Puget Sound

Thank you guys for the needed laugh about it 😆 My optimist self keeps thinking I’ll figure it out. Scuba and harpoon is somewhere in the mix of ideas.

The guy next to me after catching his ~8lber told me about last nights two large king caught and a couple other coho. He also believes in the 10-20min bite window, somehow I was at the wrong window next to him…What a gent.
 
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SF -
I saw that emergency reg. change. It appears to me that this is too late to provide much benefit to the MA 10 coho angler. The Lake Washington coho forecast (hatchery and wild) was 21,544 fish. As of Tuesday ( 9/19) Ballard lock count was 37,982! The last days around 1,500 a day are being counted.

It seems to me that the mixed stock impacts on wild stocks of concern from the June/early July resident coho (trout fishery?) costed the MA coho opportunities at a lot of hatchery coho this fall. The MA 10 coho catch drops sharply in late September/October (as reflected in the monthly catches in annual sport catch reports.

As an aside during the NOF process various users (anglers) asked about in season run size updates with the state say such updates are not possible. However it seems to me that those Ballard lock counts coupled with the Elliot Bay test fishery would provide information for Chinook updates before mid-August and coho update before mid-September.

Curt
 
Smalma said:
SF -
I saw that emergency reg. change. It appears to me that this is too late to provide much benefit to the MA 10 coho angler. The Lake Washington coho forecast (hatchery and wild) was 21,544 fish. As of Tuesday ( 9/19) Ballard lock count was 37,982! The last days around 1,500 a day are being counted.

It seems to me that the mixed stock impacts on wild stocks of concern from the June/early July resident coho (trout fishery?) costed the MA coho opportunities at a lot of hatchery coho this fall. The MA 10 coho catch drops sharply in late September/October (as reflected in the monthly catches in annual sport catch reports.

As an aside during the NOF process various users (anglers) asked about in season run size updates with the state say such updates are not possible. However it seems to me that those Ballard lock counts coupled with the Elliot Bay test fishery would provide information for Chinook updates before mid-August and coho update before mid-September.

Curt
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The locks coho counts are very encouraging. So are the locks chinook counts: 23,261 as of 9/19! The co-manager preseason forecast for Lake WA was 6,301 chinook. I believe this is now the second year in a row of severely under-forecasting. I agree that in season updates are needed, particularly if the co-managers continue to miss so badly on their forecasts.

I think calling the early resident coho fishery a "trout fishery" is unnecessarily demeaning of it. I experienced a lot of enjoyment fishing Puget Sound this summer, keeping some fish and releasing others, over the past almost 4 months now. I don't think I would trade that for keeping more fish per day over a shorter period of time. I fish for recreation, not commercial gain. Though again, it seems to me the Area 10 coho issues this summer may stem from an inaccurate forecast? When all said and done it looks like the Lake WA coho return will be roughly double what was forecasted. Miscellaneous A10 was forecasted at 15K and I wonder what that will end up at. I assume that misc. A10 includes the unmarked Elliot Bay net pen fish.
 
SeaRunner said:
The locks coho counts are very encouraging. So are the locks chinook counts: 23,261 as of 9/19! The co-manager preseason forecast for Lake WA was 6,301 chinook. I believe this is now the second year in a row of severely under-forecasting. I agree that in season updates are needed, particularly if the co-managers continue to miss so badly on their forecasts.

I think calling the early resident coho fishery a "trout fishery" is unnecessarily demeaning of it. I experienced a lot of enjoyment fishing Puget Sound this summer, keeping some fish and releasing others, over the past almost 4 months now. I don't think I would trade that for keeping more fish per day over a shorter period of time. I fish for recreation, not commercial gain. Though again, it seems to me the Area 10 coho issues this summer may stem from an inaccurate forecast? When all said and done it looks like the Lake WA coho return will be roughly double what was forecasted. Miscellaneous A10 was forecasted at 15K and I wonder what that will end up at. I assume that misc. A10 includes the unmarked Elliot Bay net pen fish.
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Personally, I'm in favor of the apparently overly-conservative forecasting. For similar reasons, I am opposed to managing for minimum escapement. Let's grow these beleaguered fish stocks to their carrying capacity.
 
SeaRunner -
Maybe I should have used the old-time term of "salmon trout" that was generically applied to all the smaller PS resident salmon during the early 1/2 of the 1900s. However, my concern is that a lot of those fish are harvested as 14-to-16-inch trout sized fish, especially in June. Those fish are fast growing and in a month many of those same fish would 17-to-20-inch fish. I guess it doesn't matter much when we as anglers harvest those fish except when that harvest limits access to the larger ocean fish in September.

The Elliot Bay net pen fish I believe part of the Green River piece of the forecast. The Misc Ma 10 are from places like Gorst Creek.

Something has changed big time with those resident coho in MA 10 recently. Looking at old sport catch reports during the latter half of the 1990s the annual summer (June/July) catch (Harvest) was typically in the 500 to 800 range. From 2000 to 2018 the average catch was about 1,500 (ranging from 227 to 2,638). Since 2019 it has been more than 10,000 with this year's catch more than 17,000.

I agree that those resident coho provide a wonderful opportunity for some very tasty fish. I look forward to harvesting a few every year to grill fresh. For me fresh they are the best favored fish the sound has to harvest. That said given the mixed stock nature of the fish (coho hatchery and wild from through-out the sound are caught a closer look at that catch and how it may limit other fisheries should be discussed at NOF.

Curt
 
Smalma said:
SeaRunner -
Maybe I should have used the old-time term of "salmon trout" that was generically applied to all the smaller PS resident salmon during the early 1/2 of the 1900s. However, my concern is that a lot of those fish are harvested as 14-to-16-inch trout sized fish, especially in June. Those fish are fast growing and in a month many of those same fish would 17-to-20-inch fish. I guess it doesn't matter much when we as anglers harvest those fish except when that harvest limits access to the larger ocean fish in September.

The Elliot Bay net pen fish I believe part of the Green River piece of the forecast. The Misc Ma 10 are from places like Gorst Creek.

Something has changed big time with those resident coho in MA 10 recently. Looking at old sport catch reports during the latter half of the 1990s the annual summer (June/July) catch (Harvest) was typically in the 500 to 800 range. From 2000 to 2018 the average catch was about 1,500 (ranging from 227 to 2,638). Since 2019 it has been more than 10,000 with this year's catch more than 17,000.

I agree that those resident coho provide a wonderful opportunity for some very tasty fish. I look forward to harvesting a few every year to grill fresh. For me fresh they are the best favored fish the sound has to harvest. That said given the mixed stock nature of the fish (coho hatchery and wild from through-out the sound are caught a closer look at that catch and how it may limit other fisheries should be discussed at NOF.

Curt
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Thank you for the clarification on the Elliot Bay net pen. It seemed to me they could be included in either group and I wasn't clear on which.

Like everything, it is a matter of degree. If the early coho fishery continues to limit fall opportunity it might be something to look at going forward. But I don't see this year's outcome as warranting changes just yet. I find the timing of the announced changes in relation to scheduled fisheries interesting and it will be interesting to see how impacts and allocation shake out when all said and done.

I agree about something changing with A10 resident coho. I don't have any memory of catch in the past being like it has the last few years, and your review of harvest seems to bear that out. Have you looked at CPUE? With the collapse of steelhead fishing in Puget Sound, including summer runs, I wonder if some of the increase is just more people on the water. Personally, I never used to fish the Sound until late July or August and was busy chasing Snohomish and some SW WA trib summer steelhead in June and early July. Those fisheries I used to pursue have been eliminated or severely reduced. But your numbers show a very large increase that I doubt can be explained by just increased participation.
 
Smalma said:
SeaRunner -
Maybe I should have used the old-time term of "salmon trout" that was generically applied to all the smaller PS resident salmon during the early 1/2 of the 1900s. However, my concern is that a lot of those fish are harvested as 14-to-16-inch trout sized fish, especially in June. Those fish are fast growing and in a month many of those same fish would 17-to-20-inch fish. I guess it doesn't matter much when we as anglers harvest those fish except when that harvest limits access to the larger ocean fish in September.

The Elliot Bay net pen fish I believe part of the Green River piece of the forecast. The Misc Ma 10 are from places like Gorst Creek.

Something has changed big time with those resident coho in MA 10 recently. Looking at old sport catch reports during the latter half of the 1990s the annual summer (June/July) catch (Harvest) was typically in the 500 to 800 range. From 2000 to 2018 the average catch was about 1,500 (ranging from 227 to 2,638). Since 2019 it has been more than 10,000 with this year's catch more than 17,000.

I agree that those resident coho provide a wonderful opportunity for some very tasty fish. I look forward to harvesting a few every year to grill fresh. For me fresh they are the best favored fish the sound has to harvest. That said given the mixed stock nature of the fish (coho hatchery and wild from through-out the sound are caught a closer look at that catch and how it may limit other fisheries should be discussed at NOF.

Curt
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Didn't the Elliot Bay net pens bump up to a release of around 1,000,000 Coho in the last few years compared to years prior? I'd think that would explain at least a portion of the increased catch rate in MA10.
 
Smalma said:
SeaRunner -
Maybe I should have used the old-time term of "salmon trout" that was generically applied to all the smaller PS resident salmon during the early 1/2 of the 1900s. However, my concern is that a lot of those fish are harvested as 14-to-16-inch trout sized fish, especially in June. Those fish are fast growing and in a month many of those same fish would 17-to-20-inch fish. I guess it doesn't matter much when we as anglers harvest those fish except when that harvest limits access to the larger ocean fish in September.

The Elliot Bay net pen fish I believe part of the Green River piece of the forecast. The Misc Ma 10 are from places like Gorst Creek.

Something has changed big time with those resident coho in MA 10 recently. Looking at old sport catch reports during the latter half of the 1990s the annual summer (June/July) catch (Harvest) was typically in the 500 to 800 range. From 2000 to 2018 the average catch was about 1,500 (ranging from 227 to 2,638). Since 2019 it has been more than 10,000 with this year's catch more than 17,000.

I agree that those resident coho provide a wonderful opportunity for some very tasty fish. I look forward to harvesting a few every year to grill fresh. For me fresh they are the best favored fish the sound has to harvest. That said given the mixed stock nature of the fish (coho hatchery and wild from through-out the sound are caught a closer look at that catch and how it may limit other fisheries should be discussed at NOF.

Curt
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Curt,
Could some of the increase in resident coho numbers be attributed to increased releases?
If I recall correctly, the Elliot Bay program went from 350k to over a million released.
That is one that stood out to me and I think those increases were fairly recent, but there may be other hatchery / pen programs that also increased their releases.
SF
 
As much as I enjoy chasing the resident fish on the beaches and using them to pad my limits during Chinook season, it is a little disappointing to be out in September chasing the big hooknoses and ending up with constant 3-5lb rezzy's instead. Do you guys have any suggestions to target the larger fish, whether on the fly or on hardware? I've thought about trying green label herring for mooching
 
My understand that the Elliot Bay net pen releases were increased from 1/2 million to 1 million. This appears to have increased the total number of coho smolts from the Green system from 1.7 million to 2.2 million. With the Green River system including the net pens accounted for 21% of the Puget Sound hatchery forecast. So yes there were more smolts released from the Elliot Bay net pens that increases would account for only a small part of the increased numbers of resident coho in recent years. With the intensive coho creel surveys it will be interesting to see what populations and at what level contributed to the resident coho catch, maybe we will see that sort of info in the next NOF.

It also appears that there were a lot of resident coho in MA 9 in addition to those in MA 10.

Curt
 
Kashf1-
Last Saturday my son and I fished MA 9 mooching green label herring catching 7 or 8 coho with the largest being about 6#.

The reality is that there are not very many larger coho this year. During the Edmonds coho derby (9/9) of the 451 fish reported caught only 5 (1 out 0f 90) were over 9#. Bottom line unless lucky one will have to sort through a number of fish to find that 10#er.

Curt
 
Kashf said:
As much as I enjoy chasing the resident fish on the beaches and using them to pad my limits during Chinook season, it is a little disappointing to be out in September chasing the big hooknoses and ending up with constant 3-5lb rezzy's instead. Do you guys have any suggestions to target the larger fish, whether on the fly or on hardware? I've thought about trying green label herring for mooching
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The 3-5lbers eat the green label too. The few days I mooched were with green label and I got mostly those fish in the 3-5lb range, one in the 7-8lb range and lost one that was likely 10+. Ask @Nick Clayton about sending down a cut plug green label herring and reeling back up a Coho the same size as the herring. :ROFLMAO:
 
Smalma said:
Kashf1-
Last Saturday my son and I fished MA 9 mooching green label herring catching 7 or 8 coho with the largest being about 6#.

The reality is that there are not very many larger coho this year. During the Edmonds coho derby (9/9) of the 451 fish reported caught only 5 (1 out 0f 90) were over 9#. Bottom line unless lucky one will have to sort through a number of fish to find that 10#er.

Curt
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At the Kingston derby, the largest fish was 9.6lbs everything else was below 9lbs. Will be interesting to see the Everett derby results this weekend.
 
Smalma said:
Kashf1-
Last Saturday my son and I fished MA 9 mooching green label herring catching 7 or 8 coho with the largest being about 6#.

The reality is that there are not very many larger coho this year. During the Edmonds coho derby (9/9) of the 451 fish reported caught only 5 (1 out 0f 90) were over 9#. Bottom line unless lucky one will have to sort through a number of fish to find that 10#er.

Curt
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I think reading has just skewed my perception of what coho are supposed to look like, we all know WDFWs "8-12 lb average" isn't the truth anywhere south of the northern tip of Vancouver island, but I always figured the rezzy's would run 3-5lbs by the end of the season, and the ocean fish 6-8. So far I would say I am hooking fish at a 4lb average with some 6lbers and one fish back at the end of August that was pushing 8
 
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