River Fishing for Coho October 2019

River fishing for Coho translates to some of the best fishing experiences in the Pacific Northwest. We are talking multiple fish days, lots of hookups, and fast action combined with the amazing beauty of the changing seasons.

As of today, October 22nd, 2019 many of the Western Washington rivers are blown out. Meaning, the recent rains have led to massive amounts of water pouring through which has brought sediment and colored up the rivers to the point of making them very difficult to fish.

The above picture indicates that the Puyallup has not even finished coming up from last night’s downpour over the cascades. Several other rivers have had flood watches issued on them. However, there are some rivers on the coast that will already be in shape today and tomorrow. I saw a report of the Chehalis putting fish out.

Before the rains came, I was catching plenty of coho on spinners and jigs like the one pictured above. These fish had been in the river for a bit and thus were colored up a bit. The great thing about coho salmon though, is that they cut nice and provide good meat quality even if they’ve had some time in the river.

Some of the best techniques for these fish are twitching jigs and slowly working spinners through good holding water. As these rivers drop into shape, you are going to want to be on them and on the best sections of the river as the first 1-2 days of the river being in shape will have the best fishing for the brightest fish.

Our page on river fishing for salmon has a section on identifying salmon holding water that may help you in your quest.

All of this water will also bring in the next species of salmon on the calendar, that being the hard-fighting chum salmon. They are probably already in rivers such as the Humptulips and some Chehalis rivers. Chum are the last species to return on the salmon calendar.

Rivers like the Chehalis, Cowlitz, and some coastal streams continue getting bright Coho all the way through November and some even into December. The Puget Sound area river coho action will die down and switch over to chum by early November.

Whatever you do, you have to get out and experience the rivers of the Pacific Northwest this time of year as the views can be breathtakingly beautiful.