Puget Sound Salmon Forecasts 2024

Couple of beefy puget sound chinook

I endured 6 hours of North of Falcon zoom meetings to bring you these fresh-off-the-grill salmon forecasts for the year 2024!

Okay, it wasn’t that bad. This forecast “unveiling” was the beginning of the North of Falcon process, wherein the salmon seasons get set and eventually printed prior to the July 1st new regulations year.

If you’re already confused, you are in good company as the entire process of salmon forecast models and the resulting seasons leave a lot of recreational anglers who are only semi-familiar with the process scratching their heads.

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Preparing for the 2024 Columbia River Spring Chinook Fishing Season

Nice fat springer caught just above Warrior Rock

The first thing you should know about the 2024 Columbia River Spring Chinook fishing season is that it’s almost here! We’ve had a few chinook go over the Bonneville Dam, and a few reports of chinook caught in the lower river and now is the time to take stock of our gear and make plans to go fishing for the tastiest of all PNW Salmon.

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2024 Winter Chinook Blackmouth Fishery to open 4 days a week

Limits of Blackmouth in MA10 Jan 2022

For many Puget Sound anglers, this announcement of our winter chinook fishery beginning on March 1st, 2024 is absolutely exciting. March is often the beginning of the recreational fishing calendar for those with a boat. This announcement is also a reminder of the challenge and difficulty of fishing seasons in Puget Sound the last few years with the restriction of being only open for 4 days a week.

We cover all the details of this WDFW news and provide links to helpful resources in this blog post.

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Reviewing 2023 Puget Sound Salmon Seasons and Preparing for 2024

marine area 10 chinook king salmon near seattle aug 2023

I recently attended the Puget Sound Salmon Town Hall earlier this week where we reviewed the 2023 Puget Sound Salmon Seasons, examined the weather and environmental conditions, introduced the 2024 North of Falcon schedule and WDFW attempted to answer questions from a frustrated public.

In this blog post I highlight the parts I think you should be aware of.

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Columbia River Spring and Summer Chinook Salmon Forecast 2024

Columbia River Spring chinook 2023 1

Before the spring and summer salmon seasons get announced on the Columbia we get to review the final tally of the 2023 returns and the 2024 forecast.

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Explaining the Marine Area 10 closure, re-opening in August 2023

marine area 10 chinook king salmon near seattle aug 2023

The summer salmon season in 2023 was one of the absolute best in quite some time!

The abundance of coho and chinook results in many wonderful fish-catching adventures throughout the Puget Sound, Strait, and Ocean.

However, many anglers will best remember 2023 for the two very confusing, confounding, and anger-inducing closures that occurred in Marine Area 10 and Marine Area 11.

This blog article attempts to explain the Marine Area 10 closure in much greater detail than how most of us have previously understood it.

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Naselle River Salmon Fishing 2023

The Naselle River is a river in Southwest Washington that drains the low-lying coastal mountain range north of the Columbia River but south of the Willapa River watershed. The river winds it’s way through the town of Naselle and eventually dumps into the southern end of Willapa Bay.

Runs of salmon and steelhead are typically abundant within the Naselle River and this page provides some of the trip planning information that might help you make a salmon fishing trip to the Naselle River in 2023.

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Washington coastal rivers salmon limit reduced, November 2023

WDFW just announced on Nov 3rd, 2023 that the adult salmon limit would be reduced to one fish across many Washington coastal rivers and chinook retention would be eliminated. The reason cited is fewer numbers of unclipped and clipped coho salmon returning than forecasted. I’m curious about this for a few reasons…

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