After all the snow, ice, and wind events we’ve had in the Puget Sound area lately, I finally made it out to fish for Blackmouth in Puget Sound. I had heard some recent good reports in Marine Area 10, so we decided to target fishing near Kingston. Marine Area 10 has been open since the start of the year and has just started to produce Blackmouth.
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.
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.
Puget Sound Crab season extended into 2020. We also recently crabbed Marine Area 8-2 looking for big winter Dungeness crab.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 the primary saltwater season in Puget Sound winds down and we don’t have an abundance of Blackmouth opportunities, the focus shifts to the rivers and in particular to the coastal rivers of the Olympic Peninsula.