cohoangler-
Ned has a very legitimate concern; all summer and continue into this fall the has been a huge number of "shaker" coho. You are correct these small coho are from this year's smolt release and are not likely to return to spawn until next fall. However for whatever reason many of this years smolts opted to remain in the Sound and are exceptionally large with most fish now in the 12 range. Suspect that the change in juvenile coho abundance and size is due in at least part much higher abundances of year of year herring and sand lance through out much of the sound.

The numbers of young coho I was catching in August while targeting adult Chinook was shocking. With smaller spoons and flashers the young coho were consistently out numbering juvenile coho as much as 8 or more to one. Even when I switch to plugs I would still catch several of those coho a morning.

No Ned's point in addition to switching to larger profile lures other methods of reducing incidental mortality on juvenile coho would include eliminating "stinger hooks", switch to large profile hoochies with large bait strips, and look to methods that do not involve use of flashers. Even a few minutes of being jerked around by those flashers seems to significantly increase mortalities. The action of those flashers not only jerk the shakers around they also make it difficult to detect that one has been hooked. Have had success by eliminating the flasher on my line and fish my lure above a "dummy" flasher. Using old school dodgers are in line fish flash type lures help to reduce the negative impacts from the flashers.

While it is true that eliminating flashers can lead to a less effective presentation that is off set by reducing fishing time lost due to undetected shakers on the line.

Curt