LET’S WELCOME MARINE Area 9 (Admiralty Inlet) to the mark-selective chinook dance floor
Saturday is the opening day for retention of hatchery kings, and fishers can also keep a stray sockeye heading for Baker Lake, Lake Washington or bodies of water in between.
It’s a one-fish limit
Just how long anglers will have to fish for chinook in that area is up for debate based on a recent spate of slow catch-and-release fishing in Area 9.
But based on anticipated angler pressure and the amount of smaller chinook, some blackmouth and some stunted, heading for Midchannel Bank off Port Townsend should be a sooner rather than later excursion.
A betting line on the length of the Marine Area 9 season has been bandied about in recent weeks, according to Ward Norden, owner of Snapper Tackle Company, and a Quilcene resident.
He’s thinking a longer season than the conventional wisdom he’s encountered in his trips to tackle shops around Puget Sound.
“After the reports I was getting last week, I think the chinook fishery may last longer than the current betting line — 8 1/2 days,” Norden said.
“Maybe 11 days? I think the fishing will be quite slow with only a few kings and mostly blackmouth.”
“The main run through Area 9 is all but over, but there are always stragglers clear into October.”
Tough tides and slow chinook fishing has been the story along the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Catch totals fell last weekend off Sekiu and Port Angeles.
And what fish many anglers did find were small, according to Brian Menkal of Brian’s Sporting Goods and More (360-683-1950) in Sequim.
“These salmon are smaller than guys are liking to talk about,” Menkal said.
“These are not shakers, these are mature kings well over the legal limit, but small.
“I’ve heard from some guys fishing Freshwater Bay that got their limit of 8 to 10 pound hatchery hens full of eggs.”
Norden thinks he knows where some of those smaller kings are headed, a tributary of the Skokomish River near Sultan in Snohomish County.
“When I was still writing weekly columns, I called them Puget Sound runts,” Norden said.
“Primarily, they are the products of Wallace River stock chinook and selective breeding to make them more commercially valuable.
“I caught dozens of hens over the years that were fully mature yet only weighed 8 or 9 pounds.
“That particular stock is very popular with hatcheries catering to commercials in that they return when prices are high (prices drop in a couple weeks).”
Norden had a unique way to target them.
“I rebuilt a 9-foot tarpon fly rod as a spinning rod and loaded a spin reel with 8-pound test mono, then used just a heavier leader to withstand their teeth,” Norden said.
“I motor-mooched herring. I never needed more than 1-1/2 oz. of lead for that light main line.
“It was a total hoot. The only drawback was that when I ever hooked a king of over 22-pounds which decided to sulk on the bottom rather than fight it out, the rig wasn’t heavy enough to lift the heavier, sulking fish from the deep.
“You always could recognize those Wallace fish because they were built like footballs, so a 10-pound fish might only be 27-inches long.”
Sandy Shore monster
Irondale angler Ole Kilmer boated a 6-pound rainbow trout at Sandy Shore Lake on Wednesday while fishing with a purplish PowerBait pellet.
His fishing partner, Tom Plut of Port Townsend, provided some details on the hog.
“This is the biggest trout I’ve ever seen around here and I’ve been fishing around here for 70 years,” Plut said.
“It put up a great fight.
“It almost stripped all the line clear off the reel.
“That’s a big fish to catch with two-pound test and a No. 10 hook.”
When the fish got near their boat, Plut started to get worried.
“That thing looked like a silver salmon,” Plut said.
“I didn’t think my net was big enough.”
When they got the fish on board, the pair discovered another angler had once hooked the beast.
“We found that it had a bigger, black hook for a worm in it’s throat,” Plut said.
“Somebody else had been looking for it, apparently.”
Two-for-one deal
I’ve never had an angler call in from the docks before.
Port Townsend’s Toni Boutilier decided to take her young daughter Adalynn for an outing at Lake Leland yesterday.
Fishing from the public pier at the park, she first caught a bottom feeder.
“It looked like a sucker fish,” Boutilier said.
“So I thought I’d put him on a bigger hook and send him back out as my new bait.”
Soon after that, Boutilier had “the biggest fish I’ve ever caught,” on her line. That fish turned out to be a 14-inch largemouth bass, which translates to just under 1.5 pounds.
Prepare your squids
Hopefully, squid jiggers found some success in the past few days. Some reports say that the cephalopods have moved on from Port Angeles’ City Pier.
If you still have some around, here’s a couple ways to enjoy your catch.
Port Angeles angler and lure designer Pete Rosko uses a recipe that Rob Walton shared.
“Simply place your squid in a hot buttered pan and sear for about 45 seconds,” Rosko said.
“Then I personally like to place a lid over the pan after turning off the heat.
“I also do this with many fish dishes.
“The end result is a seared fish/squid that is moist and tender.
Deep-fried floured squid is also a great favorite of mine.”
Norden’s favorite method uses olive oil.
“I very lightly sautée the squid bodies in olive oil, butter and a very little sesame oil,” Norden said.
“A little garlic is added, of course.
“The key is only cooking until the color changes, which only takes a minute or so, otherwise they are a tad chewy.”
Norden also has a tip for anglers.
“When I was doing a lot of steelheading, I saved the uncooked tentacles, put them in strawberry jello for coloring, and then froze them in small batches for bait,” Norden said.
“Those tentacle pieces are a natural food for steelhead, and they stay on the hook a very long time behind a Spin-N-Glo.”
Grab bag of topics
Four mini-presentations will highlight next week’s meeting of the North Olympic Peninsula chapter of Puget Sound Anglers.
“Instead of one speaker we will present four mini-presentations or clinics on Fishing Techniques for Freshwater Lakes by Karl Pohlod; “Saltwater boat setup with boat on-site by Dave Croonquist; Terminal gear knots, crimping and knot strength by Glen Humphrey, Walt Blenderman and Sherry Anderson, and All About Shrimping by Bob Keck.
The evening begins at 6:30 p.m. for viewing the raffle prizes and to swap fish stories.
A short club business meeting begins at 7 p.m. and the clinics will follow.
The club meets at Trinity United Methodist Church, 100 S. Blake Ave., in Sequim.
Refreshments will be provided.
A raffle for fishing gear and a $50 membership drawing (members must be present to win) also will be held.
Send photos, stories
Have a photograph, a fishing or hunting report, an anecdote about an outdoors experience or a tip on gear or technique?
Send it to sports@peninsuladailynews.com or P.O. Box 1330, Port Angeles, WA 98362.
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Outdoors columnist Michael Carman appears here Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at 360-417-3525 or at mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.