Non-Fly Blackmouth 2025

10 was pretty good on the opener, first time downrigger fishing. Just under 7lbs on this one. Hoping the quota will allow it to open next week so I can try mooching for another one. Coho fishing in June should be very good....

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Around 11. On a jig. The only one we landed out of 4 hooked.
Jigging was kind of hard. Only saw one real baitball - which had at least 3 fish under it of which we hooked one. Lots of trollers in the areas that I wanted to jig. It’s going to be crazy tomorrow.
 
We found a couple today jigging. We were getting deep enough with the divers so switched fully to jigging. I caught the smaller fish when we stopped to jig the only legit bait ball we came across all morning. @Kfish got the bigger fish later in the morning in a spot that had a few marks and what appeared to be sporadic bait. We stopped to jig it. Noticed a handful of other boats jigging and mooching in the general vicinity and watched as a boat nearby lost a solid fish after it spit the hook jumping. Neither of us know what the hell we are doing. Being new to this, we appreciated the fact others were jigging/mooching the same general area. If not for that, we probably would have moved on quickly. We didn’t and Lou got his fish eventually. Mine went 24+ inches and probably 6+ lbs. Lou’s was bigger :). I’ll let him share the details if he likes. Fun adding some fresh salmon to the menu this time of year.

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Like the saying goes, it’s better to be lucky than to be good :)
That fish was pure stinking luck. With nothing showing on the finder after a while we decided to reel up and move on, my line came tight somewhere around 125’ as I worked the jig up from the bottom. It didn’t felt crazy heavy although it fought like a salmon, reeling like hell I still didn’t have much stock in it thinking it was an ok fish.
I only got nervous when Jason saw it and kept repeating “Don’t fuck it up!”, “Better not loose this one!” :)
A little over 11lb bled, 31” long. Half of it went on the cedar in my bbq. Pretty tasty and so fresh.

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What a joke. Someone on BD said "at least it's better than nothing" but honestly, no, it is absolutely not better than nothing. We can't kid ourselves, fleets of hundreds of sport boats on Puget Sound does it no favors. I am sure the whales and porpoises despise it, not even mentioning the impacts on juvenile coho and Chinook, and non target species. All four a four day season targeting 24" fish??? No thank you. I think @Stonedfish once said each yearling fry costs the Washington tax payer $100 per fish. That's God knows how much money that could be going to habitat restoration, monitoring of more viable fisheries like the Skagit/Sauk Steelhead season
 
It's a little frustrating, from what I saw in the reports this seemed like the first Blackmouth opener since I started fishing as an adult where decent fish were being kept and it wasn't just 22-24" dinks
 
speedbird said:
What a joke. Someone on BD said "at least it's better than nothing" but honestly, no, it is absolutely not better than nothing. We can't kid ourselves, fleets of hundreds of sport boats on Puget Sound does it no favors. I am sure the whales and porpoises despise it, not even mentioning the impacts on juvenile coho and Chinook, and non target species. All four a four day season targeting 24" fish??? No thank you. I think @Stonedfish once said each yearling fry costs the Washington tax payer $100 per fish. That's God knows how much money that could be going to habitat restoration, monitoring of more viable fisheries like the Skagit/Sauk Steelhead season
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I don’t recall quoting that figure but it’s probably close to reality.
SF
 
wdfw.wa.gov

Salmon fishing closed in Marine Area 10 (Seattle and Bremerton area)

Action: Closes salmon fishing.Effective dates: April 9-30, 2025 Species affected: All salmon.Location: Marine Area 10, except year-round piers (Bremerton Boardwalk, Illahee State Park, Seacrest Pier, and Waterman Pier).
wdfw.wa.gov wdfw.wa.gov

Well, that’s disappointing. But not at all surprising.

What’s the solution to the problem of too many people wanting to catch too few fish? Clearly, an April chinook opener is a very, very popular thing amongst the boat owners of Washington - there were people there from all over the state on Saturday. The sport fishing advisory group set this season up to try to solve the problem of the fish being too small in January, with only 4 days a week open to try to make the season last through April. Maybe if the weather hadn’t been as good we might have got two weeks (and all the fish would have been caught by the people with the big boats).

Time to go catch some stocker trout 🙁
 
I think the solution to extending seasons for these popular fisheries is to implement an annual limit for chinook (like what we have for halibut). It looks like we are certainly heading that direction and I wonder how seriously WDFW has been considering it.
 
Paige said:
I dont get it, why use some of the impacts to catch juvenile Chinook, I'd rather wait for the summer fishing!

I know the BM is a popular fishery, but these days seems counter productive to getting a longer season.
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Brian,
I get it. Some folks aren’t in favor of this winter fishery and would prefer things to all shift to the summer season.
I think part of this besides providing opportunities is to try and keep old traditions alive. There are many folks, including some on this board who never got to experience the golden days of Puget Sound blackmouth fishing. Not only have we lost nearly all of the blackmouth opportunities, we’ve also lost other traditions such as the resorts, boathouses, most of the places to buy live herring etc.
Old traditions die hard. Personally I’d like to see as much of our Puget Sound tradition stick around as long as possible because it will likely totally be gone in the future. That just me though…..
SF
 
Paige said:
I dont get it, why use some of the impacts to catch juvenile Chinook, I'd rather wait for the summer fishing!

I know the BM is a popular fishery, but these days seems counter productive to getting a longer season.
Click to expand...

I suspect that the fish that we were targeting last week are the ones that usually make the first couple of days of the season in area 10 worth fishing. It might be really slow to start this year.

The one fish that I kept was in as good condition as I have ever seen for a puget sound fish. Eggs were only just starting to develop. Much better eating quality than a typical August fish. That’s a perfectly good reason to have the fishery in April rather than July. And it was a very popular fishery. At least as much as the summer season opener.
 
Blackmouth are good eats...
 
johnnyboy said:
I think the solution to extending seasons for these popular fisheries is to implement an annual limit for chinook (like what we have for halibut). It looks like we are certainly heading that direction and I wonder how seriously WDFW has been considering it.
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I think it might go that way too. I wouldn’t object too much to a 5 fish per year limit, but I doubt that would make a whole lot of difference overall. A 1 fish per season limit would really suck. However, there just aren’t that many tools available to limit sport fishing effort, so we will get there eventually.
 
Chucker said:
I suspect that the fish that we were targeting last week are the ones that usually make the first couple of days of the season in area 10 worth fishing. It might be really slow to start this year.

The one fish that I kept was in as good condition as I have ever seen for a puget sound fish. Eggs were only just starting to develop. Much better eating quality than a typical August fish. That’s a perfectly good reason to have the fishery in April rather than July. And it was a very popular fishery. At least as much as the summer season opener.
Click to expand...
Small eggs sounds like a Springer to me! Got one as a gift and she had small eggs in her
 
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