Off-The-Grid Spring Chinook 5

Apr 22, 2010 by Rob Endsley

 

Travis McClure of Seattle with a 22 pound spring Chinook he bagged with Bill Meyer of Anglers Guide Service on the Sol Duc River while fishing for steelhead last week.

With all the hype about spring Chinook eminating from Southwest Washington another relatively small Olympic Peninsula river has been quietly filling with chrome kings. It's talked about and publicized every year, yet you'd be surprised at just how few people actually participate in this fishery. Why is that?

It's because the Duc is a Double Black Diamond, Pucker-Factor-5 river to float and not just any-old-body can handle the ultra-technical whitewater and Super G boulder gardens that make it such great steelhead and salmon habitat. And, well, there are much easier places to fish for spring Chinook. Easier, but not quite as fullfilling!

Sol Duc spring Chinook are planted every year by the Sol Duc Hatchery near Sappho and you'll find the bulk of them between the hatchery and the Sol Duc's confluence with the Quillayute River at Lynedecker. Bill Meyer of Anglers Guide Service in Forks knows the river and it's Chinook as well as anyone and has already been banging away on these prized fish, bagging several fish in the mid-20's this past week incidentally while steelhead fishing.

"This years adult return is coming from a plant of 500,000 smolts from the State hatchery and there were even more smolts planted from the tribal hatcheries near Bear Creek and Riverside. With a friendly ocean for those fish the last few years we're expecting a lot of spring Chinook in our little river in the next couple of months," said Meyers. He's referring to cold ocean temperatures that have allowed many Northwest king salmon stocks to rebuild the last few years and the Sol Duc is benifitting from it, as well.

Bill suggests leaving the heavy duty king salmon gear at home and uses steelhead-type gear for this fishery. "The water is air-clear out here for most of the season and they shy away from the big plugs and 50 pound hi-vis braided lines. I like to use 17 pound monofilimant main line on my plug rods and when we're backtrolling bait divers I'll run 15 pound leaders, but most of the guides out here will go pretty light and run 12 pound bait leaders and 15 pound main," says Meyers.

Sand shrimp fished behind a black Hot'n Tot or Mud Bug bait diver are the ticket on the Sol Duc and they work either with an egg chaser (Shrimp Cocktail) or straight up. Bill likes to fish 15 pound leaders rigged with 1/0 hooks and a size 12 Spin'n Glo in either orange or blue and red metallic with white wings above the bait. The Spin'n Glo gives the bait added floatation to keep it out of the rocks and a little extra action to draw strikes. 

He likes to use a little heavier gear to keep the super-charged kings under some semblance of control, as most of them will use downed timber and log jams as cover in the gin clear water and hooking hot fish near cover like that, well, we know how that goes. He likes the stretch of river from Rayonier to Lynedecker, but there's plenty of great water from the State Hatchery all the way downstream.

In addition to bait divers Bill also likes to run plugs on the Duc for spring Chinook.

"There's more fish caught here on plugs than just about any other technique," he mentioned about the salmon's fetish for plastic. With the clear water he'll downsize his plugs and likes to run K-11's or K-13's in chrome with orange or blue pirate and M-2 and T-4 Flatfish in "Cheese Measle's".

"Cheese Measle's" is the mentally-warped river guides name for the M-2 Flatfish with a chrome body and kelly green dots with chartreuse dots inside. After a couple thousand days on the river I came up with a few names like this ma'self, many of which can't be talked about in public!

The Sol Duc will fish well for spring Chinook all the way thru July and anglers that hit the river later in the season have the chance of nabbing a sockeye or three while they are targetting kings. The sockeye run overlaps the latter part of the spring Chinook run on the Duc and they just so happen to eat sand shrimp. It's feast-or-famine for the sockeye, but Meyer's has caught as many as 8 sockeye on a good day on the Duc and who wouldn't want to go home with two of the best eating fish on the planet.

For more information about fishing the Sol Duc River for spring Chinook or to book a trip with Bill Meyers call 206-697-2055 or log onto www.anglersguideservice.com.

Rob Endsley

5 comments

BillyTheKid on Apr 08, 2016 at 6:36 pm said:

Yeah, yeah. Don't fish it. Waste of time. Especially the hatchery hole. No fish in there. And please don't waste your time standing on the rocks closest to the concrete pump house and casting towards the top of the hole on the far side. Waste of time. Don't use eggs cured red with sand shrimp. Waste of time.

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Randy on Jul 08, 2016 at 2:55 am said:

I don't know what your talking about but sand shrimp and red eggs work great in the hatchery hole on the rocks. I've caught several chinooks up there this year. I don't know if your trying to convince people not to fish there because you do and don't want more people there but I believe everyone knows better then to believe that..

p on Mar 04, 2014 at 11:01 pm said:

please dont fish the duc for springers its a waste of time and a marketing scam! the twilight tourism boom has died and its just a new way of getting money to forks,please please if u want spring nooks go to columbia tribs ,take this from a guy who has made the mistake

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boulder chiropractors on Sep 22, 2010 at 8:00 pm said:

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NOFISH on Apr 19, 2010 at 1:15 am said:

Suhweet fish there Travis, I'm drooling! Had to be an epic battle on that spinning rod!

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