Plugging a King…And a ‘Butt to Boot! 7

Plugs are cool.

Salmon plugs, steelhead plugs, bass plugs, cedar plugs for tuna, plugs with teeth marks… you know what I mean.

When you have to use flashers off of the Cannon Downriggers to provoke a strike, so be it but it is such a pleasure to play a fish with nothing between you but tight Trilene…
Don't get me wrong, the advent of sliding flashers such as Jim's Breakaway's by Q Cove and the various rotating in-line attractors are a vast improvement over their water-bagging brethren, but a direct line to a hot chinook is the real deal.

So, once we started finding large whole herring in the stomachs of our catch and hearing about a few plug caught fish we put two and two together: Plug bite time!
After being out of town on business for the Selective Chinook opener in Puget Sound's Marine Areas 9 and 10, I felt that I had a little ground to make up on this fishery.

The 2010 edition of this much anticipated, close-to-home opportunity had been nothing short of smoking hot and not many anglers expected the early, torrid pace to continue. In fact the mid-week action had slowed to the point of shifting most fishermen into "search mode" changing up spots and gear types to keep producing husky hatchery kings.

Sunday morning dawned to find my old friend Kevin Gogan and a guest of his aboard "Big Red" skipping toward Possession bar.  On a trip earlier in the week it was strictly flasher gear with hoochies, Kingfisher Spoons or Silver Horde's newest offering the "Ace Hi" fly and Kevin wondered why we were switching up after such a successful outing:

"Goin' old school on 'em Nelly? I haven't seen you fish plugs in a long time."

"Well," I answered, "when we get the word from All Star Charters that plugs might be the deal…we fish plugs!"

Everything was taking a whack at the plastic that day! Check out this sand dab that bit the plug and in turn was "doggied"! This also answed the question on our reports page "What's eating these fish?". 

Kevin Gogan mugs while his guest Mike handles yet another hot king! 

Even the halibut got into the "plastic act" as this 30 pound 'butt joins the party. Gogan wanted to invite "Mr. Butt" to dinner and I almost had a 3XL mutiny on my hands when I let him go!

We kept five dandy chinook on Sunday and released two more.  It's a shame that big guys make nice kings look small. Kevin (in the middle) is 6'8"…

Bayside Marine's cleaning station is a very handy, well designed place when the bite is on outside of Everett!

This selective chinook opportunity is goin' off right now! Don't miss out and we will see you out on the water!!!