Lots of salmon out in the ocean pasture means good fishing likely in months ahead

The commercial troll fishery off the southern coast at Ilwaco has been on fire in recent days, and that should bode well when the hatchery-marked selective chinook fishery opens coastwide on Saturday (May 31).

“The troll fishery is running out fish to catch, and have caught 31,000 chinook this season (which opened May 1), and we’ve already clamped down on the northern coastal fishery,” said Doug Milward, a state Fish and Wildlife coastal salmon resource manager. “The only place it has been slow for the troller (this month) is Westport, and it traditionally starts off like that, and is now starting to pick up.”

The southern coast has about 6,000 chinook left in their catch quota, and caught about 5,000 this past week, and that included on troller who landed 464 chinook. His boat wasn’t the only one scoring kings mainly to the south of the Columbia River mouth with other boats scoring catches as high as 300 chinook.

“I have high hopes for the coastal sport salmon fishery this summer,” Milward said. “When you have a .... http://blogs.seattletimes.com/reeltimeno...n-months-ahead/


Edited by Phoenix77 (05/31/14 09:35 AM)
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