The Edmonds Coho Derby is this weekend! Saturday and Sunday are going to be awesome if you salmon fish in Puget Sound… and like a little friendly competition. We went fishing this morning to get warmed up and formulate our game plan.
Coho salmon are just starting to push into Puget Sound in decent numbers. Being at the very beginning of a month long saltwater season means that us salty fishermen are on the hunt, but as far as I can tell the Coho are not as easy to find in big numbers, as they will be in say a week or two.
We ran out of Shilshole in the dark and started fishing north of Jeff Head, finding nary a bite. Then headed over to the boundary between Marine Areas 9 and 10 near Edmonds right at sunrise. We trolled around for a while before we had our first grab, and it ended up being… you guessed it… a Coho!
Evan, Sean and I worked two flasher setups off the downriggers. We experimented with Blinky and regular flavored flashers. We tested a few colors of hoochees and trolling flies. A surface rod with a banana sinker and cut plug herring was straight out the back in the prop-wash.
Fishing was off to a slow start, but a bite did materialize at around 7am. We hooked 6 Coho and landed 5, one being wild and the other 4 being hatchery. I will admit that I was the one to lose a fish this morning. Sean’s magic herring brine really helped to toughen up the cut-plugs and we had them spinning fast off the surface line.
We were even surprised by a beautiful fifteen pound Wild Chinook that Evan caught and released. Overall it was a great morning! Hope to see you all out there tomorrow, and good luck!






