We got out and fished for blackmouth in MA10 on Jan 10th, 2022 and had some great results!
As I wrote about recently, we have a Puget Sound salmon fishing opportunity right now in MA10 for blackmouth Sat-Mon until we hit the encounter quota of wilds / undersized fish.
Man, I hope this fishery stays under quota into March, how cool would that be? I think it has potential as long as we keep getting splashed with bad weather like on Monday.
As we rolled into the launch a little after the official sunrise, we were a bit taken aback by the scene. Nobody at the Kingston launch…Driving rain and straight flag…white caps in the bay not far from the launch. I have to admit, my first thought was “Should we be doing this?”
I have a lot more confidence in handling rough water since I upgraded to the new North River Seahawk, but being the only one at the launch still made me pause.
We took our time getting into the water and underway. We got out there and it was as nasty as we expected, driving wind and rain, 3 ft wind waves in certain spots.
Normally, the bar near Kingston is a nice spot to fish because it offers shelter from wind in several directions, but SSE is not one of them, which is exactly where the blow was coming from.
One of the great things about getting out in the first month of the year is straightening out the gear and downrigger trolling program ahead of all the opportunities coming up later in the year. But when you only take 2 rods and reels and one of the reels decides to quit on you, it’s not ideal.
So we ended up down a rod, so I let my buddy fish with the remaining one while I focussed on boat handling.
The water really smoothed out after about 11 am, and an ideal tide (ebb) started to build and we started hooking more fish. It only took us 6 fish total to get to our two 23″ keepers. These were nice healthy fish too.
I’m seeing it across everyone’s reports, that the fish are just bigger this year. We didn’t hook any small shakers as we have in previous years. Everything was pretty close, maybe the smallest was 18″.
I’ve had several days in previous years where you catch 15-20 salmon and no keepers, just grinding through the quota. I’m really hopeful that with the 3 days per week season and larger fish, that we will have a fishing opportunity all season.
What gear were we using to hook salmon?
We were trolling with the standard blue crush 11″ flasher gear and about a 50″ leader to a herring aide teaser head with an anchovy secured such that it would spin like a drill bit with a free trailer hook extending beyond the tail.
We generally would drop that all the way to the bottom, come up a foot or two, and stay pretty close to the bottom throughout. We trolled in 80-95 ft of water, mostly north and south along the inside of the shelf/bar that sits just east of the Kingston ferry terminal.
We saw a few charters trolling the east/west troll in the same area as well and saw reports of at least one other limit. One of the charters was still there when we left and we saw a sport boat there that I believe got off the water when things were snotty.
I hope to be back out there in a couple of weeks to do some more damage! If you’re looking for more information on Puget Sound blackmouth fishing, try our page on the topic.
