Premature Ehumpulation: Calling it quits on chinook too soon!!! 4

While the king fishing locally has not been stellar, I have been fortunate enough to soil the fishbox on each of our outings since the July 16th Puget Sound selective chinook fishery opener… until last week.

   I don’t know if it officially counts as a skunk when one doesn’t leave the dock until 9am, but it sure felt stinky since we were able to fish the slack at Midchannel in the presence of bait and working birds.

   The heat wave was in full bloom and an invitation to a friend’s cabin in the San Juans sounded like a great way to beat the heat and get back on the king-catching bandwagon. A temperature in excess of 100 degrees is way too hot for my overfed kiester anyway…

By the time we crossed Rosario Strait the temps were in the mid 70’s… We had scrubbed off over 30 degrees of the oppressive heat! Heavenly…

The next morning we rounded San Juans south tip, Cattle Point and headed for Eagle across a flat calm Salmon Bank.  

Arriving at Eagle Point, the Humminbird lit up immediately with schools of herring getting crashed by large targets! With my early July San Juan success still fresh in my mind, we quickly beheaded a pair of herring and deployed the cut plugs on the upper edge of the bait schools. As soon as we reached for our coffee cups… BOOM!!!…

Or, rather…Woof, as we were into a double on dogfish.

Six leaders later I came to the conclusion that a new gameplan was in order.

The charter fleet was beginning to arrive and it was good to see my friend,  the old pro Jim Aggergaard from Catchmore Charters set up and go to work. If Jimmy’s where you’re at in the ‘Juans, you’re in the right neighborhood…

We swapped the herring rigs for flashers and Coho Killers, moved away from the dog pound and started grinding away. It didn’t take long to get bit… We had found the leading edge of the Humpy Horde, the Pink Pestilence… yes, literally gobs of Gorbuscha!

Humpy number one of 2009 hits the deck and I’m a little torn about it…  

It’s not how you make it long… It’s how long you make it… Seattle Firefighter and fishing nut Jose Parra stretches a chunky pink for all it’s worth!  

I mentioned that I was a little torn about humpy number one hitting the deck and that statement merits an explanation.

Since the huge humpy forecast was unveiled last spring, my feeling, fear and contention has been that the sheer biomass of pinks would effectively end our chinook season by glomming on to everything we put down! So when I hit the west side of San Juan and saw the entire charter fleet whacking humpies my mental end-of- chinook-season "warning light” began to flash.

 I always have a bit of radio show prep to finish up on Friday night and while I was making my “radio rounds”, looking for the arrival of the Puget Sound pinks I started to get word of a decent showing of south Sound kings hitting No Point and arriving at Elliott Bay.

 An early start on Sunday morning to get down to the central sound was rewarded by some of the best looking bait balls I’ve seen on the sounder all season. Joined by an old friend of mine Tom Gobin and a new friend in Fetha Styx's own Bill Boyce, I had high hopes of again experiencing that chinook smell in the early morning light.

We didn’t get off to an especially fast start but once my rod slapped down to the water I knew I didn’t have a humpy on the other end of the line.

The big king made a couple “fly by’s” just to let us know we had a bit more work ahead of us!  

Once we got him close to the net, he did the ol’ head turn move but we bagged him just the same! 

Thirty-one pounds of fin-clipped fatness and hello to my career largest hatchery chinook!  

We were all surprised by the size of the fish and I was just thrilled by the chinook “comeback” after I had just about written off Puget Sound chinook for the year. After a quick picture session, we got the gear back down as there was still a ton of bait on the screen! It didn’t take long for Tommy Gobin to get in the game with a nice 12 pounder.

Not to be outdone, Billy Boyce made a comeback of his own with this chrome 21 pounder.  

I honestly felt that we lost the largest fish of the day as we absolutely got blazed by a big king that we never got a look at. Bill’s rigger got rocked and line was just peeling off his reel. We stopped the boat, got the other wires in and started to chase the behemoth. As quickly as he arrived, he was gone.

Back at the ramp, our fish are scale sampled and one of the chinook had a coded wire tag. I signed a form requesting the information from the tag and will report the findings in a future blog.

Three happy anglers with three nice chinook on a beautiful day.  

My "gut feeling obituary" for the 2009 chinook season was, happily, premature. The pinks are coming and when they arrive in true numbers then and only then will king season come to a close. 

The “fat lady” is not singing yet but I think I just saw her knock the tuba player over down in the orchestra pit on her way to the stage…