When were the “good old days” of salmon fishing

[Long_Rod_Silvers]

Hell, you could catch steelhead off the beach Nov-March on certain beaches! So much has been lost.

I'm a bit sad I never got to do this. My grandparents lived in lagoon point (whidbey) for many years. Spent a lot of time up there as a kid fly fishing the beaches, and while I never personally hooked a steelhead from the beach, pretty much every year around thanksgiving reports from the neighborhood would start circulating about folks hooking into a steelhead from the beach. This was back in the late eighties / early nineties.

 

[Chucker]

I think that in a year or two we will be looking back on 2023 as “the good old days”.

 

[speedbird]

I'm a bit sad I never got to do this. My grandparents lived in lagoon point (whidbey) for many years. Spent a lot of time up there as a kid fly fishing the beaches, and while I never personally hooked a steelhead from the beach, pretty much every year around thanksgiving reports from the neighborhood would start circulating about folks hooking into a steelhead from the beach. This was back in the late eighties / early nineties.

I was reading an article about fishing Double Bluff for Blackmouth, and the author suggested running a hot shot or wiggle wart 30ft behind your boat on a shotgun rod...to give you a chance at hooking a Steelhead! Pretty sure Whidbey Island is the only place in the world where folks were targeting Steelhead in the salt.

I bought some of the gear that people used to use mostly as a keepsake, but I might get out one day and just enjoy casting from the beach on a winters day. Beats sitting at home

 

[TicTokCroc]

The 90's, everything was better in the 90's.

 

[cchinook45]

In recent times, 2001 was the banner year for silvers, chinook, and pinks in Puget Sound. Not just good numbers, but big salmon. Any year with >900,000 wild+hatchery silver salmon forecast is a very good year. Chum runs were ridiculously good in the 2000s until commercials pounded it to death in 2008. Salmon hatchery production was severely slashed during the Great Recession budget cuts and continues downward due to wild fish litigation and killer whale love. Netting at mouths of sensitive wild populations in small streams and rivers has been a killer.

In the past, you could catch salmon every month of the year throughout Puget Sound. Chinook and blackmouth in south Puget Sound were abundant. Winter blackmouth was a big deal. Big native coho returning late season to smaller streams and rivers put out 10-20 pounders. Much better quality of fish compared to today's average rezzie. Hell, you could catch steelhead off the beach Nov-March on certain beaches! So much has been lost.

Late eighties , Clackamas , caught so many hatchery springers I was giving them away. Bobber and eggs just below River Mill dam. No more . Thanks O.D.F.W. ! You folks are awesome !

 

[johnnyboy]

I'm a bit sad I never got to do this. My grandparents lived in lagoon point (whidbey) for many years. Spent a lot of time up there as a kid fly fishing the beaches, and while I never personally hooked a steelhead from the beach, pretty much every year around thanksgiving reports from the neighborhood would start circulating about folks hooking into a steelhead from the beach. This was back in the late eighties / early nineties.

I've met people who used to fill up their punch cards from November (winter runs) through July (summer runs), up until around 10 years ago or so. Haven't heard of one caught off the beaches in a few years. But last year I saw a big one (30" or so) jump clear out of the water when I was walking the beaches around July 4 or so. That fishery can come back if the hatcheries could ever manage to get halfway decent returns of steelhead back again.

Blackmouth fishing at those same places was supposedly good too, even off the shore.

 

[speedbird]

https://wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/02257/wdfw02257.pdf

Of interest. It’s pretty cool to see the effect of the Boldt decision nearly halve sport landings in the 80s, and to see a resurgence of million fish landings in odd years during the 2000s. I think we all figured out what that is.

Also if interest is that historically, Puget Sound also had more non native commercial fishing.

 

[RCF]

The best times are always in an earlier part of our lives. First we can remember things from back then. Secondly there has been enough time to enhance and embellish our memories so that they may or not be accurate. Thirdly us older fisher people are lucky to remember anything in the recent past. So it is always better years or decades earlier.

Great sex, great drugs, great rock n roll, great big fish lives on in our memories!

 

[Bass-O-Matic]

I found this for perspective...
https://www.historylink.org/File/10443

 

[O' Clarkii Stomias]

I found this for perspective...
https://www.historylink.org/File/10443

That's a perspective.