Non-Fly 2024 Summer Salmon

Inaugurated the new boat! Ran up to the tulalip bubble but it was dead for all involved including what looked to be John Martinez(who cut me off haha). Stuck around for a bit and went down to the oil docks. Cruise went well, but just two shaker kings around 14-16in showed any interest
 
Fish hard the last 2 days and got blinked. After a full 4 hours of trolling we decided to go and check out the Biggs killer whales in the area sounds like that was a mistake cuz that's when the bite went off.
 
Nick Clayton said:
Lol There's so many bullshit beliefs involved with salmon fishing, but the "you have to troll slow for chinook" is near the top of the list.
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Think I should try fishing baitballs and tide rips for Kings this year? And pounding bottom for coho? You know, the opposite of what people do? Or is that not one of those truisms
 
speedbird said:
Think I should try fishing baitballs and tide rips for Kings this year? And pounding bottom for coho? You know, the opposite of what people do? Or is that not one of those truisms
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Lol I didn't realize people avoided rips and bait balls when looking for kings.

There's a ton of tribal thinking that goes on in salmon fishing. We do it one way because that's what everyone else does, so that must be right. Yet any conversation with a fish checker on a average day will show that a large percentage of boats on the water aren't doing a lot of catching. Perhaps doing it the way everyone thinks is the correct way, isn't as correct as one might believe.
 
ThatGuyRyRy said:
You got a tasty bugger stuffed full of these pink shrimp today. First time that I found a king stuffed with shrimp, usually it has always been bait fish.

It was interesting to compare how red this King cut compared to the standard pink hue of the one that we caught in a different area that had a bunch of herring but n the area but still had an empty stomach.

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Are you a poacher if it's out of season, ha!
 
Nick Clayton said:
There's a ton of tribal thinking that goes on in salmon fishing. We do it one way because that's what everyone else does, so that must be right. Yet any conversation with a fish checker on an average day will show that a large percentage of boats on the water aren't doing a lot of catching. Perhaps doing it the way everyone thinks is the correct way, isn't as correct as one might believe.
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The “correct” way absolutely works - the problem is that many of the people who are not catching are not paying attention to the details, and the details matter. There are also a vast number of people out there who simply do not have a clue - last time I was out the checker told me that the previous boat had come in with 2 decent sized chinook, and they thought they were coho.

As for coho in A10, last week there were a few around, but it was slow overall, and they were mostly pretty small. I’m not going after them this week.
 
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Good to see you out there Ed. Made sure to give you a wide berth. Fishing has been pretty good using all techniques out there. I had my little one out with me today and we gave mooching a shot. She was able to fish by herself which was pretty cool. Dogfish are starting to come in though so that's all we caught while mooching. Now now I just got to teach her to fillet it all.

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Nice fish. I don't keep records, but my impression from watching the creel numbers is 11 wasn't doing as well as last year. Good to see some being caught.
 
ThatGuyRyRy said:
Good to see you out there Ed. Made sure to give you a wide berth. Fishing has been pretty good using all techniques out there. I had my little one out with me today and we gave mooching a shot. She was able to fish by herself which was pretty cool. Dogfish are starting to come in though so that's all we caught while mooching. Now now I just got to teach her to fillet it all.

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I think you need the bigger model filleting board.. nice healthy fish.
 
Pretty crap out in area 10 today, but two foot tide exchange so I shouldn’t be too surprised. Fished oil docks but marked very little bait or fish. Hooked one coho at the end of the day, looked to be around 2lbs or less, sadly he slipped off the hook. Might be time to go back to double hook rigs!

Maybe it was the hoochie vs ace high fly but I had much less success with the 8 inch flasher. Zero hook ups vs quite a few on the 11 inch if we include shaker kings.

Obviously always use reliable identifiers like gum color before landing fish but it’s pretty cool how when they’re young I almost never second guess if a fish is a coho or not. I’m always second guessing with yearling and blackmouth since their level of shine can be all over the place but silvers always seem to have a distinctive aquamarine shimmer in the water until they’re very close to entering rivers.

Maybe this is an optical illusion of some sort but I notice that greenish tint on their back whenever they’re jumping too
 
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Chucker said:
How long was your leader on the 8” flasher? You need to go short for them to work well. Try 18” for resi coho.
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Yep, nice and short. Make that shit move

Considering how many salmon were trying to eat our flounder while catching bait this morning, including a bunch of chinook that came up short and a surprise 5 lb coho that succeeded and was released at the boat, maybe we're going about this all wrong using herring and squid lol
 
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