looking forward to the area 9/10 opener. last years money spots for me included president point, appletree point, and pilot point. Just curious, where will you be when thinks take off?

hmmmm, been watching this thread for a few hours...and noone wants to talk much eh? <crickets>


All the spots you mentioned are good, and I'll be fishing at all of them at one point or another. I'll most likely start at some of the Proven spots like Indianola and President, and following that I'll either be the report, or I'll be calling on my network of fishing buds for one.


I'll share what I learn on the water here with a few reports and pics. Hope you all do the same, Looking forward to it!

I mounted up my new Scotty electrics last Friday. All I have left to do is wire them up before the 15th and I'll be out there, too. Lookin' forward to what I hope is another good season on the sound.

Interesting, very interesting . I think youve said enough. look forward to seeing some pics and reports.

Tempted to head back up to Sekiu and leave the dregs to you cheapskates.

What kind of Mounts did you end up going with Sol? Alumaweld rail mounts or some custom jobbers?

I've got the wide guide gunnels, so the swivel mounts bolted on perfectly. I'm stoked.

I want to thank Brian Nelson at 3-Rivers for schooling me on mounting the downriggers and zincs. He saved me some grief and undoutedly some extra unwanted holes.

I'll be out in A10, not sure if it'll be Jeff Head, Kingston or the eastern side, but will be out there the first evening, and the next two mornings. Good luck to us all!

ill be where the bait is...cheers

In my boat.

man i wish i had a boat for all this saltwater fishing.

Wasn't someone talking about having a party/derby/keg at Kingston this season?

I probably will be in the Kingston, Pt no Pt, Posession area. This year I have been finding the bait and fish incredibly deep at times, 175-250' . We had a great afternoon at Kingston fishing with 240' of cable out. Make sure you got 300' on you riggers Sol.

Matt

Wooly I was but it didnt get the response needed to justify the effort...cheers

Id like to know, where do all you seattle side guys come from? I thought all the fish hug the east side anyway, right?

This cripple wouldn't mind a ride in area 10.

Anytime :-)

ya its about time for the boat ho's to come out, ive been doing my ho'ing under cover. parkers fee for ho lessons is cheap, a good beer or two should get ya on the water.

Ass, gas, or grass. Since I've got the ass covered, it's gonna be gas or grass.

I'm game Sol - Gas, Grass, and Intimate knowledge of possesion/pnt-no-pnt. I've got a bunch of vacation days to burn.

I'll be at work.

We'll see, bro, it's gonna be a busy summer.

Funny thing about boat ownership, everyone want to be your best friend and if you happen to do well all your friends that wern't invited cop a tude.

me too... welll....... maybe....

I've got my own boat bud (not as shiney as yours) - just offering some expertise (35 yrs downriggin' pnp and possesion), green (gas $ share), and green (better than yours). I've got 6 wks of vacation I haven't even started to use yet and I'll loose what I don't use so if your regulars bail on ya give me a ring. Dan - 206.902.6855

Gotta work during the opener. We're heading out on Friday though. Location depending on where the fish are...

Jerry and Dan give me a call or a pm. I've got some seats open the second week.

All the guys (brothers, cousins, uncles, etc...) from our family will be out there somewhere in 9 or 10 Wed through Sun. Hopefully it will be fishy for everyone, remember to release the barely legals!

I'm going to be fishing Daves boat while he's at work! Ok, I'll launch mine if I must.

I plan on starting Wednesday evening then sleeping in my truck for a real early start on Thursday. Had planned to fish it all weekend, but then a bud invited me up to Tofino to fish off his 32' boat so I couldn't turn that down. Might be my only shot because I have to take the wife up to Alberta the following Friday for a week. I hope to get out of work for at least one more day before leaving to Canada. Kind of thinking this thing will end in two weeks like last year, so after I return, it will either be Pt. Defiance or Seiku.

From what I understand this could be the last opener. The agreement was for two years, so who knows about next. Anyone else know anymore on that?

I fish the bait. If I run over bait on the way out to somewhere I stop and fish it. It paid off last year, as I found fish fairly close to Edmonds and never needed to run over to no point or possession. Who knows this year, but I know where I am looking first.

I'll be ho'ing a spot over on Sleddddddder's sled with CanyonMan. I'm sure we'll be over in the Kingston area.

Past that, the following week I'll be in Gilly's sled fishing with a pair of blind individuals and my Old Man. Should be an "interesting" day on the water.

Port Hardy, Canada. Wednesday is the end of the trip, so I will be cleaning and packaging 100's of pounds of kings, silvers, halibut, lings, etc. Look forward to this trip all year.

Fishing, working, or both.

Driving home from working in the midwest, arriving back home on the 18th...then steelhead fishing for five or six days, then a day or two on the salt, assuming the catchin' is still goin' on.

Fish on...

Todd

Now, if we can just get guides, clients, and other fishermen to only keep kings over 10lbs. as to not destroy the quota so quickly like last year.

I have no problem with people keeping good kings, but it really turns my stomach to see a < 10 pound king kept in the Sound during a quota fishery.

Let all the little ones go. If it's not 10+ pounds, toss it back.

10-4.

God, I hope your right. This is the only one we got, lets make it last.

I'll be down the road from stam working also.good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

Roger only 10 + Kings in my boat.
I'm pretty much full for dates during the season. If I've missed somebody I owe a trip to call me soon.
Dogfish if you don't feel like dragging your boat up let me know as I do owe you!

If memory serves, when I inquired last summer near the end of this fishery, it's a downrigger show, right? Mooching a herring or trolling w/o downriggers is a long odds proposition?

Sg, who BBQs the world's best salmon but doesn't have downriggers on his Lund.

S.G. - if you want to mooch it can be done. I watched a couple guys do well sunday morning. They got 4 while we got 6 trolling, and I know Capt Kieth of Spot Tail does well mooching.
Of course if you'd like to troll around I;d be happy to take you out sometime.
-d3

Find a shelf and/or steep slope (or D3 or Neal..or Gilly) and fish in the 30-50' depth range. Be there at first light or very late sundown. Put that cut-plug near the bottom and hold on.

Your window of opportunity might be smaller, but it still can be productive.

Just gotta find where the fish come up to feed in the very early am and late evenings.

DR's just give the bigger boats a chance at some fish....no matter what depth, conditions, time, etc. IE, more flexibility.

PS. I was gonna say "Ask D3", but he beat me too it!

PPS. If Shilshole ever opens back up again for kingers, it's a trolling show. First light out in front of the bluff near the set of cans - and hold on.

PPS. Point Williams - Just north of the ferry dock at West Seattle. We used to drag a boat from the beach there at the ferry dock, motor on out to about 30' of water where the slope starts and troll herring. I think that's MA 10. Used to kill the fish there trolling and/or motor mooching. Whatever it's called. Stopped doing it when the old man couldn't help me launch our 12' Livingston. We were basically popping a fish or two a morning. What Ryley just described.

You can do really well out there motor mooching right alongside the downrigger guys. Use a 6-8 oz bannana weight with 75 pulls and let your bait sink and rise using the motor going in and out of gear.. Before I started using downriggers this is how we put fish in the boat all the time.

or u can do real mooching and periodically hit bottom and come up 15 cranks

What is "real mooching"?

I always did the "motor mooching" as what Sky-Guy mentioned. Sometimes near the bottom, sometimes not. Most of the times, it was hit the bottom and come up about 3' or so.

What I always considered the "real mooching" where those guys that were using the 1-2 ounces (sliding) and would cast out the herring, work the bait down to the bottom, reel and work the bait back up, etc.

Not being racist here, but just an observation - at least when I've noticed it before, more often than not, folks of asian descent would be doing this - and they were damn good at it. Never saw any one else ever fish this way. The rest of us were just lazy I guess and trolled around in search of fish.

They would position themselves in the boat to work with the current and would just drift along and work their bait.

Some of the "regulars" would just put a hurt to the fish. We were too, so we never changed our ways.

Is that "real mooching"? Just asking.

I may run up there for a day or two.

Mooching was first documented in Elliot Bay. From what I have heard the Norwegian Herring fisherman were looking for another market for their catch. They made the herring available to fisherman, who primarily used wooden J plugs. The Japanese fisherman flocked to the live bait, and fished it with great results. The term Mooching was coined when all the fishless anglers would "mooch" the bait from the happy, fish heavy anglers.

That said, if you fish with herring and it is not on a downrigger, you are a moocher and you are mooching.

Motor mooching, drift mooching, we used to do it all before downriggers.

That said, I like to troll with my downriggers now. I cover alot more water and put my lures in front of a lot more fish.

Matt

Sg -
One can catch those kings with standard mooching gear (drifting or motor mooching) in a number of spots out of Seattle. Give me a shout if you decide to head up this way and I can provide directions to a spot or two

I love to fish 1 1/2 to 3 ounces of lead and a fresh cut plug., light lines and leaders and direct drive reels. While catch rates are not on parr with the best of the wire boys they are more than adequate for a fish or two for the table most days.

Parker -
Many of those sub 10# fish I saw last year in folk's fish boxes were in fact mature Chinook rather than blackmouth. WDFW folks tell me that there were lots of 3 year old Chinook spawning last year which hopefully will men good numbers of those larger 4 year olds.

Tell me what will happen to future runs if we select for the largest fish and leave the small fish for the hatchery where they will disproportionately contribute to the brood stock? Seems to me that using such size criteria is even more size selective than the hated gill nets.

Tight lines
Curt

There were a ton of what i would call jack chinook last year. we were catching bronze 24-26 inch fish late into the summer.
Neal and I got 6 the other day and would barely break the 10-12# mark on those fish. I'm all for not keeping the 22 inch blackmouth but if i catch a mature fish, I'm whacking it. hell, my fish never get counted anyways

Smalma, Why not cull the dinks out at the Hatchery? Since June 1 of this season nearly 95% of all kings landed in area 10 in my charter boat have been hatchery fin clipped fish, with a good number being 4yr 15-18lb fish. I would not say that the fishing has been stellar, very little bait. But the average fish seems to be pretty good.


HOld on tight if you are fishing out in the north end of area 10. One of the charter boats in our fleet caught and released a 42" Halibut today trolling at 60' in 80' of water on a hootchie and dodger.

Matt

Drift mooching or motor mooching... It just depends on the situation. I'm a diehard moocher so I'll be out there working bait all the time. Just a preference I guess. Some areas though I admit seem to favor riggers but you can always put fish in the boat the old fashioned way.

Following up on Parker's observation... my grandfather's best friend is magic on the water with a mooching setup. I've never seen anyone, not even with modern setups put more fish in the boat in ebay than him. He went in when most went out. Of course he is my idol...(sorry for the long message)

Uncounted fish don't count against the quota, so whack 'em and stack 'em if no one will be counting them! Hell, screw the limits at that point - as they are JUST hatchery fish.

If the fish managers don't want anglers to select for larger, higher quality fish, don't do a quota fishery. Open it up for X days and either allow a 1 or 2 fish limit on hatchery fish.

I'll stop selecting for the fish I whack in MA10 when the quotas stop. I'd rather fish longer in to the season than put a couple of doink nooks in the box.

I wonder how much money is dumped in to the local economy per day the MA 10 season is open?

Oh, and the quota is tiny, relatively speaking. Don't think anyone is worried as to what size/age brooders will make it back to the hatcheries. As good as we are, we can't catch them all - and it doesn't take very many fish for the hatchery to get their fill of eggs and males.

I also did a little exploring this last weekend after wacking a decent EB fish on friday and was pleasantly surprised by the amount of bait we found almost to much and a few kings . The area 9/10 fishery should be fun again this year from the early show of mature fish that we saw!!!PEACE

I hate quotas, but that being said I will be out there waging war against all hatchery fish! can't friggin wait. out of all the fish I've landed and seen landed, I bet 90 plus percent have been clippped.
Halibut in area 10 eh bro? suspended even. that's sweet.

Gilly -
I don't disagree that the hatcheries could select the fish they use as brood stock. However current spawning protocols do not allow such selection of brood stock. While you and I would likely agree on the benefits of some selection for larger brood fish the genetic police do not and currently they have the last word.

If this year fishery develops like last year and we burn through the quota as in only a couple of weeks it clearly is time to think about ways to extend the fishery or redistribute the catches. Hopefully if those discussion happen folks will become more involved than in the past. As I mentioned earlier with allowable impacts on the weakest stocks limiting our fisheries significantly larger summer quotas in mixed stock areas will be at the expense of some other fishery.

Parker -
You obviously do not get it at all. Our fishing today is not about how many hatchery fish we kill but rather how many wild ESA listed Chinook we encounter and in that process kill. Our fisheries and to some extent our future fishing depends on limiting our impacts on those listed fish. It is attitudes (screw limits) such as that you expressed above that allows other resource users to place the majority of the conservation burden on the fishing community.

When we anglers sort for better fish we will in that process encounter more of the listed wild fish meaning that for the same wild fish impacts there will be few fish to harvest. Of course we could all lie about those encounters. Howver in that case I believe that those that do so forfeit their right to take the managers to task for mis-management.

Tight lines
Curt

I have a funny feeling that the big push of Chinook are going to be arriving later this year. While the quota may be reached with the smaller Chinook in a matter of 2-3 weeks I don't think it will be like last year when most of the action was early. Just a hunch since all the other runs this year seem to be late and the fruit in my orchard are ripening later. What do I know