A friend called a week or so ago and said let's fish the Skagit on New Year's Day. I said if I'm going up there I'm gonna' fish a couple days at least. So that was the plan. We got a cabin at the park, and James asked me to check out the Hamilton launch on my way up. As WW posted in the Skagit CNR season thread, Hamilton, Birdsview, Baker, and Fabor are out of service. Mostly due to being buried in muddy sand. Well, the Birdsview ramp is open, but then drops a couple feet at the end of the ramp. I could probably launch there, but I wouldn't be able to retrieve my boat. I saw were some rafters were able to drag their raft over the sand at the left bank ramp access of Fabors. I speculated that maybe Rockport and Marblemount launches were clear and usable because of the eagle watching float trips. And they are.
We went up to Rockport and launched, no problem. A couple others used it as well. There's some changes to the river, a couple that appear good, and a couple that aren't. One little slot above Chitwood that I liked the last two years is totally gone.
I ended up not fishing hardly at all. I drove into the Hamilton launch in the dark and got my truck stuck. I thought maybe I could get out if I unhitched my boat trailer. Context: I herniated my L4-L5 disc in my lower back 2 years ago last October. I'm OK most of the time, but I tweak it every now and again and end up sorta' laid up for a few days or so; it varies. I think I did a twist and lift move on the boat trailer, and F'd it up again. So I ended up driving my boat around while James and Brian fished, checking out as many of the usual places as we could. By our account, there are no steelhead in the river, but there are still some silvers and a few bull trout. And the weirdest fishy thing of all is the chrome bright sockeye salmon that James hooked. This is well upstream of the Baker River, but the odd thing is that sockeye from anywhere in the Skagit system enter the river between late June and late August, and all are spawned out by the end of December. So was this fish a very late member of the 2025 run, or a very early entry for the 2026 run? A 2025 fish, if still alive, should be very mature and colored up, so I'm inclined to think this was the early vanguard of the 2026 run. I know that some Quinault sockeye used to enter that river as early as February. So who knows?
That's the Salmo Skagit report for January 1 and 2.
We went up to Rockport and launched, no problem. A couple others used it as well. There's some changes to the river, a couple that appear good, and a couple that aren't. One little slot above Chitwood that I liked the last two years is totally gone.
I ended up not fishing hardly at all. I drove into the Hamilton launch in the dark and got my truck stuck. I thought maybe I could get out if I unhitched my boat trailer. Context: I herniated my L4-L5 disc in my lower back 2 years ago last October. I'm OK most of the time, but I tweak it every now and again and end up sorta' laid up for a few days or so; it varies. I think I did a twist and lift move on the boat trailer, and F'd it up again. So I ended up driving my boat around while James and Brian fished, checking out as many of the usual places as we could. By our account, there are no steelhead in the river, but there are still some silvers and a few bull trout. And the weirdest fishy thing of all is the chrome bright sockeye salmon that James hooked. This is well upstream of the Baker River, but the odd thing is that sockeye from anywhere in the Skagit system enter the river between late June and late August, and all are spawned out by the end of December. So was this fish a very late member of the 2025 run, or a very early entry for the 2026 run? A 2025 fish, if still alive, should be very mature and colored up, so I'm inclined to think this was the early vanguard of the 2026 run. I know that some Quinault sockeye used to enter that river as early as February. So who knows?
That's the Salmo Skagit report for January 1 and 2.
