Marine Area 13 Chum Fishing, November 2019

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.

Go ahead and read the Marine Area 13 section like 5 more times and tell me if it makes sense. The bottom line is that the Marine Area 13 chum program is all catch and release. Even the popular terminal fisheries in these areas are closed. I was really looking forward to getting my bobber and anchovy technique nailed down this year as well.

I will share about the one trip we did make to Carr Inlet in Marine Area 13 and the mouth of Minter Creek last week though.

First off…there are some blackmouth south of the narrows being caught right now.

We were marking them on our sonar on the trip to Carr Inlet from Point Defiance where we launched. The fish checker confirmed as much as well. A fish of 12 lbs was caught recently…That’s all I will say about that! You can read more about fishing for blackmouth in Puget Sound on our blackmouth page.

We get to Minter Creek and sit in about 30 ft of water catching the last bit of the outgoing tide as we were drifting slowly in front of the mouth. We started to see activity in the area of chum splashing around on the surface.

Firing up the motor to chase them down is not really a great idea. Much better to understand the current direction and drift with the motor off for your best chance by avoiding spooking them since they swim so close to the surface.

We had several bites from Chum that were really just hard swipes as I was slowly reeling in my anchovy rigged on about a 4 ft leader below my standard float setup. The anchovy would come in all mangled, but I never felt or saw anything as I was reeling in. Also, just letting the float sit out there motionless was not producing either.

We finally settled into drifting in about 10 ft of water as the incoming tide moved us from south to north across the mouth. The one hookup came via pulling the float towards the boat and then letting it sit slack, which causes a slow fall of the anchovy combined with a rise and spin effect as I pull the float. We repeated that technique as we drifted along.

My float started to bob and then just got absolutely buried. I quickly picked up any remaining slack by reeling and gave it a nice hard hook set. Fish on! This was a nice mid-teens chum that was fighting like a freight train, pulling out line, shaking its head.

Good times! “Yes!” I’m thinking. Now, my freezer is full of kings and coho already, but I was as excited as can be to get this fish to the net and payoff the marine area 13 bobber and anchovy program this way.

I see my line racing to the surface and I’m getting more excited to see this fish maybe come up and perform some aerial acrobatics. How can this get any better, right? I’m the only boat here, with my crew, in early November, flat calm glorious conditions and we are going to get this fish to the boat after a long hard fight.

My chum surfaces, along with my worst nightmare: The dreaded seal. This fur bag has my chum!

The seal submerges and begins to swim, peeling line like an actual freight train. I’m not about to concede this easily though. I fire up my kicker and hand the rod to my Dad as we give chase. The seal must have surfaced 3-4 times off various sides of the boat before my Dad and I wonder if we have the seal hooked and not the fish at this point. We couldn’t see the fish when the seal surfaced several times.

I put the motor in neutral, took the rod back and did the straight rod pull thing until my leader snapped. As it snapped, I saw the chum one final time pop up partially out of the water, before the seal reclaimed it and disappeared one final time.

Gah!

Anyway, this way of fishing is extremely fun and relaxing (until it’s not!). Marine Area 13 is shutting down to protect the run, which is something I will always support.

Marine Area 12 aka Hood Canal should provide some opportunity to give this a try. That is probably where I will be next week as that run really starts to pick up. Unless I’m chasing blackmouth 🙂

You can checkout more opportunities and tips about puget sound salmon at our reference page.