MA 9/10 Reports - 2021

Post reports if you feel like sharing. You don't have to be overly specific.

I'll be out at Possession running some Tomic plugs for the opener. If that don't work, I'll drown a Herring Aid Coho Killer for a bit. Hoping there's more feeder fish at Possession than last year at this time.

Fingers crossed for a good season!

Good luck to all of you MA 9-10'ers and go get 'em!!!!

If area 11 is any indication, there should be a few resident fish around with a few ocean migrants in the mix. You guys should do well.

Fish are coming through MA 5 and 6. MA 5 has been so good that the state is closing the Chinook season at 12:01 a.m. Monday. They're at 78% of their quota. Hopefully, there's enough cushion that the coho/pink season can run its course. MA 6 is at an estimated 33% of its quota. Good luck to the MA 9/10 anglers

Fished Craven on the incoming from daylight to the 9:20 change. 1 bite 1 keeper nook around 10#. Never saw another net fly for at least 50 boats. Ran up to Midchannel for the outgoing, no bites for us but saw quite a few netted, most small…pinks? Left there and heard it turned on later. Buddies did better at Possession and No Pt. earlier. Gathering intel for tomorrow.

Team Nimble Whale limited the boat (4) in MA9 (Possession) and picked up a dozen hard keeper crabs in the pots. Nothing hot by any means, but we managed to get one fish that was an honest 19 lbs on a scale and the rest were your typical Puget Sound footballs.. A ton of small black mouth and one or two resident coho rounded out the trip. Fish wanted nothing to do with the Tomics, didn't seem to care at all about the Killer of Cohos but seeemed to key in on spoons. Didn't really see to many legit keepers getting pulled out the water, but I know some people had success there too.

Heard good reports up and down river from us, so I'm going to agree what streamer said. Some fish to be had with more new fish moving in.

Already seems to be a much better season that last year - at least in terms of getting fish to bite.

I think Team Nimble Whale is going to move upstream and fish some unchartered waters for the crew. May reach out to a couple of you (certain Mod) if we seem to be wallowing in sucktitude by choosing to fish someplace new (for us).

I better not see a pink tomorrow, let alone hook or land one!

Just because I've always loved to include photos with my reports, here's a classic Bleeder Bucket photo with the 19. Gotta love it when the tail sticks WAY out of the bucket!!!!



Shameless Plug: I got to try out the Simon 360 Breakaway/Bumpers and so far, have really liked them. They are easy to install, easy to setup and easy to fish. Why fight the flasher when you don't have too? So nice not to fight that stupid flasher. I would highly recommend taking a look at them in your future for both here in your local waters and down at B10 or on the columbia with the kicker/360 flashers:

https://hawkenfishing.com/collections/360-breakaways-bumpers

Did you use them with a dropper weight or downrigger? I'd be interested in downrigger applications.

Got my first rezzie coho of the year off a popular beach yesterday. Lost two other decent fish. Not the best tides but decent water movement.
Had a couple good size schools of sandlance swim by me while fishing which was promising.
Good amount of boats out. Looked like a 50/50 mix of mooching/jigging and trolling. Only saw the net fly a few times.
Lots of upside down spinning reels, but it is an odd year so that is to be expected. Speaking of odd years....a few slime rockets where reported being caught yesterday in MA 9.
SF

Lit up A10...biggest confirmed King at Shilshole per checker;) 22, 10 n two coho one pushing 6 7 lbs...not many netz flying but find the bait, find the fish. Cheers

Water is going to be greasy flat all week, go get them whilst you can! You never know how long your small window of opportunity will last in this day and age.

I fished with IrishRogue on the opener like we do every year. We fished Maxwelton on the incoming and literally had our first fish on when the downrigger ball hit the bottom for the first time that morning. Bonk! ok, good way to start the day. We weeded through a couple shakers for 30 minutes and had our second fish on a plug I threw down to keep those shakers off.

Done by 7.

Saturday, I had T-Rip, NickD90 and my brother out. 0600 to 1200 We got blanked for the day which was surprising given results the previous day. Calling around to a lot of good fishermen, That was the story for the whole of the fleet in South MA9 until the fish started biting mid afternoon. Morning was a bust ( there was also a huge barometric pressure spike overnight), though we did C&R a sweet 22ish Line burner of a nate mid morning. Thankfully crabbing remains decent.




Hope to be out a few nights this week.
Cheers all!

Saturday was tough for us. Team Nimble Whale was less than nimble and less than motivated so we went South to a secret spot. Oddly enough, there must have been every charter boat there. Place was stupidly packed and not many nets were flying.

We limited the boat again......on resident silvers. Couldn't touch a legal king to save our butts. Did get another boat limit of crabs.

I didn't make it out on Sunday, but Team Nimble Whale was back up at Possession and when I called in mid morning, not a whole lot was going on.

Heard reports of a confirmed 30 checked at the dock and hear rumors of a 40 as well. I'd love to see a photo of the 40 if that's true.

Should be some excellent afternoon/evening tides this week. As Sky-Guy said, get out and get 'em while you still can!

I've got meetings all week and a baseball tournament in P-Town this weekend so I'm out of the game until early next week.....if MA10 is still open.

Beautiful Saturday morning, first bite was a barely legal Chinook that we let go...and that was our only keeper for the day. As Sky-Guy noted, we did get to shake hands with a serious ass whooper of an unclipped hen, one of the better fights I've experienced in a bit.

The bucket full of crabs made for a very nice dinner, though!

Fish on...

Todd

Sat. headed So. to Posession. Buddy limited there the day before. Dead all morning till the outgoing started after 11. Most had left. Both boats hit fish and limited on the long troll before the wind came up. Sunday chose a closer area for the AM outgoing and banged 2 nates first thing then nothing. Headed in early with 0. No mid teeners or larger for all of us. Mature fish seem smaller every year.

It's been spotty for most I think. We limited the boat on the opener on Posession with one fish in the high teens 17-18lb and another good one about 14. Lots of small fish I would say a mix of blackmouth and what looks to be migratory jacks. Hopefully there's a wave of bigger fish on the back end of all the jacks pushing in. Additionally I hope that folks kick loose those little bastards so we can keep the season open!

Well you guys musta been keeping everything up north as yesterday morning’s MA 11 adventure truly sucked for us. We got out at day lite, fishing from Redondo. Fished the last few hours of the out, and the first couple hours of the in tide. I’m telling ya, the weather sucked, with the breeze blowing pretty good till after the tide changed. Maybe saw 10 other boats, and they were scattered from Browns to 3 tree.

Not A Bite.
Didn’t see a net, and the three other boats that came off the water when we did, were all skunked....

Cold and wet, but going again tomorrow.
Cheers

Pretty good coho fishing this morning.
I think we hooked up nine decent fish between two of us plus one humpster. Saw lots of jumpers out in the rips which I assume were pinks. Surprising the unclipped to clipped ratio on the coho this early in the season.
I wonder were those unclipped fish came from or are headed?
Lots of sandlance around. Fun to see the eats as the fish track the fly in on the retrieve.
Never changed flies all day. Chartreuse over pink clouser on a type 3 line. Lots of fun on a 6 wt.
SF

PNP was really good last few days on the outgo. Deep rods picked up the king limit, and during the process a diver and bait picked up the coho.

MA 10 gave up a true taped/weighed 25 pounder this morning.

MA 10 was sloooooooooooow for us yesterday. Heard of a few unclipped fish caught, but I only saw one "legit" 5lb dark lake king being put in the boat.

Still plenty of resident coho's around and the charter fleet is hammering on them.

Love watching the clients walk off the boat with a sandwich bag of fillets.

Looks like the quotas got updated today.
SF

https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/reports/creel/seasonal#ps-summer-chinook

A word of caution - The date on the link provided by stonefish is the date the numbers were posted not the date of the latest estimate.

I believe it is the case that the those MA 9 numbers reflect the fishery impacts through Sunday July 25. Obviously there has been impacts since then.

Curt

Caught two of my biggest MA9 Chinook ever on Saturday.

In unrelated news, MA9 closes tonight, 8/4, at midnight.

Fish on...

Todd

Been doing outstanding in 10 in various places. Nice grade of fish. Get while the getting's good!

I see that folks are upset about the B10 and area 11 chinook closure but no mention of area 10. According to the latest info on the WDFW web site area 10 closed with only 69% of the harvest quota reached but was closed because of 159% of the sublegal encounter limit happened. While chinook retention was open the majority of the sublegal chinook we hooked were probably jacks, mature fish of 18 inches up to near the 22 inch legal size. I don't think those are the fish the sublegal encounter limit is trying to protect. I also noticed that the Locks count of chinook entering Lake Washington Is over 10200 as of Wednesday.


There are still plenty of chinook in area 10. This morning in a lazy (8:00 to 10:00) trip near Meadow Point looking for a coho or pink all we hooked were two chinook, both hatchery fish probably 12+ pounds and the brightest, healthy, and strong chinnok we ever hooked in area 10.

The updated (thru 8/21) for MA 10 Chinook impacts are 95% of the harvest quota and 213% of the sub-legal encounters.

If the recreational fleet can not figure out how to reduce our sub-legal encounters we will continue to have a difficult time harvesting more of the available hatchery chinook.

Curt

Fish adults in the river. Completely avoids immatures, maximizes poundage caught, optimizes stock identification.

So, would that be above or below the commercials, and or the Tribes ?

At least in the South Sound Area (Puyallup and Nisqually) the tribes and the recs don't fish on the same days. The recs only fish on the days when the tribes are not netting.

Location would not matter. Allocation requires fish to be passed. If the NI commercials could fish selectively in the Bay (non-mixed stock) then they might go, but there would still be the bycatch issues.

CM -
I theory you suggestion sounds good but not sure that it holds up in the real world (at least for the recreational fishers).

Let's look at a real world example. For the Green river the 2021 hatchery Chinook forecast was 24,000 fish with a hatchery need of approximately 4,000 leaving 20,000 fish to split between the treaty and non-treaty fishers. For the hatchery coho the forecast was 75,000 with a hatchery need of 2,000 leaving 73,000 to split.

The tribe has demonstrated that given the opportunity they can catch their share; for the Chinook they would need to catch that 10,000 out 24,000. For a recreational fishery fishing behind that fishery it would be much more difficult.

The Green is a small river; typical August flow 311 cfs and September flow of 386 cfs. The hatchery is located about 34 miles from the river mouth with limited shore and boat access. The harsh reality is that when we see extreme shore fishing access quickly becomes limited. How would the recreational fisheries catch that share without taking the fish at the hatchery?

If we look at the exploitation rate (catch/(catch + escapement) needed in the recreational fishery on the Green to "get" their share they would need to catch 2/3 of the Chinook run and nearly 95% of the coho. A quick review of the 2019 information I found that for the Skagit hatchery spring Chinook the recreational exploitation rate was 13%. For the Skykomish hatchery summer Chinook it was 8.3% and for the Samish hatchery fall Chinook (the best I found) it was 37.7%. For coho the typically exploitation rates were 10% or less. It seems pretty clear to me that with traditional methods the recreational fishery just does not have the power to catch their share. Do we create a fishery without bag limits or method limitations at the hatchery rack? How would this fly with most anglers?

How does the table quality of a Green river Chinook caught in late July in MA 9 compare with one caught in late September at Soos Creek?

As always been the case if we wish equal catch sharing between treaty and non-treaty fishers the bulk of the non-treaty catch will have to taken by the commercial fisheries. The recreational have long lobby for the current recreational priority of PS non-treaty Chinook catch. Do they need to re-think that priority?

Somethings to consider.

Curt

Curt,
I don’t fish from a boat so my sun-legal and legal chinook encounters are minimal.

I’m not up to speed these days regarding all the different things folks use with downriggers, etc.
What would you suggest from a tackle equipment standpoint for boat anglers that would help reduce the sun-legal encounters?
Thanks
SF

Smalma

Those are very valid points. If we produce lots of hatchery-origin salmon we will have to fish mixed stock and with nets to take the harvestable. Unfortunately, that truth will destroy the wild stocks, as it has in the past and continues to.

I now that we disagree on this, but current wild fish escapement goals and recovery targets are (in my mind) criminally low. I lean towards at least 1 and ideal 2 kg/sq m of summer low flow spawning reaches as the goal for each species. Accommodating that level of spawners would necessarily reduce overall exploitation rate but would allow anglers access to a higher density of fish.

A question I have on "table quality" is that I know a silver-bright fish looks better, I know that as spawning approaches fat (and probably protein) is transferred to gametes so the flesh has less fat. But, on a purely food-based quality which one provides the most nutrition? I don't know. I do know that research in the 19-teens (by WDF's predecessor) found that spring chinook, taken in Columbia River hatcheries, were (their conclusion) of higher food quality than immatures taken in the ocean. This was at a time when WDF was trying to stop the ocean troll of immature salmon as being wasteful of a food product.

I have been reviewing some Russian salmon fisheries in Kamchatka and nearby areas. Their fisheries are basically traps for pink, chum, and sockeye with chinook and coho essentially reserved for recreational. Their view of MSY is escapements >1kg/sq m. Obviously, they don't have the human population and development. Yet. But they do have a whole lotta fish.

I'm just having trouble understanding how with over 200% of a sublegal quota, the Coho and Pink fisheries are allowed to continue as if sub legal encounters are not occuring in these fisheries, and with quota left on the table incidental chinook encounters with hatchery fish must be released....

You have to believe in the magic of modeling. WDFW had a model (Yay, Rivrguy) that showed that if you closed the NI commercial fishery in a Bay, that no additional fish would be caught by the in-river sporties. They also believed that a NI gill net fishery that started 12 hours ahead of, and downstream from, an Indian GN fishery would not impact the Indian catch.

Recs never get their quota and then the nets get the rest.

Area 10 should open Aug 1st and we should get the month to fish it when the fish are there in numbers. But nope deal was made a long time ago I suppose, so the Muk fleet will scoop the remainder of our share with no discretion as to hatchery vs. wild.

Just like they do every year it gets shut down just when it gets good. Oh we hit our quota, no matter what it will be no later than mid-August for 10 and 9 will be mid to late July. Followed by 11 if your lucky maybe the 4th week of Aug. and of course can't forget Westport and their weekday only fishing. But wait we are only at 50% so so lets open it 7 days a week and have two kings the next week just to say we did it and the recs had a shot.

Lessen the impact and make it a plug only fishery. Would be fun.

Pretty sure WDFW just makes up their numbers. Same BS every year.

In area 11, we knew two weeks before it closed what the closing date was going to be. What does that tell you?

That there is a vast dark conspiracy Lifter. . .
fb

fb, call it what you want. It happens every year, at least in 11. The closing dates don't vary much no matter the size of the king quota. Do you think the closing date is agreed upon between WDFW and the tribe(s) before the season even starts? WDFW published the closing date two weeks before it happened. Ask the sport fishing advisers. An advisor told me the closing date would be 8/25 tow weeks earlier. We didn't see a fish checker at Pt. D boathouse during those two weeks. I fish pretty much every day (mornings). And I keep in touch with a lot of guys who fish the evenings.

I can verify what Lifter99 is saying. The date was thrown around two weeks before by WDFW staff and the sport fishing advisors. I also noticed a decrease in fish checkers for the final few weeks of the season. This was also apparent a couple years ago and it was a similar situation. It isn’t adding up.


-Streamer

We don't need to check, the Model Says...