Non-Fly 2026 Blackmouth

[Stonedfish]

While Spring Chinook play a small part in our April fishery, the bulk of fish caught are yearling hatchery Chinook kept for a full year prior to release into rivers. This process for reasons currently unknown leaves the yearling fish with a tendency to remain within the Salish Sea for a period or for the entirety of their lives. Two and three salt fish seem to make up the bulk of our catch. The cost of these yearling fish is estimated to be a dollar per fish. With limited opportunity due to restrictive conservation management criteria of undersize and wild encounters, opportunity to fish for these yearling fish outside of the summer season is limited. For the last 4 years, it seems to have only ever lasted 4 days to a week.

The limited conservation impacts affect our summer fishing for larger migratory fish as well. With the WDFW budget getting smaller, I would prefer to see the exuberant amount of money used to raise these yearling fish be used to support monitoring and enforcement of other fisheries, or even expanded hatchery enhancement where it makes sense. The allowed impacts spent on this fishery would be more cost effective if spent on expanding our also dwindling summer opportunity.

Thanks for the reply. I don’t ever recall anyone being concerned with the cost per blackmouth when we had more opportunities like year around fishing. Those fish that aren’t caught in the spring also contribute to the summer fisheries.
Are you also concerned with the cost of the large numbers of returning surplus adult chinook hatchery fish you get very limited opportunities to fish for in the summer? Minter Creek had a chinook escapement that was basically twice the summer quota for MA 9 and MA 10 combined. That’s just one hatchery facility….

If you haven’t read this article before, you might find it interesting.
SF

Frank Haw Talks Salmon Issues

Frank Haw Reflects on a Storied Career, and How to Approach Today’s Salmon Issues By Pat Hoglund […]

salmonandsteelheadjournal.com

 

[VMP]

While I am happy to participate in the Spring Blackmouth fishery, with how exuberantly uneconomical the yearling Chinook program is, I think I would prefer sacrificing our week of Blackmouth for a little more time in the summer.

I don't think it works quite like that. We had a related discussion a few years ago in a kayak fishing forum, after consulting with one of the scientists involved in the salmon modeling, we ended up here:
"Fishery impacts are essentially modeled by time and area from coded-wire tag data. You cannot really shift impacts from Winter to Summer because individual stock impacts (ultimately what everything is being managed by, mostly the ESA variety) are present at different times/areas making Winter and Summer apples to oranges"
For full discussion see here:

Pause for MA10 Winter Chinook

Pause for MA10 Winter Chinook

www.northwestkayakanglers.com

I think moving the opener to Spring does make more sense than earlier openers in Winter, from my personal experience we used to struggle to get a keeper fish by getting too many 1-inch short fish with earlier openers. This year only on the last day of the opener we got more undersized and wild fish than kept fish, previous days we managed real clean catches. Loosing the Winter/Spring season, however short it has been, would be like with many other opportunities, when they are gone they never come back. The ultimate issue is too many people fishing for fewer fish, not much we can do about that, other than fish responsibly and limit our impacts by trying to avoid as much as possible the limiting factors on each season.

 

[VMP]

Estimates of Chinook catch to date indicate there is enough room to allow for an additional in Marine Area 10. Currently, we have reached 78% (3,507 of 4,491) of total encounters, 38% (1,423 of 3,713) of total sublegal encounters, and 79% (762 of 967) of total unmarked encounters agreed to in the 2025-26 List of Agreed Fisheries (LOAF).

Salmon fishing to open for additional day in Marine Area 10

Salmon fishing to reopen for additional day in Marine Area 10Action: Opens salmon fishing for additional dayEffective date: Saturday, April 11, 2026Species affected: All SalmonLocation: Marine Area 10Salmon Rules: Open April 11 only. Daily limit two including no more than one hatchery Chinook...

wdfw.wa.gov

 

[speedbird]

View attachment 181733
Estimates of Chinook catch to date indicate there is enough room to allow for an additional in Marine Area 10. Currently, we have reached 78% (3,507 of 4,491) of total encounters, 38% (1,423 of 3,713) of total sublegal encounters, and 79% (762 of 967) of total unmarked encounters agreed to in the 2025-26 List of Agreed Fisheries (LOAF).

Salmon fishing to open for additional day in Marine Area 10

Salmon fishing to reopen for additional day in Marine Area 10Action: Opens salmon fishing for additional dayEffective date: Saturday, April 11, 2026Species affected: All SalmonLocation: Marine Area 10Salmon Rules: Open April 11 only. Daily limit two including no more than one hatchery Chinook...

wdfw.wa.gov

My GF is in a very big new age spiritual phase and maybe it is rubbing off on me but I swear I manifested this because I got the notification right as I had the thought "I really didn't catch that many shakers or wilds this year, I bet we will get another day".

I doubt this will pass a double-blind control scientific study but I will try to do it again next week. See you guys out there!

 

[Stonedfish]

Good luck to everyone tomorrow who has a chance to get out.
Looks wet and perhaps a bit sporty wind wise.
SF

 

[speedbird]

It was super slow for most boats today, I imagine the crappy tide exchange had something to do with it. I fished my lucky spoon and an anchovy on the other rod. Turns out that was a good choice- 2 fish day! My buddy caught one around 25”, mine was around 24”. Both on the bait rod. Around the middle of the bar there were huge schools of large fish suspended between 40-60 feet of water- I have a feeling those were springers but unfortunately couldn’t get them to play