Puget Sound

Tallguy said:
Yes. My NH grandfathers taught me how to tie this one up several decades ago, using several sections of 2" thick walled threaded iron pipe, a heavy iron blade about 3" wide, a file, and a sharpening hone till razor sharp. Hackle it using a welder. Fish it in the winter, generally with the "8" hole plus baitfish plus ice scoop" presentation. Watch your damn toes, this fly craves toes like you wouldn't believe. I personally used it many times for 3-18" catches, of both black ice and white ice and slushy ice, with a memorable 30" thick catches here and there when I was a young man. The 40" trophies of old, spoken of with hushed quiet sweaty voices and even lying on the ground demonstrations to show how you had to clean the hole, are never, never seen anymore unless you spend a lot of money to fly way way north. As is typical, the DFWs everywhere have really fucked up management of this fishery. December and March are now basically closed everywhere, and even early January seasons are hit and miss, and often closed unexpectedly. PM for details if you want to tie one of these, I know how.
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Is there a fuze involved or was that another thread? 😅
 
Divad said:
Sounds like a worm. Didn’t we just have a full moon too? I read they get into mass orgys on full moon nights to party. At least I think that was the worms I was reading about…
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Yep, the more I think about it the more it all adds up. Some of the flies I fished could definitely double as a worm fly. I had more than a couple takes where the fly would land and the fish would inhale the fly and start swimming away with it before I even started stripping which seemed odd to me, but in hindsight if they were keyed in on worms might explain the different takes.

Not like we didn't have plenty of action, but now that I slept on it I have an idea of how to be better prepared if I run into that situation again.
 
ffb said:
Yep, the more I think about it the more it all adds up. Some of the flies I fished could definitely double as a worm fly. I had more than a couple takes where the fly would land and the fish would inhale the fly and start swimming away with it before I even started stripping which seemed odd to me, but in hindsight if they were keyed in on worms might explain the different takes.

Not like we didn't have plenty of action, but now that I slept on it I have an idea of how to be better prepared if I run into that situation again.
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Yeah, it would certainly add up to what we were seeing. I too had quite a few similar takes, and takes that were just..... different? Than what I'm used to. Like they weren't so much attacking, or smashing the fly, but just slurping it in or something, I dunno. One of the patterns I fished a lot yesterday was one I've long kinda thought might be eaten as a worm, but of course who knows. I'm definitely going to mess around at the vise with maybe some slightly longer versions of a similar pattern or something.

In years past I've messed about with tying so long, articulated worm style flies, but I've never been a big fan of fishing trailing hook patterns for cutthroat so maybe just a bit bigger version of that fly I fished yesterday, tied on a standard hook, would get the job done, especially with the way they were gulping down those flies. Stinger hooks were definitely not needed.
 
Pink Nighty said:
First of yall, hell yeah @Nick Clayton !!! Glad to see you back in action.

Secondly, wtf is this? Seen in birch bay.

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That is a Northern kelp crab, Pugettia producta (see here). This picture is a ventral view. You will often see them on pilings. I suspect that it is a molt as it is missing its abdomen and the top section of the carapace.
Steve
 
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I’ve had 2 occasions where a smallish northern kelp crab has climbed up my legs and positioned itself between my stripping basket strap and my waders. I didn’t know it had happened until taking my basket off at the end of the day or for a quick break. I read that they like to climb pilings so maybe that’s what they were doing on my legs? I’m just glad that they stopped at the belt line and didn’t venture up and over the top. 😁
 
Nick Clayton said:
After taking a few months off from fishing to focus on some other things in life, I was able to get out twice this last week.

Friday @Jake Watrous and I hit the canal in my boat. Fishing was unbelievably slow, but the weather and the company was fantastic. We managed to get off the water just as the serious rain was hitting. Good timing.

Yesterday @ffb ferried me around the south sound in his awesome new boat, and boy was it a good time. The weather was just unreal. As Jon said at some point "There's calm.... and then there's THIS". It was so calm yesterday it was almost eery. Like you could feel a weird denseness in the air. It was also fairly warm, which was quite enjoyable. We found decent cutthroat fishing just about everywhere we went, and even ran into a handful of rezzies. Didn't land anything too monsterous size wise, but plenty of good, solid fish and boy were they fat and colorful. We also found a new to us area that fished surprisingly well at low tide in spite of neither of us having a floater onboard which would have been the ideal tool for the 1-3' depths the fish were in. Fly didn't matter in the least. It was the kind of day where if you found some fish you could catch them on whatever you felt like tying on. Jon's super natural peach baitfish pattern with a black conehead was definitely a favorite lol.

I didn't take any pictures, but I should have. Was just enjoying the incredible weather and actually being out on the water again after an extended period away from it.

Big thanks to both of those guys for dragging me out on the water. I needed that!
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Like many I was wondering WTF you were up to but didn’t want to be nosey. Very happy to see you back on this forum.

I’ll reach out to you for comment when the chum fry fever goes ballistic 😉

Welcome back Nick!

Dave
 
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Fished in a long sleeve tee last night for the last hour of light. One of those evenings where the water looked incredibly fishy but not a fish in sight. No complaints here. The weather was surreal. Two people walking on the beach asked me how the salmon fishing was. I spent some time looking for garbage to pack out and was pleasantly surprised at how clean the beach and walk to my Jeep were!
 
Porter2 said:
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Tidepool sculpin, Oligocottus maculosus. Note the relatively small mouth and narrow head (for a sculpin). Its sister species, fluffy sculpin or Oligocottus snideri, has fleshy cirri on the head, the base of the dorsal fin, and the lateral line. Tidepool sculpins are common in Puget Sound and the western sections of the Strait of Juan de Fuca; fluffy sculpins become more common on more exposed areas especially as you head west in the Strait and along the coast. Individuals in the genus Oligocottus and Clinocottus (both intertidal specialists) lack scales or major spines. Mark-recapture studies have demonstrated that this species can return to its home area (often tide pools) even when displaced by up to a mile.
Steve
 
Cabezon said:
Tidepool sculpin, Oligocottus maculosus. Note the relatively small mouth and narrow head (for a sculpin). Its sister species, fluffy sculpin or Oligocottus snideri, has fleshy cirri on the head, the base of the dorsal fin, and the lateral line. Tidepool sculpins are common in Puget Sound and the western sections of the Strait of Juan de Fuca; fluffy sculpins become more common on more exposed areas especially as you head west in the Strait and along the coast. Individuals in the genus Oligocottus and Clinocottus (both intertidal specialists) lack scales or major spines. Mark-recapture studies have demonstrated that this species can return to its home area (often tide pools) even when displaced by up to a mile.
Steve
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@Cabezon Steve, not a great photo, but what kind is this greedy little bugger?

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Picture is grainy, but it sure looks like a Pacific staghorn sculpin (Leptocottus armatus). Although sculpins vary quite a bit in coloration and certainly in their common and street names, there are some that really stand out such as the staghorn sculpin for its antler-like gill spines (hence the staghorn name). What kind of fly fouled that voracious little predator?

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Jake Watrous said:
@Cabezon Steve, not a great photo, but what kind is this greedy little bugger?

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I would say staghorn sculpin, Leptocottus armatus. It has a large mouth, relatively flattened/broad head, and branched pre-opercular spines (the spines that extend off from the pre-opercular bone. The body color is black/gray with a few lighter spots. There are two other sculpins with prominently-forked pre-opercular spines: the Northern sculpin (Icelinus borealis - longer spine and browner) and the rough-back sculpin (Chitonotus pugetensis - more upright posture and more laterally flattened). All three species like soft sediments: sand, mud, shell debris, but the staghorn is often found in the shallow subtotal while the other two are found in deeper water, more than 30' (10m). Both great sculpins (Myoxocephalus polyacanthocephalus) and buffalo sculpins (Enophrys bison) and be found in shallow water, especially when juveniles, but they tend to be deeper; both species have long, rod-like pre-opercular spines.
Steve
 
VMP said:
Picture is grainy, but it sure looks like a Pacific staghorn sculpin (Leptocottus armatus). Although sculpins vary quite a bit in coloration and certainly in their common and street names, there are some that really stand out such as the staghorn sculpin for its antler-like gill spines (hence the staghorn name). What kind of fly fouled that voracious little predator?

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It was a fair hook, corner of the mouth and everything. Dunno what to call it, and the tyer was 4 at the time.

Caught at Victor, so let’s call the fly “Victoria”.
 
Even with the super slow fishing this morning @jasmillo still had the hot hand landing several cutts to my one little cutt.
We fished some very fishy stretch but blanked out so I decided to make a long run to another inlet, back to a spot where we caught fish before and that saved a skunking.
This little son of a gun had a gruesome wound on the back I don’t know for how long but damn what a tough species they are!

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Good boat deal here, look at that beautiful patina and the all natural organic hull armor coating.

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Hadn’t planned to fish today due to the slow cutt fishing lately, but since I had to head south to visit my mom at her care facility threw the gear in the rig. Glad I did.
February is usually a very slow month for me, but today was one of the best February days I’ve in a very long time.
Got to the canal at about 8:30, about two hours before the high and fished until 1:00.
Generally catching a fish on your first cast is a bad omen, but not today. Fish rising pretty much all day with multiple targets at the same time and lots of fish to hand.
Took some advise from @jasmillo and based on @Nick Clayton and @ffb recent report mentioning possible food sources, tied up some unweighted olive buggers last night. The plan was to imitate polychaete worms, but I didn’t have any long shank salt hooks so tied them in size 6, 3X long TMC 5263 with an extra long tail. Never had to change the fly all day. Fished on a full intermediate fish super slow with lots of pauses. The fish weren’t pounding it, you’d feel weight and the next strip was fish on.
Lost two really nice fish that both spit the hook on jumps.
I noticed the bigger fish don’t have a lot of color but some of the smaller fish did. Very similar to last year and hopefully there will be some nice pre-spawn fish like last year in April.
Fun day on the water. Kind of felt like spring.
Some pics from today.
SF

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3.5 - 5 this morning for me. Little guy got off at the boat while getting the net. With how slow it was, I’ll take .5 for that fish :). Smallish fish in general. Still fun though. 5 fish hooked on 4 very different patterns off the same 150 section of shoreline. Couple from today.

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