“Salmon School” in the San Juan Islands

I got a bonus day of fishing this weekend. You might recall that last month I attended the classroom portion of a “Salmon School” with Anglers Unlimited, but that the on-water portion was rescheduled due to a mechanical problem with the boat. It turned out to be fortuitous, because yesterday both the weather and the fishing were better than the originally-scheduled day. It was essentially a fishing charter that was specifically geared towards teaching fishermen how to fish more skillfully.

I got up at zero dark 30 to be at Cap Sante Marina in Anacortes for a dawn departure. The guides were a youngish couple named Scott and Jamie. There were two other students besides me, both much more experienced than myself. It was a lot colder than I was expecting, but it was a gorgeous morning as we headed into the San Juan Islands west of Bellingham. On a lark I had brought the leftover herring strips I had brined for the previous day’s fishing. It turns out their bait had spoiled, so they were thrilled when I showed up with my own. Every single fish that day was caught with my herring on the hooks.

Catching a fish with a professional guide is very different from catching it by yourself. On a charter trip, you are using the guide’s boat, the guide’s gear, and are following their instructions. You basically take turns grabbing the rod when it shakes. Catching it yourself on your own boat with your own gear is always a lot more challenging. That being said, this trip was really cool because I got to really geek out about technical details. We were the ones putting our hands on everything, setting up the gear and downriggers ourselves under the guide’s instruction. We also took turns netting. Their rods, reels, and downriggers were all a bit beefier than mine, but their tackle was nearly identical to what I had been using the day before. The principles were all the same as on my boat – the difference in success boiled down to just skill.

We trolled for probably 45 minutes along the coast of a beautiful forested island before the rod shook for the first time. Another student grabbed it and handed it to me. He said that I should take it since I had never caught a chinook before. I wrestled with it for several minutes as I slowly reeled it in. Just bringing the fish toward the boat without losing it is a skill unto itself. The third student finally netted it, and brought my big chinook salmon onto the deck. It was time for high fives. Although it was a mighty fish, it proved to be the smallest of the three chinook we caught that day. The largest was 18 pounds.

For the rest of the day we experienced bursts of activity, followed by lulls of jokes and long chats in between. The sun came out and warmed us all up a little as it turned the sea and sky from gray to blue. There were a few other boats, but nothing like the crowd I was in the day before. The guides seemed to know all the other boats, and often shouted greetings as we trolled past each other. There was nowhere else in the world I would have rather been than this amazing place.

We were catching fish at a steady pace. When my turn came up again I got a particularly feisty one. It was taking a very long time to reel him in, and I was starting to get exhausted. Finally we figured out that I had the drag on the reel set a bit too loose, and the fish had been taking a lot more line out than I was reeling in. I tightened it up and had to start all over with a fish that felt like it was a quarter mile away. I flipped the rod over so that I could start cranking with my left hand, and finally brought it in. We were surprised to find that it was actually a brute of a coho rather than a chinook. It would be the largest of the four cohos we got that day. We neglected to weigh it, but they estimated it to be 7 or 8 pounds. I told them I’d tell my friends it was ten. They laughed and said I’m already learning how to be a fisherman.

One epiphany I had was not to be afraid to troll right along the bottom. I had always heard it was bad to hit your downrigger ball on the bottom, but they were doing intentionally, though briefly. In fact, the depth counter on one of their downriggers had broken, so we had no way to know how far down it was. So, they taught me how to bounce the cannonball off the bottom and reel it up just a little. I think that might be the main reason why there were catching so many more fish than me. We caught seven nice fish that day, and although we had more people aboard, we still only had two downriggers just like on my boat.

It was such a good day that the skipper extended our time from the promised 4-5 hours to 6-1/2. Nobody was in a hurry to go home. When we returned to the dock in Anacortes, he set up a little rail-mounted cutting board onto his boat. A seal immediately showed up, soon followed by a buddy. The skipper filleted each fish with amazing speed and efficiency, and showed me how to do it too. He threw all the guts, spines, heads, and tails to the waiting seals, who splashed around joyfully. It was then that I learned about “white kings”. About 5% of chinook or “king” salmon have pale colored meat instead of the more common red. It’s a genetically inherited trait handed down from a spawner to its offspring. It has a slightly different taste which is highly treasured. While my chinook was red, both of the other two were white. One of the most common places in the world for white kings is the Fraser River in British Columbia, which is probably where these fish came from. My fellow fishers felt lucky indeed. We all came home heavy laden with fresh fish meat. Now I have pink, coho, and chinook all in my freezer. One day I want to compare them side by side.

It was a really fun day. I came away determined to fish up north more next season, where the fish are more plentiful, the catch limits are more generous, the crowds are fewer, and the scenery is amazing. I also learned a lot. They said they might offer a lingcod and halibut class in the spring. If they do, I’ll be there.