keeping one Chinook but there are still some chum around and local coho to fill the two fish limit. And we will have winter crabbing in area 11 this year starting November 21st seven days a week til December 31st.
There is nothing like a crisp clear winter day, where the sun is out and the water is perfectly flat. There is very little competition for these fish so I am usually the only boat out, or one of just a couple. If I’m lucky I can get my buddy James or one of the other hard cores to go. We fish Blackmouth mostly at the tide changes, and hour before to an hour after. I’ll fish the Girl Scout Camp or Point Richmond on the in and Point Defiance on the out. Or Gig Harbor on either tide. There is a hump just north of the harbor that holds fish on the leeward side.
I troll between 2.5 and 3 MPH but will go slower if I’m running fat plugs like the Tomic Tubby’s. I usually run spoons or hoochies in green. I also have a couple Tomic Plugs one white and one green that work really well for Blackmouth. For instructions on rigging these check out my youtube channel. Don’t forget to subscribe. And you want to run this right on the bottom. usually if you run your downrigger ball the same depth as the water, or even a little deeper for the angle, you will usually be close enough. These fish are sitting on the bottom and feeding up.
Don’t forget to wear a life jacket when fishing in the winter and let someone know where your going and when you’ll be back. Unlike the summer, there aren’t a lot of other people around so a small mistake could be disastrous. Good Luck
Good Fishin' To Ya'
Kerry W Allen
I was out yesterday and caught a small humpy. The trick with humpies is to bleed them right away and put them on ice. Unfortunately I didn’t have any ice so I cycled the water in my cooler a couple times and kept him alive till I could clean him at the dock.
I filleted him, put him on ice and BBQed him tonight with some pineapple pepper sauce we got at Costco. It was great!!!
Good Fishin' To Ya'
Kerry W Allen
It looks like this rain has done it’s job and some kings are moving in to the area and plenty more are on the way. Try the girl Scout Camp on an incoming tide or Point Defiance on the out. There have also been some nice fish caught in front of Gig Harbor early in the mornings and evenings this last week or so. When fishing in the Gig Harbor area I will often stay “between the cabins”
View Gig Harbor (www.GigHarborFishing.com) in a larger map
I have been known on an out tide to fish farther south near Point Evans. You don’t want to get too close to point Evans because the bottom is rough and you will lose gear.
Try kingfisher spoons in cookies and cream and green uv, the 3.5″ apex in green and smoke or ace high flies. Any of these can be run with a flasher.
I have also been seeing great reports coming from my friends in
Ucluelet, BC 
and LaPush. 
Westport has been doing well also and if your like me and excited about Tuna a friend of mine went 40 miles and got one last weekend. That was an expensive Tuna but it is only the beginning of some great fishing to come.
Good Fishin' To Ya'
Kerry W Allen
As I was fishing yesterday morning with my buddy Jeff We snagged this dude. It’s an eight and a half inch herring. The herring in the south sound tend to be a little smaller than in the north sound or the ocean so smaller spoons, hoochies and plugs usually work better here. Kingfisher and Apex spoons in the 3.5 inch or 4 inch Tomic plugs are my favorites. I also like needlefish hoochies. They give a smaller presentation to more closely match what the salmon are eating.
So at the end of our day we snag this huge herring. Can you guess what I’ll be trying on Thursday when I go out next?
Good Fishin' To Ya'
Kerry W Allen
Columbia River anglers will get at least eight more days to catch hatchery-reared spring chinook salmon below Bonneville Dam under a decision announced today by fishery managers from Washington and Oregon.
The lower Columbia will reopen to fishing Friday, April 8, through Friday, April 15. Fishery managers will meet again April 14 to determine whether to allow additional fishing time.
Through April 4, anglers had caught and kept a total of 4,500 spring chinook. Approximately 3,800 were upriver fish, compared to a 7,700-fish harvest guideline for upriver chinook set at the beginning of the season.
Along with the eight additional fishing days, lower-river anglers could get another chance to catch spring chinook in May, once fishery managers update the run forecast. While the preseason forecast projected a return of 198,400 upriver fish, the fishery has been managed with a 30 percent “buffer” to guard against overestimating the run.
Read the press release here
Good Fishin' To Ya'
Kerry W Allen
There was an oil spill in the harbor today. The coast Guard says it was not enough to be harmful to marine mammals and will dissipate normally.
From the Seattle Times:
Lt. Marina Turner at the Coast Guard office in Seattle said the spill, called into the Coast Guard at about 10:45 a.m., was not potentially harmful to marine mammals and was evaporating naturally.
The Coast Guard and Ecology aren’t sure what caused the spill, but Turner said it may have been from a boat that had fueled up at the marina and then accidentally spilled some of the diesel.
Couple things here; First: there is no fuel in the harbor, so how could someone be fueling up there. Second, if a spill that big is no big deal I’m going to stop worrying about a couple drops at the gas dock. I’m not saying I don’t think it was an accident, I believe it probably was, I just don’t buy the whole it’s no big deal thing.
Good Fishin' To Ya'
Kerry W Allen
Gig Harbor Fly Shop
Gig Harbor.com