2023 Puget Sound Spot Shrimp Season

puget sound shrimp coming up

We are only a few weeks away from the 2023 Puget Sound Shrimping season! Now is the time to review season details, take inventory of your pots, your riggings, and of course your bait.

Do you remember where you left off last year? Do you remember the valuable lessons you learned? Now is the time to review, head to the store if you need to and come up with a plan to make your 2023 season a big success.

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Pink Salmon Run 2023

Duwamish waterway fishing for Pinks
Duwamish waterway fishing for Pinks

Like the first gleam of dawn on the Duwamish industrial water way is the glimpse of summer time fun we just received from WDFW via the North of Falcon Salmon season setting process.

That’s right folks, it’s time to board the hype train to humpy town! Pink Salmon season 2023 is upon us!

Let’s get the full rundown of the pink salmon um…run, in 2023.

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Puget Sound Salmon Forecasts 2023

Nice chinook salmon caught around Sekiu

This is the big forecast news dump we’ve been waiting for! There’s so much information on what we can expect with regards to salmon fishing in Puget Sound revealed at the beginning of North of Falcon with these forecasts now released.

There was also some framing of the kind of salmon seasons we can expect. I will unpack all of it for you in this blog post, including details about the nearly 4 million pinks (humpies) expected to return to Puget Sound in 2023!

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Gold Creek Trail Hike April 2021

Views of the olympics from Gold Creek Trail
Views of the olympics from Gold Creek Trail

Gold Creek trail on Green mountain is just a short drive from Bremerton and a fantastic out and back with panoramic views of the Olympics and lots of elevation gain for the short 2.5 mile hike.

Getting to Gold Creek Trail
Getting to Gold Creek Trail

The trailhead at Gold Creek is just a short drive from Bremerton (less than 20 minutes) and an easy hour from the Puyallup area where we started from. We lost cell service in the last 10-15 minutes of the drive though so better have the directions plugged in early!

Gold Creek Trailhead satellite map
Gold Creek Trailhead satellite map

The trailhead requires a Discover pass to park for free as you are within a State Forest. There is ample parking at the trailhead. However, when we came back down around noon, it had mostly filled up. The hike will take you anywhere from 1.5-2.5 hours total depending on the fitness level of your group.

At the trailhead parking there are two trails that aren’t marked clearly. The northern most trail is Gold Creek Trail. The southern side of the parking lot trail entrance is a different trail with what we were told included significant challenging elevation gain to start out.

gold creek trail heavily forested
Gold creek trail heavily forested

A good portion of the trail looks like the above pic. Heavily forested and going up up and up. The elevation gain total is around 1000 ft over 2.5 miles. A great place to get some exercise!

hood canal and olympics from gold creek trail
Hood canal and Olympics from gold creek trail

After about 1.5-2 miles climbing you are rewarded with some fantastic panoramic views of the Olympics and Hood Canal right around the clear cut area. I could see our Hood Canal shrimping spot from up there!

We did this hike in April and it hadn’t rained much in the past week, so the trail was fairly dry. I could see there being some challenging during periods of heavy rain for the tennis shoe approach here.

Also, this is a mixed use hiking trail. We yielded the trail on the way down to some dirt bikes who were making their way up. Overall, there wasn’t a ton of traffic for a Saturday hiking trail with views as spectacular as what we experienced.

Also also! We passed by a fair amount of huckleberry bushes that come August should yield an amazing foraging opportunity!