Summer salmon fishing season is finally upon us here in Seattle and the rest of Puget Sound! Good friends Ross and Bianca joined me this morning for another great day on Puget Sound. Fishing has been pretty good for Resident Coho Salmon, so we decided to start out trolling at Jeff Head.
It was a perfectly calm morning on Puget Sound, and the run out to Jeff Head was very pleasant. We set up our troll on the very eastern drop off of Jeff and immediately got bit! Throughout the morning, the action was fast paced, and we didn’t go 10 minutes without a hookup. We fished with Gibbs Flashers in the green-glow/moon jelly color, a 22″ leader to a white Ace Hi Fly on both sides of the boat and it produced big time! I always put a small sliver of a herring fillet on the hooks and I am a firm believer that the scent helps coax the Coho into biting a little better than without.
Bianca is no rookie to salmon fishing, but her first trip out in a while and she crushed it! We landed 5 Coho, just short of our limit, so that we could run up to one of my favorite mooching spots and see if we couldn’t catch a Chinook or a Coho.
Kingston is one of my happy places and it’s hard for me to be on Puget Sound and not head there if the tides look good. The bait was stacked in Kingston, so we had high hopes. Bianca hooked a salmon that bit at 180′ down, and it ran fast right towards the surface and threw the hooks. Having her hook a salmon mooching for me was a big win, which would’ve been a bigger win had the fish cooperated and allowed us to land it. I hooked and landed my first mooching Chinook of the summer so I was thrilled. Eventually the bite died and we decided to return to trolling to pick up our final Coho for a 3 person limit. We ran to the deep water south of Jeff Head, deployed the trolling gear, and popped our sixth and final Coho for the limit!
I really felt those summer vibes today and can’t wait for the next trip out!
Seattle Marine Area 10 Resident Coho Salmon Report – June 16, 2020
