Puget Sound

Stonedfish said:
Nice!
What size herring are you guys seeing?
The little dudes that we sometimes see lots of in July or bigger ones?
SF
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Nick Clayton said:
It's been a bit of a mix but I haven't seen a ton of those little firecracker herring. Seen some schools of significantly larger ones but I'd say most of what we are saying are in the green label range.
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We have been seeing herring in the 5 to 6 inch range, the coho we have kept recently are stuffed with them. One of the coho we caught from baitballs last weekend (see below) had one herring in its mouth and two more in the stomach. The fly that coho fell for was about 5 inches long (pictured).

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SF -
What we saw last weekend was a mix of smallish and green label size herring. The coho are clearly targeting those green label sized bait, like VMP reports those fish we cleaned had one or more freshly consumed green label. We did try to jig some bait from the deeper schools (8 to 10 schools) getting takes from only 3 schools so think there is a lot of smaller bait. Unfortunately, with the active feeding coho all but one bait was taking by coho as they neared the surface, chumming?

Two of our larger fish had that ocean look - set scales, etc. but upon cleaning they cut sockeye red. I believe they were resident fish. Interestedly both fish were clipped. In PS rivers the hatchery fish tend to spawn earlier than the wild fish so maybe it makes sense they may be starting to mature a little earlier. It will be interesting to see the size of the fish in MA 9 tomorrow. Without a fishery cropping off the larger faster growing fish the last 6 weeks we may find a higher % of larger fish. Looking forward to reports.
 
Nick Clayton said:
Spent a super fun day on the soundwith @Northern

Less than stellar fly fishing conditions most of the day but we still were able to find some good action and make a day out of it.

Started off super slow until about 7 or so when we spotted a big bird bang in shallow, ran in and found just an absurd amount of herring. And the fish were on em. I started off with 3 fish in three casts which was pretty rad, then it was fairly constant action as we chased the bait around. As usual the coho were able to avoid coming to the net more often than we'd prefer, but such is coho fishing.

That finally petered out and then spent the next several hours cruising all over area 10 looking for signs of life, but didn't find much but a few missed grabs and follows. Close to 3, just when we were thinking about calling it a day, we found some pretty crazy action in 75-125' of water. I saw a fish crash through some bait so we zipped over there and then there was nothing. No bait, no rips, nothing. But within a few minutes we started seeing fish follow our flies. Lots of fish. Then things got super busy until almost 5 when we both decided we were out of steam and called it a day. That was awfully fun fishing. We hooked a decent number of fish right next to the boat as there was pods between 4 to maybe 20 fish chasing flies which seemed to make them a bit more aggressive. Northern even hooked one on a popper during this period.

Pretty weak tides today and it was so bright and flat calm out, but sure is cool to still be able to find some decent fishing. Incredibly beautiful day on the sound but would have paid money for some cloud cover.



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Thanks again, Nick, for that super fun outing! Both you and the antics of those coho had me laughing all day, despite my failing to actually boat one 🤪

Those fish yesterday were wonderful: showing up exactly where they shouldn't be, under conditions they shouldn't favor, and then apparently wielding a magical ability to rob both of us of any capacity to use the English language for communication. Priceless!
 
Good luck to those that venture out to MA 9 tomorrow on the opener.
Hopefully there will be some kings, coho and pinks around. If not, at least there might be some chinook, silvers and humpies available.

One strategy that has always worked for me in MA 9 is to stare at the water prior to fishing. If I don’t see any fish jumping, I know the run hasn’t started and I just head home.

One last pro tip. Resident coho run deep while sea run coho come close to shore.
SF
 
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Stonedfish said:
Good luck to those that venture out to MA 9 tomorrow on the opener.
Hopefully there will be some kings, coho and pinks around. If not, at least there might be some chinook, silvers and humpies available.

One strategy that has always worked for me in MA 9 is to stare at the water prior to fishing. If I don’t see and fish jumping, I know the run hasn’t started and I just head home.

One last pro tip. Resident coho run deep while sea run coho come close to shore.
SF
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And hatchery fish tend not to be as deep as wild ones.
 
Nick Clayton said:
It's been a bit of a mix but I haven't seen a ton of those little firecracker herring. Seen some schools of significantly larger ones but I'd say most of what we are saying are in the green label range.

Starting to see some significantly larger fish. Wasn't able to put any of those into the net today but had our chances. We didn't keep any fish today but I would have likely bonked one of those larger ones out of curiosity to get a better look. Might be some ocean fish trickling in.

Also had about a 7 lb fish jump feet from the boat while I was running. I immediately stopped and that fish hit the water and literally just came to a stop and sat there a foot under the surface. Did not look like a coho at all, in size, general appearance, and the way it jumped and behaved. After thinking about it I wonder if it was a sockeye. I know the All Rivers boat got one on a naked herring fished on a flat line about this time of year two seasons ago.
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I recognize the area in the photo and the mention of a potential Sockeye is another hint. Those are my stomping grounds June-September, I had no idea you could catch Rezzies on the fly there. Are you using sinking lines? Or just going really early
 
Dave Boyle said:
Here’s the link that goes into the gory details.

Dave

www.theguardian.com

‘One hell of a mess’: volunteers clean up three tons of trash from Lake Tahoe

Cleanup effort after Fourth of July was ‘one of the worst’ in years, says founder of group behind trash collecting
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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My first time on Lake Tahoe I was dating my wife we were in high school and I saw something on the bottom and thought I would show off to my girl friend and dive down and grab it. Well it took me about 3 tries before I could reach the bottom and grab the gift for my girlfriend. The water was so clear you could see a golf ball clearly in 25 feet of water. That mess makes me want to throw up.
 
Lol It's no secret I've been fishing area 10, but if you can get more than that from that picture you're better than me!

They can most definitely be caught out there through the whole season, and not just early (though that certainly never hurts).

As mentioned above we had steady action for a couple of hours in the afternoon as well as mid morning. Put a fly in front of those fish and there's a pretty good chance they will eat it.





Kashf said:
I recognize the area in the photo and the mention of a potential Sockeye is another hint. Those are my stomping grounds June-September, I had no idea you could catch Rezzies on the fly there. Are you using sinking lines? Or just going really early
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I fished MA9 for about 90 minutes this morning. 2 for 3 with the resident silvers (kept 2 hatchery silvers). Also caught several plump SRCs. Stomach contents included shiner perch and adult sandlance 5". No pinks
 
Nick Clayton said:
Spent a super fun day on the soundwith @Northern

Less than stellar fly fishing conditions most of the day but we still were able to find some good action and make a day out of it.

Started off super slow until about 7 or so when we spotted a big bird bang in shallow, ran in and found just an absurd amount of herring. And the fish were on em. I started off with 3 fish in three casts which was pretty rad, then it was fairly constant action as we chased the bait around. As usual the coho were able to avoid coming to the net more often than we'd prefer, but such is coho fishing.

That finally petered out and then spent the next several hours cruising all over area 10 looking for signs of life, but didn't find much but a few missed grabs and follows. Close to 3, just when we were thinking about calling it a day, we found some pretty crazy action in 75-125' of water. I saw a fish crash through some bait so we zipped over there and then there was nothing. No bait, no rips, nothing. But within a few minutes we started seeing fish follow our flies. Lots of fish. Then things got super busy until almost 5 when we both decided we were out of steam and called it a day. That was awfully fun fishing. We hooked a decent number of fish right next to the boat as there was pods between 4 to maybe 20 fish chasing flies which seemed to make them a bit more aggressive. Northern even hooked one on a popper during this period.

Pretty weak tides today and it was so bright and flat calm out, but sure is cool to still be able to find some decent fishing. Incredibly beautiful day on the sound but would have paid money for some cloud cover.



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Hot jiddy damn! Sounds like a fine time on the water!
 
Another sunny morning on a MA9 beach. I released an unclipped resident silver (good jumper) and lost another. Several fat cutthroat came to hand as well. I finished the morning by wrangling in a nice 7" Dungeness crab that strayed into the shallows near my feet.
 
Landed 3 keeper-sized rezzies during a short first light bite. 2 were unclipped. Things slowed down at this beach after the sun was above the horizon. Only euphausiids in the belly of the fish I cleaned. A fly guy near me also landed 3 rezzies in the same bite window. 2 of his were clipped. No bait or shakers to be seen.
*edited to correct clipped/unclipped ratio for the other fly angler :)
 
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Pretty tough day for us today. Just never really found anything super interesting. Didn't see the same amount of bait as we had been seeing, and in spite of the nice incoming things just never seemed to set up the way I'd have liked, or perhaps we zigged when we should have zagged and just missed the best of it. Who knows. Fished all day for a handful of missed grabs/lost fish, a small handful of follows, and I finally did pull one nice fish out of the nicest rip we found all day in about 30' of water.

@VMP and @Chucker came by and said hi this morning. Nice chatting with you guys! Hope you were able to find something better than we did!
 
Nice to meet you on the water @Nick Clayton! Similar day for us, we only fished the outgoing tide, things slowed down quite a bit for us once the bright sun hit the water. We just could not find the bait that we had seen till recently. We got a few coho followers, missed strikes, refusals, and a group of 5-6 chunky coho just cruising subsurface right by our boat but not interested in our offerings just as we saw you for the 2nd time when we were working a great looking tidal/wind rip. We boated one on the fly, missed one that was following the hooked one and got scared just when it was going for the other fly. Got a few others dirtbagging trying to find a king, which we didn't. On the other hand, fishing was red hot for flatties :), fishing 30' to 50' of water, some were not so close to the bottom, or we were effectively getting flies down while trying to dredge a king.

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This weather just sucks for fishing. In fact it sucks for house painting as well.
Monday will be the day. Maybe even Tuesday. 😉
SF

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