Mooching for Coho in Forest Fire Smoke

We had a long debate about whether or not to go fishing today, partly because of the smoke from the Bolt Creek fire. The other issue was that there was a small craft advisory in effect, which was very confusing. I studied the weather buoy data for the whole region, and I didn’t see anything indicating strong winds. In fact, the weather was quite calm that day. Finally, we decided the risk was quite low in the area we would be fishing, and we decided to go.

The goal was to try to catch back the coho we had stupidly thrown back the week before, because we didn’t know the rules or how to identify the fish. Someone had told me that we had been “mooching” without knowing it. So, we decided to mooch intentionally. Mooching is an active form of salmon fishing where you drop a cut plug herring deep into the water, reel it back up, and then repeat over and over again. To make a cut plug herring, you brine some herring overnight, cut the head off, squeeze the guts out, and hook it to a double hook rig. The bottom hook goes through the side of the fish and dangles behind. The upper hook gets stuck into the backbone. What you get is a very shiny and tempting bait that “swims” realistically when pulled through the water. My friend studied up on this intently, and got really good at making them.

We made the 40-minute trip out to Possession Point at the south tip of Whidbey Island on fairly smooth water, and found only a few other boats. The smoke was not as intense there as in Everett. We had previously caught coho there, but it had been later in the evening. Salmon like cold water, so they tend to go deep in the middle of the day. However, the water was shallow there, so I was hoping we’d find some anyway. My friends still weren’t tired of bottom fishing for sand dabs though, which requires a mostly stationary boat. So, I started casting my cut plug herring far away and then reeling it in to make it move. We started fishing in drifts. We encountered a large kelp forest which caused our lines to snag, so when we drifted near it I would restart the engine and drive far enough away to give us 5-10 minutes of fishing before I had to restart and move the boat again. With the engine off, it was quite silent out there except for the bells on a nearby buoy.

In the middle of fishing I got the famous warning to evacuate because of the fire. I thought it was clear enough that it was only the Skykomish Valley, so I ignored it and went about my business. My friends had good luck; they found more than a dozen of the largest sand dabs we’d seen so far. I had a lot of distractions trying to help them unhook all the fish they were catching. Partly because of this, I didn’t catch any salmon. We agreed that next time we would just focus on catching salmon and not worry about the bottom fish.

One thing that surprised me when I started fishing was the sheer amount of lead that fishermen drop in the water everywhere. You tend to lose a lot of weights while bottom fishing, because they get snagged a lot. So, the previous week I had ordered my first kit of lead-free fishing weights. I felt a strange sense of satisfaction last Saturday when we lost two.

Eventually, the wind started to pick up a bit and we decided to head home. As we passed by Mukilteo, we could see the Lighthouse Festival going on. A ferry pulled out in front of us, so I slowed down to distance myself from his wake. Otherwise, the water was pretty smooth. We stopped at Jetty Island for a few minutes before coming back to the boat launch. My friends had never been there. Jetty Island Days are over, so it’s now only boaters on the island for the next ten months. After docking, we walked to the far side of the island to look in the opposite direction that we usually do. It was a relatively short and relaxed day of fishing. When I get the boat back, I’m looking forward to learning how to catch salmon.

It’s time to turn in our summer Dungeness Crab catch record cards. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife requires every crabber to count their catch during the two-month summer season. Our catch this season was impressive. Considering that Dungeness is currently selling for about $25/pound at Safeway, we’ve devoured a couple thousand dollars worth of crab this summer!