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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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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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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Marine Area 11 shore based fishing allowed in August 2023

Bright pinks caught off the beach at Brown's point
Bright pinks caught off the beach at Brown’s point

I…*sigh*

This news story is hard to write about. More opportunity is always a positive. And I’ve had some incredible memories fishing from the shore for pinks and coho in Marine Area 11, but if you’re a boat angler in the south sound this news probably hurts a bit.

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Changes I made to stop losing big chinook while trolling

Holding a 17 lb westport chinook king salmon

If you’ve been a follower of our YouTube channel (you should be!), you know that we ran out to Neah Bay not long after the June salmon opener for a single day incredible turn and burn trip. And on that trip, we hooked into 8 quality chinook, but lost 6 of those, and only landed 2.

I’ve recently made some changes and have gone 11 for 11 on quality chinook since those changes. This blog post is to highlight what exactly I changed.

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Should we lie to WDFW about the fish we caught?

Box full of fresh chrome salmon

You might be thinking this is a ridiculous blog post just from the title, but it’s actually a really important question to think through with a full understanding of how our fishing and catching data is used by WDFW. By attempting to apply logic and reason to this question we will hopefully illuminate some things we may not fully understand.

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