Puget Sound

jasmillo said:
Yes I do. I need to fish the Skagit for anything. The fact that I have lived here over ten years and never made a cast on that river is disgraceful. Long distance for a day trip from this sound of the sound but that’s not an excuse!
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This guy is pretty representative of what I'm gearing up for on the skagit (on the nook in this pic, actually my redeemer fish from the same run I lost a rod on.) 12-15lbs of absolute brutality. They come bigger, and also smaller.

A day trip shouldnt be discouraged, but sep-dec on the Skagit is fully worth overnight accommodations. The fish I talked about being a bazillion pounds was probably mid 20s in his prime. I would not likely have won a fight with him.

For the chum haters.... i get it. I grew up on consumptive fishing and every hooked chum was time away from preferred species. As I am now releasing in all but the most specific of circumstances, its about the tug and the fight. Chum have that in spades.
 
When Stilly and Skagit chum salmon were in their heyday, they averaged over 13 pounds in commercial catches. 20 pound chum salmon were fairly common. I dreaded hooking one because it meant another lost fly since I never used any tippet other than 8# Maxima.
 
Pink Nighty said:
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This guy is pretty representative of what I'm gearing up for on the skagit (on the nook in this pic, actually my redeemer fish from the same run I lost a rod on.) 12-15lbs of absolute brutality. They come bigger, and also smaller.

A day trip shouldnt be discouraged, but sep-dec on the Skagit is fully worth overnight accommodations. The fish I talked about being a bazillion pounds was probably mid 20s in his prime. I would not likely have won a fight with him.

For the chum haters.... i get it. I grew up on consumptive fishing and every hooked chum was time away from preferred species. As I am now releasing in all but the most specific of circumstances, its about the tug and the fight. Chum have that in spades.
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Yeah, the average is smaller where I’m fishing though we get into some brutes on occasion. Even in the salt when fair hooked, they can be very mean at that size. Biggest to date this year for me below. He actually earned real.

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They are mean period.
When I was a kid we would go to McClain Creek.
Some chum died and that's all I'll say about that.
 
A bunch of years ago I went up to the Skagit to play with the dogs. As I was walking in over an old river channel, I met a couple coming out. They had 2 broken Spey rods and a single hander with an empty reel. They were wide eyed and babbled on about monster chum that broke 3 rods and stripped the line off 2 of them. I was geared with the same tackle that I used on the Kenai river in Alaska for kings. The right tool for the job as when the big chum head across and down river they’re a real handful.
 
first salmon I ever caught in Oregon was a chum on a 9' 8 wt, weighed around 15# and thought I had hooked a fish 2x that size. Fished the same river a whole lot for the next 13 years and never saw another chum caught on it, supposedly rarely if ever seen. The day after catching that chum I bought a 9 wt.
 
The first chum I didn't catch on the Skagit was on a 5 wt fishing a small egg off a bobber for bulls amongst the spawners.

I was dumb enough to think I could horse it. The crunch still sticks in my mind. I was a dumbass but I know a little better now, not a lot but I fish an 8wt when I do go chummly.

Dave
 
I enjoyed the backbone of my Sage Xi3 10 wt on some river chums today. It was good to put that thing to some use as it had been many years. I paired it with a 12 wt floating line and that was a good combo for the 20-40 foot casts I needed. The only thing is the floating line was a “tropic” line and man was that a coily son of a gun on a mid 40s rainy day, but it did get the job done otherwise. Last time we did this I used an 8 weight and it really was not as fun as it was today with the 10. The 10 was the right tool. Especially from the boat, if you don’t want to chase after every other one.
 
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Ended up going all out for chums again this weekend with @jasmillo . Pretty good fishing, we tried hand lining to tail them instead of beaching but that was only semi successful. Half of the time it was a total mess of tangled lines and flies stuck on boots, let’s just say we’re no ballerinas out there :)



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Kfish said:
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Ended up going all out for chums again this weekend with @jasmillo . Pretty good fishing, we tried hand lining to tail them instead of beaching but that was only semi successful. Half of the time it was a total mess of tangled lines and flies stuck on boots, let’s just say we’re no ballerinas out there :)



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Pretty insane returns at the spot you, @jasmillo , and I met last year. I only fished it once, a couple weeks ago, but today I stopped by with the fam in tow just to watch the show. The creek is totally plugged, and they’re still jumping all over the bay, too.
 
NRC said:
Pretty insane returns at the spot you, @jasmillo , and I met last year. I only fished it once, a couple weeks ago, but today I stopped by with the fam in tow just to watch the show. The creek is totally plugged, and they’re still jumping all over the bay, too.
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Really? Chum is having a really strong run this year! Hopefully chum fry fishing will be out of this world comes next spring.
 
Kfish said:
Really? Chum is having a really strong run this year! Hopefully chum fry fishing will be out of this world comes next spring.
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I kinda assumed that’s where you two were catching yours. I guess all muddy/grassy creek estuaries look alike.

Honestly at some point with chum fry, they can be so thick that the situation is almost unfishable. I’d still take it, though!
 
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