Except for a short stretch of 3 days, the Puyallup and Carbon Rivers have stayed in low visibility coloration for all of September. The fish are most definitely in and being caught consistently all over the river system.
Unfortunately, the majority of the catch in the upper parts of the system are still pink salmon. There are some big kings around and I’ve even heard of a few “chrome” fish being pulled out. I expect the last of the king run to be completed over the next 7 days though.
The silvers have been pulled out consistently, but you have to put the work in or be in the right spot when a school is pushing through. I would say that more silvers are being caught on the Puyallup than the Carbon as the Carbon is still largely choked with pinks.
Silvers do not like to mix in with pinks if they can help it. Unfortunately, both species prefer very similar holding water.
If you are catching pinks in holding water, but you are looking for silvers, you will likely need to relocate. Give it a few more weeks and those pinks should be out of the way as well.
Have you seen the weather forecast for the next few days? Snow in the cascades down to 4000 elevation. Lows in the 30’s by Sunday. What does this mean for fishing? I expect the entire Puyallup system to green up this weekend and next week.
Why does this matter? If you have a good read-through of our page on fishing for salmon in the rivers, visibility is a big deal when it comes to getting fish to bite.
Especially coho, which will typically be very aggressive with lures. That combined with the run building to larger and larger weekly numbers should make for some great fishing throughout October.
There’s still some emerging concern about coho-run health based on the recent WDFW limit change for Marine Areas down to a 1 fish limit. There are no specifics about which run or if it’s just a concern about quotas.
The fish are certainly smaller this year as a result of the Pinks likely competing with them for food in the salt. So many more pinks returned than predicted, which is something I predicted back in March.
So what am I doing? I’ve got an awesome opportunity to hunt whitetail in NE Washington with a good friend, so I will be giving the salmon a break for a few days. Upon my return, I will be packing up to hit the Forks area the following week, so I will not have my direct pulse on the Puyallup system for a bit, but I expect the fishing to be pretty epic when I return.
A note on the coast…because of the super wet September, there’s already plenty of fishing moving through. Take a day off work and head out there if you get the chance. There’s even a razor clam dig this weekend, so you could pull off a dual clam/salmon trip if you wanted to.
I know I will be interested in that come October. I’m not crazy about the tides for the September dig.
Final note, for those of you who fish all the time, but consider taking up hunting, I hope to start to build some helpful references for anyone attempting to take on the learning curve from scratch.
I’ve only ever hunted for dove in Arizona before, so I’m really excited to start to take on the big game and really learn as much as I can about it from an experienced hunter.
If you missed it, here’s a video I posted about detecting the bite while driftfishing with bait:
