October 2010 - La Nina forecasts & a Big Crab Vote

I read about it in the local Olympia newspaper. It was on the front page and it’s called La Nina, which results in a gray, wet and cold fall/winter. Oh goodie!

If you’re an outside person like me, you’ve recently observed enduring the coolest, wettest summer in 30 years. Just like southern California, but different.

The article went on to say, expect above average rainfall, increased snow pack and lower temperatures until spring. Sounds like the summer of 2010.

While we attempt to understand why we live here, especially in the months ahead, salmon are happy campers when Mother Nature delivers La Nina conditions.

Starting with summer, the northwest winds blow on the ocean, creating incredible upwelling conditions as the northwest currents blast the continental shelf, producing megatons of zooplankton and phytoplankton onto the coastal pasture, setting the table for northwest salmon stocks, fattening up for a northern migration, while passing their adult relatives, heading south, on their way home. While the plankton produces the right food for salmon smolts and baitfish, such as herring, anchovies and sardines, the entire food chain benefits producing greater survival rates for the next few years.

Mark Cedergreen, who represents the Westport Charterboat Association and resides in the Westport community, knows about La Nina and El Nino conditions. He has witnessed the poorest of ocean salmon survival rates as the result of warm ocean waters produced by El Nino conditions. And more recently, he has monitored high ocean salmon survival rates from La Nina conditions.

Earlier last month, I spent a few days salmon fishing in the ocean out of Westport. In two days of fishing, an Olympia fishing buddy, Greg Kluh and I estimated we hooked around 90 big Coho salmon, along with a dozen kings. It was Nirvana. At the end of the second day, I declared, “I’m done.” It was time to head back home, hang upside down in the closet for 48 hours, and return to daily life. It was a couple of salmon fishing days memories are made of.

During that fishing trip, Greg and I could not escape tough, fat young Chinook salmon from 6-10 pounds. “Don’t fish under 30 feet,” I said to Greg, “or one of these pest Chinook will eat you.” Thick as fleas.

One of those evenings, in talking to Mark Cedergreen, he suggested that the La Nina conditions will likely produce another great Chinook summer, hopefully similar to this year. Make my day.
Therefore, in summary, while we listen and live to the driving cold rain this fall and winter, you are right... La Nina, baby. However, focus on the payday of next summer, when the kings of 2011 are heading home. Nirvana, all over again!

The Big Crab Vote

Today is a very important day, for recreational crab fishers in Puget Sound. After four years of consideration, data collecting, listening to crab biologists, sport and commercial crab fishermen, along with a few legislators, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission will vote on one of three options (A, B or C) designed to adjust the allocation of Puget Sound crab.

The road to this day, and this vote, has been long and challenging, as the Commission will likely endure the wrath of the commercial industry if the sport crab fishing season is expanded, or the sport crabbers will scream injustice if the vote is anything less than the preferred option A, providing more fishing opportunity for sport crabbing. It is a good day not to be a Fish and Wildlife Commissioner.
As you may recall in previous writings, Governor Gregoire, in meeting with sport fishing organized groups, vowed to recognize the growing economic importance of sport fishing in Washington, which includes the crab fishery in the comparatively calmer waters of Puget Sound. Statistically, at last count, there are about 235,000 sport crab license holders in Puget Sound. Commercially, the number is around 200. Sound like a no brainer? Will the Commission, appointees of Gov. Gregoire and her platform have the courage to do the right thing? Or, will they back down to legislators who threaten their existence on the Commission. It’s political as usual and the outcome will be public following the vote at 10 a.m. on Friday, October 1.
In the meantime, October is a time of change. Mature Chinook and most adult Coho salmon have cleared marine waters and are preparing to make their offerings to perpetuate their stocks in the streams and rivers of their origins. For freshwater anglers, October is prime time to do business with these migrating fish as they enter the last chapter of life.
For this cat, I’ll continue to sniff the waters of Grays Harbor, attempting to intercept jumbo Coho salmon bound for the Chehalis River system. The South Channel, along with the North Channel, up to the mouth of the Little Hoquiam River has been good to me in recent years during October.
Following October and Grays Harbor, it’s back to late fall and winter blackmouth fishing in Puget Sound and the cycle repeats itself, year after year after year.

So chin up, rain gear on and get ready for a long, gray and wet fall/winter. Don’t expect it to slow me down. So many fish and so little time. See you on the water.

September 2010 - Coho Salmon Fishing in the Pacific Northwest

Forecasting salmon runs is similar to forecasting Pacific Northwest weather. Sometimes it’s accurate, sometimes it’s not. Regardless like the television weather forecasters, right or wrong, they all get paid.

Case in point; if you spent time this summer chasing king salmon off the Washington coast, with success or failure, do you believe the spring modern day forecast record of 650,000 fall king salmon is accurate?

While I have been hearing this question repeatedly the last month, I have been one of those anglers, chasing king salmon most of the summer.

Yes, the ocean fishery has been inconsistent the past two months, in terms of the presence of chinook, but I like the bigger picture. Analyzing the catch data, for example, out of Westport during the last week of July and the first two weeks of August, I am blown away by the results. Literally, thousands of anglers, like me, in search of the big one, encountering more often than not, good numbers of kings. The data suggests that during the timeframe fore-mentioned, that anglers averaged a king salmon per person during those three weeks. In my career at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, paying attention to similar data, these catch rates are off the chart. My mentor, Frank Haw, told me eons ago, that when the chinook salmon catch achieves a half fish per angler, that means that the fishing is red hot. Therefore, a king salmon per angler must qualify as white hot.

I spent the third week of August fishing out of Ilwaco at the mouth of the Columbia River. My catch results were very good, especially on my last day (Aug. 27) when three of us landed five kings and one coho in the ocean. Remember, the king salmon limit in the ocean this summer was expanded to allow two kings per day, per angler. That happens in the fishing world about as often as pigs fly.

September, from this writer’s perspective, is the bell lap for this year’s summer fishing season. It is a time when most anglers shift their attention from chinook salmon to coho salmon and wow, are there ever great fishing options to consider.

My first recommendation has got to be the ocean: Ilwaco, Westport, La Push and Neah Bay. Each of these four ports, are currently open to salmon fishing, traditionally driven by the coho salmon quota. If the coho quota is not achieved by the date for each port, then each of the areas will close on a season closing date, leaving some level of coho salmon on the quota table. Make sense? For example, the cutoff date for Ilwaco this year is September 30. For Westport, it’s September 19 and on the north coast, at La Push and Neah Bay, it’s September 18. Do you realize what that means? It means incredible coho salmon fishing, coastwide. It means, in a year like this, coho salmon as big as semi-trucks.

Fishing near the mouth of the Columbia, and in the river per se a week ago, I saw a coho salmon driving a 20-foot trophy boat! And, it was missing an adipose fin, the result of the fin clipping process at a WDFW salmon hatchery. Somebody get a large hook into that coho! Seriously, mid-teen coho were not uncommon. Big, cart-wheeling, sprinting shades of chrome, screaming around the boat like a formula one race car on the first lap. Gotta love it. Go fishing on the coast this month and you’ll see what has put this salmon angler on spin cycle.

Sekiu in mid-September is money too. Salmon biologists suggest mid-September is prime time for the peak of the big ocean run coho to make their way from ocean pastures to Puget Sound. Sekiu is lights out in mid-September. Good luck finding a room as the town will be plugged with anglers who understand prime time. Sleeping in a tree is always an option.

Finally, I can’t overlook north Puget Sound in mid-September. The Edmonds Coho Salmon Derby (Sept. 11) and the Everett Coho Derby (Sept. 18-19) are great, well attended salmon derbies offering tons of prizes. Having attended these two events for the last six years, I have witnessed strong coho fishing on Possession Bar near Edmonds. While the coho are found deeper in the water column in this region, usually around 100 feet, similar to the coastal stocks, I anticipate they will be as big as Clydesdale horses this year. A coho 20 pounds or better will likely provide the winning angler with a wheel barrel load of cash at both events.

It’s coho salmon fishing time in the Pacific Northwest, hey-now, hey-now. Giddy-up and I’m saddled up to find that big coho behind the wheel of the Trophy Boat I saw last week. See you on the water.