South Sound salmon day

On Friday, there was a great outgoing tide, so me and one of my fishing buddies Bob decided to head out to a local beach to try for some resident Coho Salmon. When we arrived at the beach the wind was up a bit, but definitely at a fishable albeit challenging level and there was no initial sign of fish. However, this did not last to long and within the first five casts Bob was into his first resident Coho, which took a white baitfish pattern on a fast retrieve.

The beach

For the next half hour the fishing continued to be quite good, with me and Bob picking up a couple decent of sized residents a piece. After this the school seemed to move out and the fishing died. With the pace slowing a bit we decided to work our way down the beach to a point that gets a good current ripping past it when the tide is flowing. As we approached the point, sea gulls could be seen dive bombing a school of baitfish just offshore (definitely a good sign!!), so we positioned ourselves in front of the bait ball and started casting. The fish appeared to be well aware of the baitfish and after a few minutes I got a solid hook up. However, this fish did not react as would be expected for a resident Coho and instead charged straight at me only to head for deeper water once it spotted me. This type of fight is typical of Chinook Salmon and sure enough when I brought the fish in it turned out to be a small Chinook Salmon. These fish have an aversion to day light and as such are not often caught during the day, but the low light conditions from the cloud cover seemed to be enough to bring this one up to the surface to feed.

The Chinook salmon

A couple casts after catching the Chinook salmon I caught a decent resident Coho which put on a nice show of aerial acrobatics. Before long Bob was into another Coho as well, but after this the fish moved down the beach a little bit. Luckily a couple jumpers gave away their location and after getting in front of them I was able to bring one more Coho to hand.

Another Chinook salmon or "blackmouth" as they a commonly called for the coloration along their lower jaw.

By this time we were losing day light so we headed back to where the trail comes down to the beach to try our luck there for a few minutes. Before for I could even set foot in the water Bob spotted a jumper and sure enough on my first cast I caught another Chinook Salmon. On Bob's first cast he LDR'd a nice Coho and the fishing continued to stay decent for the next fifteen minutes or so. I ended up landing one more resident Coho and two more Chinook before things slowed down. Once the fishing finally slowed down again we decided it was time to call it a day and headed back to the car.