Salmon Fishing Trip to South Puget Sound

I have been eagerly anticipating my first salmon charter of the 2022 season this weekend with Best Seattle Fishing. Our favorite local salmon spots near the Shilshole Marina slip are still a couple weeks from opening, the plan was to make the long run down to Marine Area 11 and fish around Tacoma and Gig Harbor, but plans were squashed at the last minute. After only three days of fishing in that area, the encounter rate was caught up, and a closure announcement was sent out the afternoon before our trip. We needed to make it happen regardless, so the decision was made to burn a little more fuel and run down into South Puget Sound’s Marine Area 13.

Cruising from Shilshole to South Puget Sound was amazing on Saturday. I plotted my course based on the quickest route, and we cruised past Downtown Seattle, into Colvos Passage on the westside of Vashon, and into the Tacoma Narrows. Small fog banks peppered Colvos, but as we passed them the view would open up to some incredible views of the Vashon Bluffs, Point Defiance, Mount Rainier and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. For guests from out of town, I can’t imagine a better cruise to show them the beauty that we see everyday on Puget Sound.

I was thinking we would start at Point Fosdick, but made a last minute decision to head down to Fox Island. A little further, why not!?

We set up our troll, deployed the gear and searched for our first salmon. It was about an hour into our trip before we had a bump, and released a small Chinook. After a little searching, we found some good bait on the sonar and picked up our first keeper. We fished for about 5 hours and ended up with two nice Chinook and released a couple unclipped ones.

With the unexpected early closure of nearby Marine Area 11, there were more boats that had the same idea as we did, and the area around Fox Island, just south of the deadline at the bridge, and Point Fosdick were more crowded than I anticipated, but we did see a bunch of fish caught around us. We spent most of the day trolling Silver Horde Kingfisher Spoons behind an 11″ Flasher as close to the bottom as we could. After watching a number of moochers pick up fish, we converted over to mooching for a little change of pace, and released a nice Wild Chinook before we needed to make the long run home.

I was really excited to get to experience MA13 and see it on a good fishing day. I know it’s not a very consistent salmon fishing area, so I feel pretty lucky that we were able to find a few nice salmon to take home!