by Jason Brooks If you ask me what is the most versatile watercraft to pursuit salmon and steelhead I would have to say it’s the drift boat. With its distinctive up curved ends and flat bottom designed and built to float in skinny northwest rivers it also handles bigger waters such as mainstream rivers, estuaries, […]
My first taste of the annual lower Columbia salmon bonanza known as Buoy 10 was over a decade ago and ever since, the challenge of this huge river mouth fishery has captivated a part of my thoughts and, an increasing part of my fishing plans! After a season of deep downrigger trolling for chinook –which […]
Last season was a tough one for big coho in local waters but hot on the heels of a large pink salmon run is a very solid showing of chunky coho salmon! With the Edmonds and Everett Coho Derby looming in the coming weeks, let’s brush up on some silver slaying strategies! The name of […]
Every year of our annual sojourn to southeast Alaska, I seek a pattern, a clue or a theme to the location and distribution of fish that may lead to an understanding or “edge”, eventually guiding us to a successful season. We’ve all read -with varying degrees of interest and concern- of the changes in sea […]
A sure sign of spring after a long winter is the annual arrival of our salmon forecasts and the “North of Falcon” meetings. I await the salmon forecast numbers like a kid waiting for Christmas morning. Hello, my name is Tom and I am a “salmon sicko”. After watching the numbers for a number of […]
It’s 0640 Saturday morning, we’re between segments on the Radio Show and Rob Endsley’s pen is just flying across his show sheet. “Well, if you don’t write it, I will…now what is the fourth blackmouth point?” Rob says. Some of the best “stuff” happens in between segments while the microphones are off and Robbo and […]
The rivers are nothing more than a trickle here in Western Washington right now so why would I be blabbing about three new Kwikfish colors from Luhr Jensen? Because one of these days the skies will open up and the rivers they will rise. And when they do you’ll wish you had these plugs in […]
This year’s edition of The Outdoor Line’s annual Sitka trip was a very special one. We had some Alaska “first-timers”, (I was going to say “Greenhorns” but…) some of our wives made the trip for the first time in several years and 2014 marked the Alaskan arrival of the 710 ESPN flagship, the Weldcraft 280 […]
Like clockwork, every February, saltwater salmon fishing for winter blackmouth gets better and better in the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Sekiu east to Smith Island. As the microscopic tag, inserted in tip of the snout of about 10% of Washington’s hatchery produced chinook salmon indicates, these winter fish that gather in the Strait […]
Wanna piss off your next hunting or fishing guide? Here’s a few tried and true tactics that work every time: The Low-Holer There are very few things that will piss of a fishing guide more than a Low-Holer. A Low-Holer is the customer that plays stupid but their true intention is to learn a guide’s […]
