Puget Sound

1/1 Today, within 30 minutes of getting to the beach I had two 4-6lb coho follow my fly in at the same time, both circling around it before swimming off. I stuck this 25” hen about 20ft in front of me and I’m amazed it stayed hooked. She jumped 3-4 times and swam straight at me twice. About 20 minutes later had another nice 5lb coho take a grab at my fly right at my rod tip, but missed the hook and seemed very confused when I yanked my fly right out of his mouth😄
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1/3 today, Pretty puzzled on how I lost the first two fish. Had both of them on the reel and had tension and they just popped off. My luck has been pretty good with landing my hookups this season so I figured a day like this would happen soon. The first one was a nice 6-7lb hatchery that I got a good look at before it swam off. Had two other strong bites
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KFCDAVE said:
1/3 today, Pretty puzzled on how I lost the first two fish. Had both of them on the reel and had tension and they just popped off. My luck has been pretty good with landing my hookups this season so I figured a day like this would happen soon. The first one was a nice 6-7lb hatchery that I got a good look at before it swam off. Had two other strong bites
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The dreaded "coho curse." It's uncanny how you can go 10 for 10 and then have your next 12 come off. The Houdini of the salmonids.
 
So far clean air in Burien……pretty strong north winds right now. We’re fishing by lake Cushman tomorrow, hopefully no smoke! Just depends on which way the wind is coming from.
 
Fished the sound with a gear buddy today. Like a few other days this year, the hope was to troll up a couple on divers then go cast. Either fly or gear, depending on who’s on the boat. Well, the plan was in place but of course fell apart. It is 2025 after all. Ended up trolling flies and herring for 5-6 hours. 8-9 hookups, 4-5 landed All except 1 were unclipped and sent back per the regs in the MA they were caught in (we fished 3). I was able to bonk one 5-6lbr.

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Back to the beach and the bug rod exclusively the next two days. I honestly can’t wait. Especially with the zoo the derby will likely unleash on our local launches this weekend!!
 
I think we fished a combined 10-12 hours for 4 bites yesterday, hence the “slow”. Lou did a better job hooking and landing fish with the correct fin composition on the right beaches than I did. 1-2 for me yesterday. The fish I landed had too many fins in an MA where harvesting her would have been frowned upon.

Today was even slower if you can believe it. 0-1 for me in 7 hours fished. Interesting year indeed!
 
I'm a moderately competent and infrequent beach guy at best but do always enjoy it when I go. This morning I was on a beach I drove aways to get to at dawn, only guy there and holy crap it was quite the experience for me. I was fishing a flat that was draining on the outgoing with sub surface channels and undulations and good current. This flat was absolutely full of cuthroat crashing on small schools of small, skinny baitfish, maybe 2" long at the most. Water depth was 2' - 4' at most and these SRC were crushing the baitfish at the surface 360 degrees all the way around me. As the tide went further out a nice riffle formed in one area for half an hour and a down stream erratic strip matching the minnows getting flushed out was nuts! I only landed 5, several others LDR'd and many swipes and missed grabs in an hour and a half and then the current stopped, the flushing out was done and the cutties split. It was like an episode of Wild Kingdom for a hot sec and giggly fun, pretty cool stuff! Oh and there were some pigs in the group, I didn't hook any of them but they were in the game. All three patterns got some action but I quickly ended up on the really skinny one and that was the ticket.
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