OK, so I’m sure when you hear “Minter Creek,” you think of “combat fishing” and “a place to avoid”. I’ve shared these same sentiments. I hadn’t been to Minter Creek in about 9 years due to these sentiments. I was pleasantly surprised with the experience.
A week ago, WDFW closed Minter Creek, Marine Area 13, and Kennedy Creek to chum salmon fishing. A week later they re-opened Minter but closed Hood Canal. These closures really narrowed down the options for fishing for chums.
I was thinking that maybe most people wouldn’t realize that Minter had re-opened and that there would still be a few fish around to tangle with.
There was a 13.6 ft high tide at 10:20am in Wauna on Carr Inlet. I arrived at Minter Creek about 3 hours prior.
This turned out to be a bit too early as the creek was super low and just started to get the tidewater pushing in. About an hour later though, I saw the first few chums swim in. After that another 8-10. Then another 2. It seemed every few minutes a few more would push up.
I decided to hike back upstream a bit though because where I was positioned they were just swimming by and not paying my jig under a float any heed.
Finally, I saw a school of 7-8 fish swim past me and I chucked my gear 20 ft ahead of them and let the float and jig just sit there. I could have counted down: 3 2 1. Bam! Bobber down!
Fish on! It took me a few minutes to get this fish to the bank and it certainly had plenty of fight in it. The above video captures most of it.
This season, the chum opportunities have certainly been limited and the options limited. Maybe you had a bad experience once at Minter Creek and haven’t been back since. I cannot guarantee the bad experience won’t be repeated.
However, if you stick below the bridge and target biting fish with a float/jig/prawn presentation, you may have success and more importantly a good time.