I finally made it out for a fishing trip after a dry spell of almost 5 weeks! The goal of this trip? Float fishing for steelhead on the Washington coast! In this post, I describe all the details that made this a successful steelhead fishing trip.
Places
Places to fish, hunt or forage
2019 Utah Elk Hunting
Hunting for elk in Utah during winter is an amazing experience whether you get to fill your elk tag or not.
On this Utah elk trip, we ended up with a whole lot of tag soup, but this was largely a factor of the deck not being stacked in our favor.
I’m not always as excited to write about trips that didn’t result in punching tags or fish. However, any hunting trip where you experience the kinds of backcountry views we had, where you learn a lot that can be applied to the next season, and where you stay safe and warm (mostly), is a great trip.
2020 Puget Sound Salmon Seasons
2020 Salmon seasons have been released as the North of Falcon process concludes. While the biggest headline and disappointment is the loss of most of the winter blackmouth season in 2020-2021, it may only be a one year setback. Summer chinook seasons have a slightly higher quota. Everything kicks off on June 1st with the opening of the Marine Area 10 coho season.
My final update to this post is a link to the 2021 Puget sound salmon season post just released.
2019 Puget Sound Crab Season Extended into 2020
Puget Sound Crab season extended into 2020. We also recently crabbed Marine Area 8-2 looking for big winter Dungeness crab.
Minter Creek Float Fishing for Chum
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.
Marine Area 13 Chum Fishing, November 2019
Puget Sound salmon fishing has tailored off significantly as coho runs are fully in the rivers (some runs like the Puyallup are basically over). Chum are now making their way through Puget Sound, but there is some bad news on that front we will dive into.
RV Camping near Aberdeen WA
With several consecutive outstanding razor clam tides on the coast, we wanted to stay a few nights at an RV Park near Aberdeen WA. We ended up finding Hoquiam River RV Park after a brief search.
Lake 22 Hike
It’s fall and you might be looking to hit that popular summer hike that you are hoping has less foot traffic on it now. Lake 22 would not be such a hike, but the views and the trail are worth braving the crowds.
As we made our way down, we probably passed 30-40 people and saw another 20 staging near the trailhead with a completely full parking lot by 10 am on a Saturday in late October.
Puget Sound Crab October 2019
I finally got the boat back out on the water to try and get some crab on the last day of the season in Marine area 8-2 near Everett, WA.
Usually, this season remains open through December, but unfortunately this year WDFW announced the closure on Oct 24th. Why did it close early and how did we do?
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.
