Pink Salmon on West Possession.

[Matt]

If you are looking for pinks make your way over to Skatchet Head Buoy. They are over there THICKER than concrete right now. Tried fishing for kings there yesterday, but had to leave due to the amount of pinks we were hooking. Hooked them from 90-195 feet of cable out on the DR (Yes, you read right, 195 feet and pinks). Any gear will do, we caught them on spoons. They are porpoising and rolling all over in the area, TONS along the shoreline. I have heard Shipwreck has been slow so if you're looking to get into NONSTOP fish with the potential to hook into a keeper king head over to West Poss Bar near Skatchet.


Just a heads up

[Mike Carey]

thanks, going out Saturday, would not have thought to venture over there.

[Matt]

If it persists you will be looking at EASY limits, Mike. Let us know how you do.

[EAmon___hoffman123]

Im having trouble finding this. my dad and i are after pinks this weekend. is it near possesion point?

[Mike Carey]

Im having trouble finding this. my dad and i are after pinks this weekend. is it near possesion point?

The south side of Whidbey Island has two points - Possesion Pt is the SE point, and Skachet Head is the SW point, kind of across from Point No Point.

I predict there will be several WL.com'ers fishing Skachet Head come this weekend, thanks to this post, LOL.

(and I think I'm spelling it wrong)

[A9]

Scatchet Head is best defined as the cliffs to the west of the green can on the west side of Possession. It is a little different than the west edge of Possession Bar.... Scatchet Head is not the west ledge of Possession Bar.

What many people don't realize is that Possession Point is like an intersection for salmon. Salmon either stream into southern Area 9 via the west side of Whidbey Island or the west side of admiralty inlet (MidChannel, Point No Point,) or through the middle via the shipping lanes... Coho and Pinks can be found anywhere, in fact many people overlook fishing for them out in the middle of the shipping lanes, whereas Chinook tend to follow structure on their migration southward into the Puget Sound.

Just about all fish that move onto Possession have to pass through the Scatchet Head area/west side of the bar. From here, the fish break off into one of two directions: They either continue southward to the south sound rivers via the Edmonds side or Kingston side of the channel, and the other option is the fish head east than northward to the Snohomish system, which is likely where all these Pinks staging on the west side of Possession are headed.

One word about Scatchet Head: Fish don't particularly hold well here. Salmon do however hold on Possession. Chinook and Coho can hold quite well on Possession (it always depends on the time of year/species/conditions) because of how much bait there is @ Possession. Pinks are a bit of a head scratcher this year, with the higher flows and colder temperatures, they don't seem to be holding in their usual haunts for very long so this school Matt found could likely be further east/north at Humpy Hollow/Shipwreck/Mukilteo or even out front/in the Snohomish. They could also very well be in the same spot, all I'm saying, is these fish can move a lot within a few days.

There's the old saying among fisherman, "You should have been here yesterday" and this applies 100% to salmon in the Puget Sound. Sometimes if you wait around for reports you'll be a day or two late and the fish will have moved on. So who knows where to find them come this weekend..

If you just look at a map you can visualize where the salmon are coming from. I've never seen any point in joining the crowds at Humpy Hollow when you can fish the many areas that are just to the west of it (ie midway in channel between south whidbey/shipwreck, possession, scatchet head) that are the exact routes that the Pinks must take to get to Humpy Hollow and ultimately the Snohomish. There are many people who don't really know what there doing so they just fish around the other boats because they assume that everyone else knows what they are doing. Sometimes you get these huge clusters of boats who for whatever reason feel secure about fishing around all the other boats. Fish where the fish are, not where the boats are. Sometimes the other boats are on the fish, and many times they aren't.

[BARCHASER]

If you want to know where stuff is without buying a chart, here is a real handy website.

http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer ... able.shtml

Specifically, here is the chart of northern Puget Sound. Just center the cursor over the area you want to see, left click to enlarge, left click again to enlarge still more. Just hold down the left click and you can move the chart around to where you want it. In this case first center the cursor at about Pt No Pt.

Easy to use.

http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/18441.shtml

Matt, tomorrow, I'll be trying pnp to Norwegian first and then Pilot. I might saunter over to Pink country, after we catch our limit of Chinooks of course, but my arm may be too tired!

[Matt]

Nice post, Jeff. Very informative.

I will let you all know I was out there today again fishing kings and the pinks are still in there as thick as ever. Boats around us were doubling and tripling up, and had fish on constantly. We fished plugs down deep to about 220 ft of cable looking for those stray kings. We actually doubled up on kings one at 150 on a kingfisher light Irish Cream spoon and the other on a 600 series Tomic down 195 ft. Biggest was 21, smallest 10 and we landed both. If you do go out there and fish for pinks, I would highly recommend running one rod 145 ft or deeper with a spoon or a tomic plug. There are kings still in the area to be picked off and this is the last weekend for them!

[Dave]

After talking to my buddy and WALakes.com member fetchitup7 it sounds like the pinks are also at the shipwreck in high numbers where he and his buddy limited with little effort on Wednesday morning. He also said there were 150 to 200 boats spread out in the Hollow that day and nets were in the water all morning long.

So I will be out there tomorrow morning and Saturday morning and hope to see quick limits. In a PM Mike pointed out that the 2009 reports for pinks indicated it was right about this time last pink season that the pink fishing at the Hollow got red hot and I do remember it very well. Hopefully the rain will stay away for a week or so while the pinks stack up but if they aren't at the Hollow in big numbers I wil surely go to Scatchet head.

Thanks Matt. I appreciate your expertise and willingness to share the wealth. You Da Man!!!

On a side note: I notice very few salt reports and I'm sure many of the hundreds of fishermen and women out there in the Sound are WAlakes.com members. Just a polite request (I'm sure Mike would agree) to please post a fishing report after you fish, it's what makes this site so valuable and so great. Thanks everyone.

Good luck out there!

[Matt]

Well, since I have been fishing for DFW on the test fishing program I have been fishing 5 days a week in the sound, but did not post reports in the reports section because it is more of a professional position rather than personal activity. I have been communicating with several WAlakes members throughout my time with the state though and trying to keep things up to date. For the most part, about 90% of the time, I definitely post a report for any of my outings in my time on my boat.

[Mike Carey]

I am getting really pumped for this Saturday!

First sockeye and now pinks, heck of a summer for salmon fishing in Western Washington.

[Matt]

Mike, we have caught 2 ocean coho about 9 lbs each this week and 2 kings a day onaverage so you never know what you might get out there right now! Hope you guys do well.

[EAmon___hoffman123]

Were going out on sat and sunday so i will post a report.

[Mike Carey]

Were going out on sat and sunday so i will post a report.

cool! Let's see a flood of 8.2 fishing reports this weekend!

thanks Matt, it will be hard to sleep tonight.

[wolverine]

Should be a lot of them stacking at the bar as wave after wave of them have been coming down the west side of Whidby all week. my smoker, Foodsaver, and pressure cooker have been getting a workout this week. Still have 8 bucks to process this weekend. The goal is 100 pints of lightly smoked canned salmon. Should get there by Labor Day and then switch over to silvers.

[A9]

Should be a lot of them stacking at the bar as wave after wave of them have been coming down the west side of Whidby all week. my smoker, Foodsaver, and pressure cooker have been getting a workout this week. Still have 8 bucks to process this weekend. The goal is 100 pints of lightly smoked canned salmon. Should get there by Labor Day and then switch over to silvers.

There's thousands of them cruising by the west side of the island right now.

We fished point no point today and were finding them all over the water column while targeting kings. Also found a few willing silvers to bite, including a nice 10+ buck and a few nice kings that are still milling around.

[BARCHASER]

Got a 15 pound wild Chinook yesterday at Pilot Pt but no keepers. Fished westside Possession from 11- 1 or so, pick up four Pinks for two of us. One of my Scotty Electrics broke, brake wont work, dropped it off at Johns in Everett for repait and new cable (actually I'm going to try the braid). The DR is 5 yo, so prob just wear. Since one my DRs is out, think I'll try the lower Sno around Lowell on Monday, get a few Pinks on jigs, trout gear maybe my fly rod even. Prob C&R since I dont need the meat.

Sounds like I should have done some mooching at pnp but I didnt bring any herring!

[Mike Carey]

couldn't bring myself to leave HUmpy Hollow, it was pretty good fishing there this morning.

[A9]

We were fishing for kings and it was tough to keep the pinks off our gear this morning. Might have released 9 or 10. No kings but found a nice school of coho that gave us a double header. Back at it in the morning

[EAmon___hoffman123]

im going back out in the afternoon. we managed to stay at shipwreck#-o last night. will try skatchet Head bouy#-o