A lot of discussion a on where are the hatchery fish so I did a C&P on that subject. Pay attention to the Bingham numbers for the rack returns as right now for this time of year Bingham is 600% more than last year. One last time, it RAINED EARLY not once but several times and nothing good comes from that.


You got the movement down. The hatchery Coho shot above the cut off lines for fishing and parked as it only takes a day on a small rise to get them above the Springs on the Satsop let alone blow out three times. Also the Skook Mit Coho are late returning as a portion of Bingham’s. So while the hatchery % looks OK on paper nearly half do not come back Sept through October but rather mid Nov through Dec. So again if it rains early let alone three times before the end of the first week of Oct the fish will move up rapidly and stage up out of the areas open for fishing. Those that stay lower simply stage go to hiding non biting mode which is how you get red fish mainstream.

The movements of Chinook were huge but moved up with the rain before the QIN landed on them but they still got a bunch. Coho seemed to be moving in school’s that were here one day gone the next. If you found a bunch of Coho they were sea lice & scales not set which translated means right out of the ocean and high speed nose down moving rapidly upstream and except for South Elma where they would stop for a bit but mostly ran right by Recs in a day. There was a two week window on the Satsop that those knowing the movement got into Coho when they slowed down but the rain took them above the fishing boundaries. Early rains like this year are not any help to any terminal fisher.

One final thing. Last year this time Bingham had 1700 Coho this year 5700 with 5000 jacks. At the end of Nov. 2020 Bingham had 6788 adult Coho and 3682 jacks. Not sure I want to take up a bet on run size for Coho but it is as he said because it rained early.

Hope this helps compare apples to apples.