Stalk The Nervous Water
Why Beach Casting and Car-Top Fishing For Salmon
is Taking Off in Puget Sound
By Terry W. Sheely
Perched like stalking herons, the four of us stand in two small boats and drift the tide line a few yards into the water from the graveled beach of a western shoreline somewhere in south Puget Sound.
Two to a boat, we stare at bottom pebbles and broken clam shells through polarized glasses, clutching rods already rigged, hoping to see a flash of fish, but watching for a trembling twitter that may barely quiver the surface. It will be a vague almost indefinable agitation that ruffles the reflected mirror so lightly that it might easily be mistaken for a zephyr.
Nervous water.
That’s what the fly guys call it.
More precisely, nervous water is surface film that appears to vibrate with tiny nervous disruptions produced by the powerful tail surges and swirling strikes of wild game fish on the hunt, predatory beach cruising sea-run cutthroat trout and irascible resident chinook and coho salmon slashing into food with a speed and energy that stirs the surface with their mayhem.
These aggressive beach-prowling salmon and trout are the basal ingredient of one of the hottest new sport-fishing flings in the Northwest —stalking shallow saltwater edges and bays inWashington’s wind-protected inland reaches. Puget Sound, Hood Canal, and select beaches in the central and north Sound are attracting a growing cadre of wading and car-top anglers, drawn by shallow-water opportunity to tangle with sea-run cutthroat and immature resident coho and chinook salmon that can vary from 12 inches to omygawd!
Dean dips the oars and we slide a little further along the beach, gliding over water just deep enough that we can almost make out the bottom. Two strokes and we glide, watching for something to stalk.
Although an occasional 22-inch blackmouth or fat resident coho is whacked and packed off for the barbee, the beach fishery is evolving largely as catch-and-release; deportment partly motivated by conservation concerns but mostly by extenuation of a heavy-handed statewide ban on killing sea-run cutthroat trout which are one of the primary species available to beach anglers.
Beach fanatics from other ocean-front areas of the country find it odd that until the last handful of years beach fishing opportunities were, with specific exceptions, virtually ignored by Pugetropolis salmon anglers. Since gut leaders and cedar rowboats, it’s been tradition for Puget Sound salmon seekers to confine their searches for winter blackmouth and summer-fall migrants to salt water offshore from the first deep water break line over a bottom rarely less than 100 feet down. Kickers and moochers, trollers and meat liners cutting back and forth obliviously just beyond a major feeding area—the beach zone.
Beach banging enlightenment began to lightly nose into Puget Sound salmon circles a few decades ago credited at least partly to several nearly simultaneous events.
The main attraction was a resurgence of beach-prowling sea-run cutthroat, the recovered success of a statewide conservation program with the teeth of a catch-and-kill ban. Sea-runs are beach fish, and they attract fly and light conventional tackle fishermen to pea gravel and steamer clam water rarely visited by saltwater fishermen.
About that time the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) beefed up its public pier program, acquiring and building a series of public fishing structures along the shore and in some areas adding artificial reefs to attract salmon and bottomfish. With the pier program came net pen releases to ramp up resident coho numbers and provide aggressive feeder fish for pier lobbers to catch. On top of the resident coho binge were well-intended, fully funded but under developed enhancement flurries directed at beefing up resident blackmouth numbers.
Startled sea-run anglers suddenly started getting their tackle twisted by coho and immature blackmouth feeder salmon that were mixed among the hunting cutthroat also following baitfish into the shallow beach zones.
Land-tethered fishermen frequently had their 6-weight cutthroat stickers and planter-trout spinning rods tortured by salmon with shoulders—usually resident coho, but infrequently too by blackmouth chinook and in-season- adult spawners migrating up the shoreline. The piers, with lighted walkways, fish cleaning tables, benches and rod-holder railings, became magnets for anglers with oversized reel spools hurling Buzz Bombs, Stingsildas, Point Wilson Darts and bobber-rigged herring. And they caught fish—consistently—mostly salmon. Blackmouth chinook and resident coho from Thanksgiving through winter; and shore-tracking ocean spawners migrating down-Sound in summer and early fall.
Adventurous anglers grabbed long rods pulled on chest waders and went exploring, looking for stretches of public beach to walk or shallow shorelines where rowboats and small kickers can be carried to the water.
Prominent peninsulas like Point No Point, Bush, Lagoon, Wilson, Defiance and narrow passes like Deception were soon joined by new beach hot spots: Kayak Point, RichmondBeach, West Point, Alki Point, Sinclair Inlet, Redondo, Dash Point, Fox Island, Agate, Hale,Pickering and Pitt Passes, Point Evans, Hammersley and Totten inlets. Every year, it seems, the number of productive beaches climbs.
More hot spots have developed in Hood Canal where sea-runs had long been a favorite of beach-casting fly rodders and small boat trollers. The Canal fishery is boosted by ever-tightening salmon restrictions that have closed most rivers to salmon fishing, but allowed anglers to work the shallow estuaries and saltwater near the river mouths where salmon congregate and acclimate before transitioning to sweet water.
The heart of beach fishing is pounding loudest in central and south Puget Sound and Hood Canal with somewhat
lesser flutterings in the dozens of irregularly-shaped bays and sounds on Camano and eastern Whidbey islands, and even the tapered beaches along the south shore of Juan de Fuca Strait.
Ahead of us, half-a-football field away, the heron in the bow suddenly bends at the waist, stares intently, cocks his arm and rifles a cast. Thirty feet off the bow and parallel with the shoreline there’s the splash of a cannonball split shot and a tiny half—and-half trolling spoon sweetened with an inch strip of herring sidemeat.
The protected shorelines inside Puget Sound appears to have been deliberately sculpted to fit fly and light conventional tackle anglers. Miles of shorelines taper gradually into deep water, creating low-tide beaches fertile with worms and crabs, and shattered clams that attract baitfish and in turn predatory game fish followed by anglers adrift in small boats or wading and casting. The biggest problem is beach access, but where
trespass violates beach rights, isolated water for small boats is created. Single seat pontoons, 10 foot prams, 12-foot outboards are now common sights along beaches tucked in out of the wind.
And while sight-fishing for Nervous Water is by no stretch a tactic necessary to the sport the stalk does elevate the game from the unpredictable surprise tug of blind prospecting to the high tension suspense of stealth and hunt.
It’s light tackle, shallow water suspense which is reason enough to haunt the graveled edges of every significant pea-gravel clam beach from Carr Inlet to Skagit Bay.
The heron sets the hook. His spinning rod, a 7-foot stick better suited for Sammamish smallmouth or American Lake trout, doubles over and bucks. There’s a surface splatter and suddenly a fish is in the air, backlit in the morning light and crashing hard.
Sea-going cutthroat trout now push the scales to four and five pounds at regular intervals and the resident salmon come in packages from one to 12 pounds. It’s a dynamic one-two fishery where you never quite know what you’re teasing or how badly it’s likely to beat up your excuses.
Part of the attraction of beach fishing is the simplicity of gear.
A six-weight fly rod, salt water rated single action reel loaded with sink tip, full-sink or intermediate line, long leader tapering to a 2X fluorocarbon tippet and a thinly-dressed streamer—alevin, smolt, herring, candlefish pattern. Shrimp flies are popular in the south Sound and there are times when dry patterns—bushy caddis, hopper, and noisy popper-styles--dropped into rise rings will bring slashing strikes from cutthroat. While dry fly trout fishing in salt water is a tantalizing challenge, the opportunities are unreasonably rare and not to be counted upon.
The most consistent success always falls to the wet fly, which imitates 99 percent of the food base while also appealing to the always-prowling salmon that may be in the same water as cutthroat.
Most conventional gear includes spinning tackle, spooled with 8 to 10 pound test mainlines, on 7 to 10 foot rods (longer rods cast lighter weights further) and either cast or troll. One-quarter ounce spinners are trout size and productive, but take a back seat to thin-blade spoons like Dick Nites, McMahon’s, Point Defiance, Triple Teazers, and Needlefish. A large Muddler fly or rabbit hair leech also makes a devastating spinning rod offering when tied a foot or so behind a couple of cannonball split shot for casting weight.
I’ve scored best, though,—especially on sea-runs, coho and small blackmouth, with a Colorado style spinner blade on a rotating clevis tied into a 2-inch chunk of monofilament that’s connected to a single 1/0 Siwash hook. A tough sliver of salted herring side meat, with scales intact, is pinned to the hook. It’s a versatile rig that can be lob cast and retrieved or slowly trolled through the shallows, rising and falling, slithering and darting.
The heron does a little dance to the stern and back with his wand of a rod poked into the water. Something blows through the surface in a cartwheel of spray. Eventually the heron reaches down, shakes the hook and stands up.“Coho. Maybe three pounds,” he shouts. “There’s a bunch in here!” Dean pulls hard on the oars.
Both trout and salmon prefer gravel beaches that taper gradually toward deep. Both species are also almost always found hunting along the blue-green edge where the bottom disappears from sight. Expert sea-run hunters position their boats on the seam at the place where the bottom fades from gravel to water. The contour line that marks the end of bottom visibility and parallels the shoreline marks a magic zone for feeding trout and salmon.
Because the schools are small and constantly on the move the most effective technique is to locating fish by trolling then switching to cast and retrieve presentations, usually retrieving in short bursts that impart a jump and dart feeding/fleeing minnow action.
Incoming tides predictably out produce ebbs, bringing fish uphill feeding on bottom stirrings of small worms and eels and minnows that push ahead of them.
Minnow and shrimp fly patterns (there are dozens that work) are tied primarily on No. 4 hooks, although it’s not unusual to find venerable sea-run chasers going up to No. 2 and down to No. 8 depending on the size of the dominate bait fish.
While growth of Puget Sound beach fishing has been phenomenal, it’s still one of the loneliest pursuits in the Northwest. The popularity of salmon fishing from or on the beach could be multiplied by 10 and would still rate as one of the great uncrowdeds.
Sea-run trout and salmon can be anywhere with good shoreline habitat, scattering anglers over a vast area of inland saltwater.
I’ve chased sea-runs down the walls of Hood Canal, drifted and cast from small boats around the islands of the South Sound, experimented with them in Clayoquot Sound onVancouver Island, and enjoyed their convenience in downtown Pugetropolis, sometimes within sight of Seattle skyscrapers.
If there are crowds in this sport they will be near the cities in saltwater parks and points: Kayak, Picnic, Meadow, West, Alki and Dash Points are points in case.
Other top Puget Sound spots would have to include the edges of Bainbridge Island, Camano Island, east side of Whidbey Island, Skagit Bay, Port Orchard, Manchester, Dabob Bay, Hoodsport, both sides of Hood Canal from top to bottom, Carr Inlet, Fox Island, Hale Pass, Wollochet, Budd Inlet, Sinclair Inlet, Dyes Inlet, both sides of the Tacoma Narrows and nearly every piece of gravel beach south of Vashon Island.
In recent years it has actually become tougher to find a tapered beach without sea-runs and resident salmon than it is to find one with fishable concentrations. Every fly shop in cities on the edge of Puget Sound are keyed into this fast-growing fishery and conventional tackle stores are catching on. Both can offer critical where-when-how information, and some are able to recommend guides who specialize in chasing beachcombing trout and salmon.
Dean rows and I watch and while I watch I flip the herring-spinner behindthe boat, slip 60 feet of six-pound line off the reel and troll the wake. I spot a fin in the surface several yards off the bow, when the rod goes down in the stern and snaps me around.
Investing an hour or two of an afternoon to lean on the counter at good tackle shop, fly or conventional, will cut years off the learning curve and likely put you into fish from the first day out.
Two books I recommend for any serious saltwater fly chaser are published by
Frank Amato Books
(www.amatobooks.com) out of Portland.
Fly Fishing Coastal Cutthroat Trout by
Les Johnson is an exhaustively comprehensive explanation of the flies, tackle, techniques and tactics. Johnson fell in love with sea-runs when other anglers were singularly infatuated with cutthroat and steelhead trout in freshwater and had abandoned the mysterious salt water to bait dunkers and gear haulers. While Johnson directs his work at fly fishermen, there is little in his lessons that don’t also apply to conventional tackle.
The rest of us are just catching up to where Les Johnson has been all this time.
Another compelling reference is Steve Raymond’s 1996 release, The Estuary Fly Fisher. While Johnson explores the full run of saltwater, Raymond concentrates on river mouths, a feasting place for trout and feeder salmon in spring and fall when the rivers dribble their delectable smolts into the open water. Tides, flies, tackle, tactics, and seasonal keys are explained in great detail by Raymond.
My fish shrugs hard, runs wide and digs for the bottom. Dean drops the oars reaches past the net, comes up with his own rod and rifles a rabbit hair leech streamer (purple and pink for God sake) and twin cannonball weights in the general direction of where the fin used to be.
The saltwater trout and salmon catch-and-release fishery is open year-round and most importantly is productive year-round. Salmon are more closely regulated and before you keep a fish for the smoker check the current regulations twice. Salmon restrictions in Puget Sound tend to get a little sticky.
Success of course comes with highs and lows, tied primarily to tides and the seasonal appearances of salmon fry or baitfish, but there’s never a day when there’s not a fish to be caught on a beach somewhere along the inland Puget Sound.
Standing in a small boat, balanced on flat water, with the whisper of wavelets tumbling into a gravel beach, Mount Rainier glowing in the distance, and the hack-sawed peaks of the Olympics chewing into the sky behind you, all the time watching for a quiver of nervous water to throw a skinny streamer at—is not a bad place to be.
Get the net Dean, this is a legal chinook—27 maybe 28 inches.
Get the net now!
“In a minute,” my partner mutters, “I’m hooked up too.”
I can hear the line whining off his reel before I turn around. Then I hear a lawn mower start up. We’re that close to Pugetropolis, hooked up and by ourselves-just four herons and a beach of feeding fish.
Tackle Box:
WHAT TO BRING:
Chest waders, polarized glasses, or a small boat that can be beach launched. Layers of clothes for winter fishing. Warm drinks always welcomed.
RODS, REELS AND LINES:
Medium to heavy trout weight spinning and fly rods. Fly rods: 6 wt., sink tip floating lines, 10-foot tapered leaders, 4X tippets. You may want to adjust to heavier weight forward lines because of the distance casting involved. Spinning: Heavy trout or light steelhead spinning reels with large diameter spools for distance casting. Six to 8 lb. test monofilament is standard but 10 to 12 lb. is insurance against a large salmon, especially during summer-fall migrations of spawners. Barbless hooks.
FLIES:
Bring the fly box. Everything from translucent alevins to raggedy monstrous bunny leeches will produce. Shrimp patterns are great for sea-run cutts and resident silvers, larger streamer patterns for blackmouth. Barbless hooks.Check with a local fly shop.
LURES:
Small, thin blade trolling spoons especially in half-and-half finishes like Dick Nite, McMahon, Point Defiance. Also ¼ oz. in-line spinners, especially for cuttrhoat and silvers. My favorite is a Colorado spinner ahead of a 1/0 hook that is sweetened with salted herring strip. Barbless hooks.
LICENSE.
Saltwater (annual) $16.26,
nonresident one to 5 day $7.50-$17.50.
TACKLE STORES:
Most major Puget Sound metro tackle shops like Kitsap Sports in Silverdale, Ted’s in Lynnwood, Sportco in Fife, have beach-fishing information and tackle. The latest and best info, I’ve found, though, comes from fly shops which in most areas around the Sound are leading the beach-fishing revolution.
GUIDEPOSTS:
GETTING THERE:
The inlets, points and beaches of South Puget Sound and Hood Canal are top spots, but public beach areas in Seattle and north up to Camano and Whidbey Islands are gaining popularity.
GUIDE:
Sound Fly Fishing,
Ben Zander,
206-940-3020
[email protected]
www.soundflyfishing.com
LODGING:
This is Pugetropolis—lodging and accommodations are everywhere.
REGULATIONS:
Most beaches are open year-round for sea-run cutthroat and silvers with catch-and-release opportunities for resident blackmouth. The daily bag limit for sea-run cutts is zero. Up to 2 coho of any size are allowed, and when open chinook, including blackmouth, must be at least 22 inches to eat. Much of this fishery is catch-and-release.
WHEN:
Year-round, but late spring and early winter offer the best chances to hook a mixed bag of sea-runs, silvers and
blackmouth.
Perched like stalking herons, the four of us stand in two small boats and drift the tide line a few yards into the water from the graveled beach of a western shoreline somewhere in south Puget Sound.
Two to a boat, we stare at bottom pebbles and broken clam shells through polarized glasses, clutching rods already rigged, hoping to see a flash of fish, but watching for a trembling twitter that may barely quiver the surface. It will be a vague almost indefinable agitation that ruffles the reflected mirror so lightly that it might easily be mistaken for a zephyr.
Nervous water.
That’s what the fly guys call it.
More precisely, nervous water is surface film that appears to vibrate with tiny nervous disruptions produced by the powerful tail surges and swirling strikes of wild game fish on the hunt, predatory beach cruising sea-run cutthroat trout and irascible resident chinook and coho salmon slashing into food with a speed and energy that stirs the surface with their mayhem.
These aggressive beach-prowling salmon and trout are the basal ingredient of one of the hottest new sport-fishing flings in the Northwest —stalking shallow saltwater edges and bays inWashington’s wind-protected inland reaches. Puget Sound, Hood Canal, and select beaches in the central and north Sound are attracting a growing cadre of wading and car-top anglers, drawn by shallow-water opportunity to tangle with sea-run cutthroat and immature resident coho and chinook salmon that can vary from 12 inches to omygawd!
Dean dips the oars and we slide a little further along the beach, gliding over water just deep enough that we can almost make out the bottom. Two strokes and we glide, watching for something to stalk.
Although an occasional 22-inch blackmouth or fat resident coho is whacked and packed off for the barbee, the beach fishery is evolving largely as catch-and-release; deportment partly motivated by conservation concerns but mostly by extenuation of a heavy-handed statewide ban on killing sea-run cutthroat trout which are one of the primary species available to beach anglers.
Beach fanatics from other ocean-front areas of the country find it odd that until the last handful of years beach fishing opportunities were, with specific exceptions, virtually ignored by Pugetropolis salmon anglers. Since gut leaders and cedar rowboats, it’s been tradition for Puget Sound salmon seekers to confine their searches for winter blackmouth and summer-fall migrants to salt water offshore from the first deep water break line over a bottom rarely less than 100 feet down. Kickers and moochers, trollers and meat liners cutting back and forth obliviously just beyond a major feeding area—the beach zone.
Beach banging enlightenment began to lightly nose into Puget Sound salmon circles a few decades ago credited at least partly to several nearly simultaneous events.
The main attraction was a resurgence of beach-prowling sea-run cutthroat, the recovered success of a statewide conservation program with the teeth of a catch-and-kill ban. Sea-runs are beach fish, and they attract fly and light conventional tackle fishermen to pea gravel and steamer clam water rarely visited by saltwater fishermen.
About that time the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) beefed up its public pier program, acquiring and building a series of public fishing structures along the shore and in some areas adding artificial reefs to attract salmon and bottomfish. With the pier program came net pen releases to ramp up resident coho numbers and provide aggressive feeder fish for pier lobbers to catch. On top of the resident coho binge were well-intended, fully funded but under developed enhancement flurries directed at beefing up resident blackmouth numbers.
Startled sea-run anglers suddenly started getting their tackle twisted by coho and immature blackmouth feeder salmon that were mixed among the hunting cutthroat also following baitfish into the shallow beach zones.
Land-tethered fishermen frequently had their 6-weight cutthroat stickers and planter-trout spinning rods tortured by salmon with shoulders—usually resident coho, but infrequently too by blackmouth chinook and in-season- adult spawners migrating up the shoreline. The piers, with lighted walkways, fish cleaning tables, benches and rod-holder railings, became magnets for anglers with oversized reel spools hurling Buzz Bombs, Stingsildas, Point Wilson Darts and bobber-rigged herring. And they caught fish—consistently—mostly salmon. Blackmouth chinook and resident coho from Thanksgiving through winter; and shore-tracking ocean spawners migrating down-Sound in summer and early fall.
Adventurous anglers grabbed long rods pulled on chest waders and went exploring, looking for stretches of public beach to walk or shallow shorelines where rowboats and small kickers can be carried to the water.
Prominent peninsulas like Point No Point, Bush, Lagoon, Wilson, Defiance and narrow passes like Deception were soon joined by new beach hot spots: Kayak Point, RichmondBeach, West Point, Alki Point, Sinclair Inlet, Redondo, Dash Point, Fox Island, Agate, Hale,Pickering and Pitt Passes, Point Evans, Hammersley and Totten inlets. Every year, it seems, the number of productive beaches climbs.
More hot spots have developed in Hood Canal where sea-runs had long been a favorite of beach-casting fly rodders and small boat trollers. The Canal fishery is boosted by ever-tightening salmon restrictions that have closed most rivers to salmon fishing, but allowed anglers to work the shallow estuaries and saltwater near the river mouths where salmon congregate and acclimate before transitioning to sweet water.
The heart of beach fishing is pounding loudest in central and south Puget Sound and Hood Canal with somewhat
lesser flutterings in the dozens of irregularly-shaped bays and sounds on Camano and eastern Whidbey islands, and even the tapered beaches along the south shore of Juan de Fuca Strait.
Ahead of us, half-a-football field away, the heron in the bow suddenly bends at the waist, stares intently, cocks his arm and rifles a cast. Thirty feet off the bow and parallel with the shoreline there’s the splash of a cannonball split shot and a tiny half—and-half trolling spoon sweetened with an inch strip of herring sidemeat.
The protected shorelines inside Puget Sound appears to have been deliberately sculpted to fit fly and light conventional tackle anglers. Miles of shorelines taper gradually into deep water, creating low-tide beaches fertile with worms and crabs, and shattered clams that attract baitfish and in turn predatory game fish followed by anglers adrift in small boats or wading and casting. The biggest problem is beach access, but where
trespass violates beach rights, isolated water for small boats is created. Single seat pontoons, 10 foot prams, 12-foot outboards are now common sights along beaches tucked in out of the wind.
And while sight-fishing for Nervous Water is by no stretch a tactic necessary to the sport the stalk does elevate the game from the unpredictable surprise tug of blind prospecting to the high tension suspense of stealth and hunt.
It’s light tackle, shallow water suspense which is reason enough to haunt the graveled edges of every significant pea-gravel clam beach from Carr Inlet to Skagit Bay.
The heron sets the hook. His spinning rod, a 7-foot stick better suited for Sammamish smallmouth or American Lake trout, doubles over and bucks. There’s a surface splatter and suddenly a fish is in the air, backlit in the morning light and crashing hard.
Sea-going cutthroat trout now push the scales to four and five pounds at regular intervals and the resident salmon come in packages from one to 12 pounds. It’s a dynamic one-two fishery where you never quite know what you’re teasing or how badly it’s likely to beat up your excuses.
Part of the attraction of beach fishing is the simplicity of gear.
A six-weight fly rod, salt water rated single action reel loaded with sink tip, full-sink or intermediate line, long leader tapering to a 2X fluorocarbon tippet and a thinly-dressed streamer—alevin, smolt, herring, candlefish pattern. Shrimp flies are popular in the south Sound and there are times when dry patterns—bushy caddis, hopper, and noisy popper-styles--dropped into rise rings will bring slashing strikes from cutthroat. While dry fly trout fishing in salt water is a tantalizing challenge, the opportunities are unreasonably rare and not to be counted upon.
The most consistent success always falls to the wet fly, which imitates 99 percent of the food base while also appealing to the always-prowling salmon that may be in the same water as cutthroat.
Most conventional gear includes spinning tackle, spooled with 8 to 10 pound test mainlines, on 7 to 10 foot rods (longer rods cast lighter weights further) and either cast or troll. One-quarter ounce spinners are trout size and productive, but take a back seat to thin-blade spoons like Dick Nites, McMahon’s, Point Defiance, Triple Teazers, and Needlefish. A large Muddler fly or rabbit hair leech also makes a devastating spinning rod offering when tied a foot or so behind a couple of cannonball split shot for casting weight.
I’ve scored best, though,—especially on sea-runs, coho and small blackmouth, with a Colorado style spinner blade on a rotating clevis tied into a 2-inch chunk of monofilament that’s connected to a single 1/0 Siwash hook. A tough sliver of salted herring side meat, with scales intact, is pinned to the hook. It’s a versatile rig that can be lob cast and retrieved or slowly trolled through the shallows, rising and falling, slithering and darting.
The heron does a little dance to the stern and back with his wand of a rod poked into the water. Something blows through the surface in a cartwheel of spray. Eventually the heron reaches down, shakes the hook and stands up.“Coho. Maybe three pounds,” he shouts. “There’s a bunch in here!” Dean pulls hard on the oars.
Both trout and salmon prefer gravel beaches that taper gradually toward deep. Both species are also almost always found hunting along the blue-green edge where the bottom disappears from sight. Expert sea-run hunters position their boats on the seam at the place where the bottom fades from gravel to water. The contour line that marks the end of bottom visibility and parallels the shoreline marks a magic zone for feeding trout and salmon.
Because the schools are small and constantly on the move the most effective technique is to locating fish by trolling then switching to cast and retrieve presentations, usually retrieving in short bursts that impart a jump and dart feeding/fleeing minnow action.
Incoming tides predictably out produce ebbs, bringing fish uphill feeding on bottom stirrings of small worms and eels and minnows that push ahead of them.
Minnow and shrimp fly patterns (there are dozens that work) are tied primarily on No. 4 hooks, although it’s not unusual to find venerable sea-run chasers going up to No. 2 and down to No. 8 depending on the size of the dominate bait fish.
While growth of Puget Sound beach fishing has been phenomenal, it’s still one of the loneliest pursuits in the Northwest. The popularity of salmon fishing from or on the beach could be multiplied by 10 and would still rate as one of the great uncrowdeds.
Sea-run trout and salmon can be anywhere with good shoreline habitat, scattering anglers over a vast area of inland saltwater.
I’ve chased sea-runs down the walls of Hood Canal, drifted and cast from small boats around the islands of the South Sound, experimented with them in Clayoquot Sound onVancouver Island, and enjoyed their convenience in downtown Pugetropolis, sometimes within sight of Seattle skyscrapers.
If there are crowds in this sport they will be near the cities in saltwater parks and points: Kayak, Picnic, Meadow, West, Alki and Dash Points are points in case.
Other top Puget Sound spots would have to include the edges of Bainbridge Island, Camano Island, east side of Whidbey Island, Skagit Bay, Port Orchard, Manchester, Dabob Bay, Hoodsport, both sides of Hood Canal from top to bottom, Carr Inlet, Fox Island, Hale Pass, Wollochet, Budd Inlet, Sinclair Inlet, Dyes Inlet, both sides of the Tacoma Narrows and nearly every piece of gravel beach south of Vashon Island.
In recent years it has actually become tougher to find a tapered beach without sea-runs and resident salmon than it is to find one with fishable concentrations. Every fly shop in cities on the edge of Puget Sound are keyed into this fast-growing fishery and conventional tackle stores are catching on. Both can offer critical where-when-how information, and some are able to recommend guides who specialize in chasing beachcombing trout and salmon.
Dean rows and I watch and while I watch I flip the herring-spinner behindthe boat, slip 60 feet of six-pound line off the reel and troll the wake. I spot a fin in the surface several yards off the bow, when the rod goes down in the stern and snaps me around.
Investing an hour or two of an afternoon to lean on the counter at good tackle shop, fly or conventional, will cut years off the learning curve and likely put you into fish from the first day out.
Two books I recommend for any serious saltwater fly chaser are published by
Frank Amato Books
(www.amatobooks.com) out of Portland.
Fly Fishing Coastal Cutthroat Trout by
Les Johnson is an exhaustively comprehensive explanation of the flies, tackle, techniques and tactics. Johnson fell in love with sea-runs when other anglers were singularly infatuated with cutthroat and steelhead trout in freshwater and had abandoned the mysterious salt water to bait dunkers and gear haulers. While Johnson directs his work at fly fishermen, there is little in his lessons that don’t also apply to conventional tackle.
The rest of us are just catching up to where Les Johnson has been all this time.
Another compelling reference is Steve Raymond’s 1996 release, The Estuary Fly Fisher. While Johnson explores the full run of saltwater, Raymond concentrates on river mouths, a feasting place for trout and feeder salmon in spring and fall when the rivers dribble their delectable smolts into the open water. Tides, flies, tackle, tactics, and seasonal keys are explained in great detail by Raymond.
My fish shrugs hard, runs wide and digs for the bottom. Dean drops the oars reaches past the net, comes up with his own rod and rifles a rabbit hair leech streamer (purple and pink for God sake) and twin cannonball weights in the general direction of where the fin used to be.
The saltwater trout and salmon catch-and-release fishery is open year-round and most importantly is productive year-round. Salmon are more closely regulated and before you keep a fish for the smoker check the current regulations twice. Salmon restrictions in Puget Sound tend to get a little sticky.
Success of course comes with highs and lows, tied primarily to tides and the seasonal appearances of salmon fry or baitfish, but there’s never a day when there’s not a fish to be caught on a beach somewhere along the inland Puget Sound.
Standing in a small boat, balanced on flat water, with the whisper of wavelets tumbling into a gravel beach, Mount Rainier glowing in the distance, and the hack-sawed peaks of the Olympics chewing into the sky behind you, all the time watching for a quiver of nervous water to throw a skinny streamer at—is not a bad place to be.
Get the net Dean, this is a legal chinook—27 maybe 28 inches.
Get the net now!
“In a minute,” my partner mutters, “I’m hooked up too.”
I can hear the line whining off his reel before I turn around. Then I hear a lawn mower start up. We’re that close to Pugetropolis, hooked up and by ourselves-just four herons and a beach of feeding fish.
Tackle Box:
WHAT TO BRING:
Chest waders, polarized glasses, or a small boat that can be beach launched. Layers of clothes for winter fishing. Warm drinks always welcomed.
RODS, REELS AND LINES:
Medium to heavy trout weight spinning and fly rods. Fly rods: 6 wt., sink tip floating lines, 10-foot tapered leaders, 4X tippets. You may want to adjust to heavier weight forward lines because of the distance casting involved. Spinning: Heavy trout or light steelhead spinning reels with large diameter spools for distance casting. Six to 8 lb. test monofilament is standard but 10 to 12 lb. is insurance against a large salmon, especially during summer-fall migrations of spawners. Barbless hooks.
FLIES:
Bring the fly box. Everything from translucent alevins to raggedy monstrous bunny leeches will produce. Shrimp patterns are great for sea-run cutts and resident silvers, larger streamer patterns for blackmouth. Barbless hooks.Check with a local fly shop.
LURES:
Small, thin blade trolling spoons especially in half-and-half finishes like Dick Nite, McMahon, Point Defiance. Also ¼ oz. in-line spinners, especially for cuttrhoat and silvers. My favorite is a Colorado spinner ahead of a 1/0 hook that is sweetened with salted herring strip. Barbless hooks.
LICENSE.
Saltwater (annual) $16.26,
nonresident one to 5 day $7.50-$17.50.
TACKLE STORES:
Most major Puget Sound metro tackle shops like Kitsap Sports in Silverdale, Ted’s in Lynnwood, Sportco in Fife, have beach-fishing information and tackle. The latest and best info, I’ve found, though, comes from fly shops which in most areas around the Sound are leading the beach-fishing revolution.
GUIDEPOSTS:
GETTING THERE:
The inlets, points and beaches of South Puget Sound and Hood Canal are top spots, but public beach areas in Seattle and north up to Camano and Whidbey Islands are gaining popularity.
GUIDE:
Sound Fly Fishing,
Ben Zander,
206-940-3020
[email protected]
www.soundflyfishing.com
LODGING:
This is Pugetropolis—lodging and accommodations are everywhere.
REGULATIONS:
Most beaches are open year-round for sea-run cutthroat and silvers with catch-and-release opportunities for resident blackmouth. The daily bag limit for sea-run cutts is zero. Up to 2 coho of any size are allowed, and when open chinook, including blackmouth, must be at least 22 inches to eat. Much of this fishery is catch-and-release.
WHEN:
Year-round, but late spring and early winter offer the best chances to hook a mixed bag of sea-runs, silvers and
blackmouth.
