A fellow 150 Montauk owner recently mailed me a surprise gift of a yellow squid lure for chinook, and wouldn’t you know I actually caught a chinook with it! The powers that be only give us a few opportunities every year to catch chinook in our area, and we have a three-day opener right now. My fishing buddy Dave and I both took Friday off to jump on it. We got to the boat launch around 6:30 a.m., which made us one of the last to the party. The parking lot was completely full of boat trailers, but the launch was already quiet. We cruised out to Possession Point and were fishing by 8:00. There were more than 100 other boats there. We started exploring the underwater nooks and crannies of the bar, initially fishing at around 90-100 feet deep.
About 9:00 I saw my rod abruptly straighten as it popped off the downrigger clip, then started jerking. I grabbed it and started reeling it in. Whatever I had was big and fought hard. Several times I had to let him run before reeling him in again. My arms were tired by the time I brought him to the boat. David did a great job netting him and bringing him aboard. It was a big hatchery chinook, and well above the 22″ minimum size. It was a keeper!
We trolled the entire day trying to get David a chinook of his own, or a coho for either of us. We pulled up our gear often to check for problems. More often than not, we found a small fish hooked on there that was preventing the lure from attracting a target fish. We pulled in six juvenile salmon, four dogfish, and oddly enough a sand dab that we somehow got while trolling. All were released. The fact that we were catching so many juveniles (called “shakers”) told us that we were doing something right. It’s just a matter of luck whether you get a big salmon or a small one.
A little after 3:00 I told David I’d had enough and started stowing my gear. Suddenly his rod popped off the clip, he grabbed it, and started reeling in a big fish. This one fought as hard as I mine had. I netted it clumsily but successfully. It was a big chinook, similar in size to the one on ice in my kill bag. David was heartbroken to find an adipose fin – it was a wild fish and he had to release it. Still, he had the experience of catching one. Our nine hours on the water had been worth it – definitely better than working!
Fish and Wildlife monitors the chinook fishery even more closely than they do everything else. At the dock in Everett, fish counters were talking to every boat that came in. Many had chinook. Each fish got examined to make sure it was legal, but they also took fin samples and checked several other things. It turns out mine was “chipped” in the way dogs and cats are chipped for tracking. Maybe 1 in 20 hatchery fish are chipped. He cut the head off and took it with him. This will tell them which hatchery it came from, and other information. My fish weighed in at about 12 pounds and almost 29″ long. It’s the kind of fish every Washington fisherman dreams of catching. I still won’t think of myself as a “real” fisherman until I can catch a lingcod, but I’m getting better each time.
One of the many things I enjoy about fishing is the feeling of providing my wife and friends with delicious food from nature. The chinook I caught on this trip took up my entire stove top. It yielded about 12 generous servings of some of the best fish I’ve ever had. This one was a male (no eggs).
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