Eight MILLION pinks arrive in Puget Sound. Can we catch them?

Pink salmon come to Puget Sound every two years, in odd-numbered years. The 2025 run is forecast to be 7.8 Million pinks! Compare that to 700k coho and 300k chinook. This year the run was so big that Fish and Wildlife increased the catch limit from two fish to four per person, per day. With the run starting to ramp up, Saturday would be our first shot at them. However, we decided to first try to catch a more challenging coho or two before giving up and going for pinks.

Based on my experience a couple weeks ago of catching so many coho with Todd at Possession Point, we decided to head back there. Like my previous trip, we would have an ebb tide all morning, which favored the western side of the bar. After the long trip out there, we found relatively few boats, probably since there was a chinook opener in Area 10 that day. We set up to troll south along the edge of bar. At first we didn’t see any action, and I was ready to give up on coho and switch to pink salmon gear. When I went to check my gear, though, I found that a “shaker” a little baby coho was hooked to my line. This meant two things: One is that it explained why we didn’t see any action, and also that I was doing everything right. Based on this I decided to stick with my coho rig. Dave pulled his up right after me, and also found a coho shaker. We were onto something.

Throughout the next three hours, we would catch quite a few of these unwanted small fish. Five times we got a “real fish” on the line. One of mine shook itself loose when it hit the surface. I bumped one of David’s fish off the hook with the net, the first time that’s ever happened. The other three we brought aboard, but all had the “freedom fin”, indicating that they were wild, and were released. We had fished well, but had nothing to show for it.

By that time I was starting to need a bathroom break. The nearest bathroom was maybe 10-15 minutes away at Possession Beach Park. We pulled up our gear and headed over there, but found a disappointing sight. The tide was so low that the entire dock was laying high and dry on the beach. We considered going all the way to Mukilteo, but didn’t want to waste that much time. Besides, I hate docking there because it’s so exposed, and so often rough. Dave suggested that I could just wade ashore. At first I thought he was joking, but the more I thought about it, the more the idea made sense. I didn’t have any water shoes, but I could just take my socks off, roll up my pants, and get my shoes wet. We decided to try it. I sat on the bow while David slowly brought the boat straight into shore. When I could see that the bottom was close, I jumped off into the water and David reversed back out to sea. I was ashore. When my business there was complete, David brought the boat back in and retrieved me. He then decided that if I could do it, he could do it. So, I took over his place at the helm and dropped him off the bow, and retrieved him a few minutes later. Rarely has a bathroom stop been such a fun adventure!

We declared the operation a success, and decided to give up on coho and go fish for pinks. Rather than returning to Possession Point, I pointed the boat towards the Edmonds shipwreck, a well-known landmark. So well known, actually, that it legally marks the boundary between Marine Area 9 and Area 8-2. Each marine area has different fishing rules. Within 8-2 is an area that fishermen call “Humpy Hollow”, “humpy” meaning pink salmon. This area goes from the shipwreck north to the Mukilteo Lighthouse. However, surprisingly 8-2 is closed to pinks this year. Even though there are more than seven million fish total, the Stillaguamish River run was wiped out by a flood two years ago, which swept all the salmon eggs from the river. To protect that run, they are forbidding anglers from fishing in the area for pinks (though you can still fish for coho there). The shipwreck, though, is adjacent to Humpy Hollow, and I was sure that it would contain more than enough for us to easily find them there.

David had brought gear for jigging for pinks but not for trolling. Fortunately I had made up three pink trolling rigs the night before, and brought an extra plain white flasher. It was a simple rig, no bait required, and it was all that he needed. We set up our troll with the main engine at idle. I had left the kicker at home after last week’s fiasco at Baker Lake. For pinks we should troll between 1.5 and 2.0 mph, and we were slightly above that. I had intentionally left my drift socks set up after Baker Lake, and I deployed them to get our speed down. A couple of minutes afterwards, David got a fish on the line and reeled it in. We studied carefully and decided that it was indeed a pink. Before he could get it out of the net, I got a fish on myself, forcing David to rush to get his out and into the bucket. The next hour was a turkey shoot; pink after pink came aboard. After each of us had caught three, we decided to try jigging. David is far better at this type of fishing, which requires casting a Buzz Bomb out, due to his years of experience with freshwater fishing. I had only a baitcaster reel, and I should have had a spinning reel. As it was, I kept getting a big backlash in my line every time I tried to cast. I soon gave up and went back to trolling, and eventually Dave did too. Unfortunately we trolled right through the a huge blob of eelgrass floating on the surface, and got my gear all gummed up in it. When I finally got it free, David had to free his too. Finally I got my fourth and final fish of the day. David trolled for a little longer and finally got his. It was a struggle to cram all our fish into my kill bag. When that happens, you know it was an outstanding day of fishing!