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.
The weather for the day was projected to be rain with a heavy dose of wind and more rain.
While the wind was projected to lay down slightly (from 20 down to 12), the wind direction is equally as important to understand when planning a blackmouth fishing trip in marginal weather in Puget Sound.
In our case, the wind was coming from the south, which generally boogers things up a bit. However, the fishing area we wanted to target in front of Kingston had some protection from a south wind via Presidents Point a mile or so to the south and east.
OK, so in my previous post and youtube video I wasn’t willing to draw a map to a sensitive area (so maybe this makes up for it a bit?).
Where to fish in front of Kingston is in no way a secret. There’s a big bar right in the middle of the chart where depths go from 300 up to 80 ft and then down to 300 ft again.
We were fishing on the west side of that bar. It’s shallower on the north end and deeper on the south end. The tidal current wasn’t much of a factor due to the low exchange, but the wind was definitely making it easier to troll south to north. Interestingly, most of our fish bit going north to south, and into the wind.
We were fishing spoons with both the Blue Coyote flasher and the Gibbs moon jelly Bon Chovy flasher. We had a herring aide coho killer on one side and a herring aide kingfisher 2.0 on the other. Tipped with just a smidge of herring smelly jelly.
When we first started fishing we kept hitting shakers and some blackmouth that were just short. Later on, we heard from the fish checker that some people have been keeping fish just short. Gotta measure vs just guessing!
It can be challenging at first to judge the size of the blackmouth since none of them tripped our downrigger clips when they bit. After the 5th or 6th blackmouth though you kinda get the hang of what might be a keeper vs a short vs a shaker. There was only one other boat on the water with us and they were having a similar challenge of just catching shorts.
I decided to increase my speed to try and avoid the undersized blackmouth. The larger fish can swim faster and catch up to your gear, but the smaller fish cannot. I would be careful to get up to speed before dropping my downrigger all the way to the bottom since the bite was sometimes immediate if you dropped down and then tried to gain speed.
Many apologies for this photo (and the others) as it’s a screenshot from my GoPro footage which had some rain drops on the outer lens that I was unaware of until I started crunching the footage.
We found that I had to keep my speed about 2.4 knots (2.7-2.8 mph) or higher to avoid the shakers, which made it a bit more exciting when we would get a bite as we knew it was a decent fish. We had one other fish that was likely a keeper we lost right at the boat before netting this nice 23″ keeper that had some serious fattiness to him.
I mean look at his head size relative to his body. What a butterball! Overall, this was a great day on the water despite the weather. It’s important to have fully waterproof gear when out doing this kind of thing on an open boat. Even more important to zip up the pockets on said waterproof gear when they hold things like your wallet…
Looking for more details on the topic? Check out our full page on Puget Sound Salmon and Blackmouth Fishing. Additionally, a bunch of other Marine Areas open up on February 1st, which is just one week away!
I bet those who chose to stick in Marine Area 10 in front of Kingston and south of Jeff Head will do just fine though as some of the other pressure disperses around the area. Check out more of what’s coming for 2020 Puget Sound salmon seasons here. We will keep that page updated as more of the season-setting process gets revealed.
Good luck and stay safe on the water!
Hello- I would like to learn a bit more and ask a few questions.
Sure Glenn! You can DM me on instagram @kyle.towle or this public comments area.