Sekiu, and Straights desert waste land ?

Since the opener I have fished a total of eight days from Neah Bay to Port Angles and haven't landed a single adult Chinook. I am not new to fishing there and have a few select spots to target Chinook along the kelp beds that usually never fail me. Fished the opener and lost 2 adult Chinook at Sekiu and that has been it, with 6 days fishing at there. We did land several Black mouth from 6 to 10 pounds and these fish do not count as Chinook in July, as usually we let them go. Never in 30 years of fishing Sekiu have I seen such dismal fishing. Very little bait on the screen showing and only a few fish marked.
Fish Sunday out of Port Angles and seen zero nets fly, marked no bait or fish.
I know they are catching Kings and silvers out of Neah Bay out deep but nothing to talk about inside the Straights, sure they are catching a king here and there but no big push of fish coming in from the ocean yet and only 18 more days left on the King fishery. I thought after the rain last week something would change, but still no fish. Will they come??????

I 2nd your assessment. Something isn't rite. We've landed a few oddball decent fish up at Neah but it isn't close to what it should be in the normal areas. If you want to do a 90 mile round trip you can get into some decent fish but is it worth the run. Even the coho swarm is holding farther and farther of shore the last few years.

Wynoochee Syndrome

We were out at Neah Bay Thu-Sun and compared notes with Achewter daily...and were about the same success rate.

Two kings on Thursday, a limit on Friday...then one on Saturday, and no kings on Sunday.

Clipped coho were around, and we did get a few of those, at least...and if you like retaining 24 1/2 inch blackmouth you could run 20 miles offshore and fill your limit in no time every day...we let all those go, and in fact had to leave several areas because we could hardly get our lines set without catching one.

Kinda like the usual of trying to get around all the coho to get a king...this time it was getting around the clouds of little ones to try and find an adult.

At least easy boxes of lingcod and rockfish were handled up at the end of each day, and the ocean/skies were absolutely beautiful.

Fish on...

Todd

I'm fairly certain all the missing fish are NOT in Area 7 either.

We fished Freshwater bay for 3 days---one 20# "native", one 30# "native", an 11# hatchery chinook that was kept----One keeper for 2 experiencedd guys fishing hard for 3 days. Coulda stayed down home in MA 11 and done the same....yesterday's creel count---15 boats, 28 anglers, 6 chinook.
Ugh...

What Todd and Achewter described sounds like great fishing to me, but that's probably because I don't have to think about how much gas was burned up finding the fish....

So upping the quota's up north aren't working for us down here this year?????? Sucks to hear it.Good luck,

SZ

The boats at the mouth of the Rogue are averaging about a King per boat and it is just getting started. Could the fish be out further right now? Oregon seems to be having great fishing so far this summer.

I for one am glad my boat is sold. After 40 years of declining fishing, I've come to the conclusion that the local grocery store always has a nice fish for less than the 3 gallons of gas my trolling motor would burn to catch one. Not to mention the other $30k I spent getting out there Good luck gentlemen.

And it is all about the meat isn't it Kyle?

I totally agree this is going to be a very down year. Been fishing the Port Angeles area for the last 35 years and never in those years have I seen it as poor in what should be prime time. My partner and I fished hard the last two days and only put one fish to the net and it was about a #30 wild at Freshwater and saw only one net out in two days. We have been spoiled because it has been so very good the last few years but in my opinion you will start seeing some articles in papers with the question of what has happened to the Puget Sound Kings this year in what was supposed to be another great year. I also do not believe they are late as the last week in July thru the first week of august has always been prime time the last 35 years and it would really tail off after the middle of august. Even thru the years that were a bit down or very average the fishing was 10 times better then it has been this year or at least it was for the guys that really knew the area. I think most of the fish you hear about being caught in the ocean are fish heading to the Columbia. I know people that fish Sekiu regularly too and its the same story for them. Lets hope this isn't the norm in the future............Les

Have to say that I feel better after reading this thread. Three days of fishing Sekiu and Neah Bay in early July resulted in one 12 lb king and a bunch of 5-8 lb blackmouth. Fortunately I was fishing with kids so they were just pleased as punch with the smaller fish. I thought that I maybe was doing something wrong... but I guess I was just experiencing a really bad year.

Wonder if the huge Columbia River run creates a competition issue for food with the Puget Sound fish? Interesting to note that most of the fish we caught were stuff with tiny little squid... never seen that before.

Guess that means Westport for the rest of the summer. The fish there are running pretty far offshore this year. Could be the PS fish are way out feeding and will just motor right thru the Straits and into the rivers in August?

Could it be fish are running to deep to catch? I remember a few yrs back Coho in the straight were non existent, only the hatchery returns were huge. Theory then was they ran through to deep to get to. Wesport reports I have state 200' downrigger depths in 300' of water have produced good king catch rates. Bait top to bottom when you find it. That' s deep! Bet more are even beyond that, and impossible to access. Seem to be some decent area 9 reports. Point Wilson moochers are doing fair, some must be moving in? Just a thought a thought?

Last time we were at Westport, three weeks ago, 200-225 was the sweet spot. Every time we hit that depth we had fish on in minutes. Searching for silvers is what took us so long, otherwise we would have been donje by 10am.

I was on swiftsure the 18th, 19th 20th and 21. We limited every day on 13-18 lb Chinook. East side, right on the boarder, fishing mostly alone. Unbelievable bait, krill, whales, sea lions ducks etc along the rips. Released a lot of small fish, many coho and some frankenfish. The offshore boat armada was on the table top/west side most of the weekend and we stayed away from them. They were within 100 ft of each other trolling on one spot. Wind Song came near us on the east side one day in pea soup fog and they had 13 limits on board that night at the dock. My friends down at skagway were getting fish in the low 20s but they were trolling for hours on end to get one.

My friends at Seiku blanked the week before. ten years of going there and they had never been skunked for three days straight in the beginning of July. No Chinook at the dock either. Feel bad for Van Rippers.

I was out this morning at possession and no point and Ive never seen it where there was just no signs of bait. Some ducks, no bait marking at all. I got to double bluff/ skunk bay and marked very little bait if at all.

Where are the herring?

Does this have something to do with he Haida Indians dumping 165 tons of sulfate off of Vancouver Island this year?

We slayed them, both in numbers and size, fishing Sharkfin out of LaPush three weeks ago...fished there over the weekend, as well, and we scratched out a limit of very average fish...and it took a long time, besides a 32 mile run each way.

We had our best luck there fishing anywhere from 285 to 365 feet down...they aren't sneaking by below us, the depth finder and fish finder would show them to us and we'd go get them if they were

Fish on...

Todd

Even in the best years, owning a boat for fishing doesn't pay off from a purely economics point of view, money spent to put meat in the fridge. In that sense you wasted a lot of money over 40 years. I understand the frustration with diminishing returns but owning a boat is never about economics, becsuse it just doesn't pay.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/10/19/iron-sulfate-haida-gwaii-dump-defended_n_1984574.html

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering


The Gwaii Dump.

Iron Sulfate, by the shytload, dumped off vancouver island.

Jigged up a bunch of herring just north of kingston last weekend. Saw a lot of bait balls and fish on the finder, but no kings for us...

It is very possible that the Chinook are moving thru the Straights down deep, since that has been the pattern out in the ocean this year. Not many, if any Sekiu fishermen ever run there downriggers down below 150 feet. Usually its top 60 feet in the early morning hours in 120 feet of water or less. I believe if the fish have really moved in out of the ocean better reports would be coming in from the inside waters of the Puget Sound.
Maybe next trip to the Straights I'll try fishing out deep. My next plans to fish out in the boat I suspect will be low on the Columbia.

We fished Sekiu for 4 days, 7/20 to 7/23, 3 rods. Lousy, dozens of Shakers and mostly small wild Silvers, no wild Chinooks. Last day we finally got two keeper Chinooks, 6 and 15.

We were going to go over again this coming Saturday, but cancelled. Not enuff fish to make it worthwhile, with the high cost of gas and the ferry cost. I thought the Chinook bite might pick up with the rain we had but looks like it didn't. On line fishchecker reports for Olsons had it 12 Chinooks last Sunday for 132 rods and the same kind of count last Saturday and Friday. I suspect a lot of the Chinooks that were caught were blackmouth. I just hope the Silver run in Puget Sound is better.

Also, there were zero bait balls at Sekiu around the Caves, Mussolini Rock, Eagle Beach and all the spots that usually hold bait.

The 15 pound Chinook was a white King which usually occur in BC and sometimes the north sound. Beginning to think Puget Sound Chinooks are a no show. Could be late I guess but I don't think so.

I fished it shallow and deep. I mostly jig for the kings and I fished the bottom in 200+ feet several times. There is a lack of bait but there is enough there should be more then there is especially at Freshwater. There also is a glaring lack of dogfish...now this might seem good to some but usually when the dogfish are around the salmon are too as they hang with the bait too. There were dogfish the first two weekends of July but they have since disappeared. You can actually fish a bait as the good news...the bad news is there are few nookies to catch with the bait. Not much bait at all along the hook at PA as you would usually see those bait balls all over the top of the water in the morning and in really shallow later in the afternoon and evening. I really think the plain fact is it is just a crappy Puget sound Chinook run this year. The prediction is way off.....lets hope those big ocean silvers show for the October opener because that run is projected to be good too...........Les

"We had our best luck there fishing anywhere from 285 to 365 feet down..."

How big a balls you using?

We were using 15# balls and braided rigger line to reduce the blowback as much as possible...trolling with the current, of course...we caught the heck out of 'em that deep, too, if you remember my La Push report from 4th of July weekend.

Fish on...

Todd

We've been consistently limiting on chinook out of Neah Bay since the opener. Swiftsure has been pretty reliable but it gives up mostly 8-12 lb'ers. Deep (250') tomic plugs are good for larger but few fish - mostly in the 15-18# range. Last Sat and Sun. (7/26-27) I was with an impatient newbie so we fished up in the 135' range. We limited on kings by 11:15 on Sat and 10:15 on Sunday. Flashers and pearl or purple hootchies.

Sharkfin and South Prarie has been where most of the commercials are at and a few of the recs looking for bigger fish. Decent but not great numbers of fish in the 15-30+ range (mostly upper teens, low 20's) have been coming from those areas. The guys who are getting 'er done best are fishing real deep - 250 to as much as 425 on the cable.

Occasional nice fish have been coming from the usual kelp bed adjacent areas - Skagway, Spike Rock, Father and Son, but the bite there has been very slow. It was awful during the opener. I attribute that to the terrible visability due to an algae bloom that only cleared a week or two ago.

Further N, excellent numbers of Chinook (and larger than average Coho) have been showing in the past week at Esperanza inlet and Nootka sound. I still think this is shaping up to be one of the best king years in recent history, we just need to be a little more patient.

My uncle and crew caught 3 at pilot this morning, that is 5 for him this week all deeeeeep. 3 were caught on the seahawk spoon

Joe

Didn't fish the straights this weekend.....just wondering any new reports on the Inner Neah, Sekiu, Freshwater, PA fronts..............hoping this thing at least has one last spurt of Kings before its over. It is a pretty promising look at the early amount of silvers in the Sekiu area according to the fish checks.....hopefully that forecast of good fishing will come to be.................Thanks for the reports.........Les

9 fish out of 24 boats on Saturday at Ediz Hook launch when I asked the creel checker at 2:30 PM yesterday.

Thanks for the reply.....looks like the same old, same old. It should be way better then that for what should be prime time. Some of those may have been those penner silvers too in that count. I really hope this is just "one of those years"...........thanks......Les

The on line fishchecker report for the strait and sound gets posted on Monday, so then we'll have a better read on the actual results.


http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/creel/puget/

The checks for Sekiu and PA still terrible. Did the stats for PA......In a 5 day period 306 anglers checked with 39 Chinook. Just to compare I did the same time periods in the last two years for PA. 2013/ 461 anglers with 160 Chinook....2012/ 508 anglers with 249 Chinook....This definitely is the poorest year I have seen in the 35 years I have been fishing the area In what should have been a prime time week. The Sekiu checks didn't look much better, if not worse for chinook so not many fish in the pipeline headed for PA. The last three years especially have been lights out in the area....guess we were due for a bad one.......Bad year for the Puget Sound Nookies.......................Les

Amen to that. I had a reser at Curleys starting last Sat but I cancelled. My bud still went over with his boat. I tried his cell today but no service, I'm curious to see if he did anything.