Coho & Mackerel

Today's wind forecast wasn't good for fishing where I Ideally would have fished today. And with a young family with 2 young boys who had no boat time on the ocean I decided to meet them in Sidney. The waters there are protected and normally water ski able flat calm. Today was no exception and they enjoyed the calm water while we waited for tide change and a bite to start. We released a couple of undersize Chinook prior to tide change. Around noon the quick 1/2 hour bite started. They landed these two nice hatchery Chinook that went 80 and 85 cm. The bigger fish even performed a water clearing jump half way through the battle. Mission accomplished they got fish for dinner ( and a few more) and enjoyed their trip without worry of anyone getting seasick. The advantages of keeping the boat on the trailer and being mobile at this time of the season.

The 2024 fall Coho salmon fishery has been stellar. Bigger fish than average and lots of them. Daily trips have been consistent so far just like today's trip. Our guests enjoyed constant action with multiple doubleheaders and one triple. We played over 40 salmon today that were between 6 and 10 pounds We kept our limit of 4 wild Coho and another 7 hatchery Coho. We also kept 4 nice crab from our traps...crabbing has been good all summer and fall as well.. There should be another week to 10 days of decent Coho fishing left before most move on towards fresh water and the spawning beds.

Today with 4 guests from L.A. for the 1st of two mornings of fishing this weekend. The morning started quiet for about 90 minutes. Nice calm water, watched a couple of Humpback whales around us and then between 9:30 and 10 am fish started to bite. We ended up with 5 nice Coho salmon, lost a couple more and a couple of Jack Mackerel. Three nice Dungeness crab in the traps finished the morning off. Left the traps in overnight today so hopefully more will be in them tomorrow morning.