10/01/2024

9/01/2024 - 9/15/2024, lot's of Coho jacks, not many Chinook jacks. Coho, small, hatchery were in good numbers BUT you had to release them....WDFW must have had a plan, the river has been open for years on Coho September 1.

If the WDFW plan was to reduce impacts on Chinook, hooking mortality, they did good.......tough to have a mortality on Chehalis run size so small, that it could be called "non-existent". Time to shut down any fishery that targets Chehalis Chinook, hatchery or Wild.....

9/16 to current date......Many 4-6 pound Coho, skinny water jack fishery has been good, IF you have good eggs. Coho that I've seen, small 20+ inches but not many in the 9-10 pound range.

If you're a jet boater, low water can be a problem, more than a few boats have "filled the pump" with gravel.......

Agreed that small coho are very normal early, and I've seen a dandy or two as well, but I'm talking 3 pounders here. I would consider 5 pounds a relatively small adult.

On the other hand, I DID encounter some really big coho jacks in September (21-22 inches), so maybe some of those fish I've been seeing are just "turbo" jacks? One can hope.

But yeah... kings. I have seen good numbers return late (Oct.-Nov.) before, but even in those years, at least SOME were apparent in the Chehalis and lower tribs by Oct. 1.

Anyone else seen them? Obviously, we don't need to know where; just need to know you've seen them...

Haven't seen a single Chinook this year. I agree with the consensus up to this point regarding small coho and absent Chinook. Hopefully it'll turn around.

QIN pulled on schedule and the modeled fishery was 3100 plus coho and 600 plus chinook. I doubt that happened unless the drift nets in the bay cleaned house because the fishers above the 101 bridge most certainly did not. The next QIN set is 4 days starting Sunday at noon and will answer many of the questions we all have.

Sometimes you have to fish to know what's going on but I would feel much more confident if there was a series of weekly updates (regardless of r-Squared) to have an idea of what is happening. Not hard to do. Or wasn't forty years ago.

This.

I headed to the river after work today (Satsop), and I am no longer concerned about chinook. There were a LOT of kings, from chrome to black, flipping around. So many I couldn't help but catch a couple. That said, while there were some bright coho around (to include a few big ones), the numbers there weren't as good. Saw lots of kings caught (and thankfully released), and about half the people there got a keeper coho. Better than I expected to see, if not great.

Feeling a little better again, but I agree that next week's gillnet opener will be an important marker.

I really don’t like getting into this stuff but here goes. We lost above Fuller Hill because folks would not leave the Chinook alone. The problem with the Satsop is of similar circumstance. So ….. those are Summers staging up and the old rule was they reach the Springs by October 10th. Enforcement has been bitching for a couple of years about this problem with some fishers bothering Chinook and it needs to stop. You don’t accidentally catch staged up Chinook you have to target them. Years ago it was suggested to keep the river above the nursery bridge closed until flows increased. With the objections to the status quo from Enforcement growing from what I know it might happen. In fact the attitude and conduct of some fishers and the growing numbers might mandate it. Now that is sad.

Here is what I have for today. Had seals at the house and fish went right upstream with the incoming tide and then not much. I watched the NTs for a couple of hours this afternoon and only a couple fish a drift coming over the bow. Right with the nets were sealions up to five staying with each net. Several sealions picked off fish along the shore by the Log House on their own. Upriver was good fishing for some.

The thing I got out of this was we have fish moving but it appears the vast majority are in schools in tidewater. Above south Monte the pattern should look different but I have no idea. So today was the first break we have had in the numbers of fish moving at least seeing anyway. Hopefully this is the start of something good but always present for me is 111+ coho preseason forecast. This does not look like 111+ coho no matter how you look at it.

111+ got people to buy their license

And next year there will be bonus pinks....

Yee flipp’n Haa !

Finally some good salmon fishing news now forecast from our C man !

Can’t wait.

They will forecast lots of pinks. Not saying they will materialize, just that the forecast will spur license sales.

Well we have rain kinda sorta. Supposed to be around .87 in the Olympics side but upper basin will be lucky to get over half inch. Ten day forecast has 2 1/2 inches over 10 days but spread out after todays rain, in other words no gully washers. Doty is forecast to stay at record low flow territory. Most of the flows will only go up around 100 cfs then drop so a bump.

10 days out the flow predictions go right up but the forecast rain does not seem to match up. We will have to wait a bit to see what shakes out but around the 15th of the month the weather pattern we have had for some time will start to break down.

Seems like (more anecdotal wisdom from me, worth every penny you paid) the first few rains of the season (unless they are legit gully-washers) tend to get soaked up in large part by the summer-parched earth. Once the soil saturation increases, the rain starts washing down the valleys more quickly, which is what blows out the creeks, then the rivers. Hopefully, we'll reach that saturation point toward the end of next week (or, maybe that's what NOAA and the USGS are thinking). If the forecast holds (it won't ;-)), the light rain over a long period could mean healthy flows that are still green to clean (at least in the Lower basin).

Well, the tribs shot up all of 50 cfs with yesterday's rain. We gotta do better than that.

Did a little tour of the northern tribs this morning. First stop was promising; I was the first person there. As soon as I got to the river, I realized I had it to myself because there wasn't a single fish in it. No longer promising.

Stop 2 was about mid-river on a well-known trib, and it yielded the same results (no fish observed, and certainly none encountered). Stop 3 was further down on the same river, and a guide had his clients pounding the hole pretty hard (to no apparent avail), so I moved on. Stop 4 was down low on the same river. I saw one other angler get a very small coho (basically a jack), and I got a nice sea run cutthroat on a jig, but all I saw besides that was a bunch of dark kings rolling around.

Plenty of anglers at the last stop... so many I didn't bother to walk in and fish. We're talking over 100 bank anglers here, assuming each rig at the access point had 1.5 anglers in it. Considering the location, at least 50% of those anglers were likely flossers, and that number of flossers would shut down the best of bites on the best of days, so I left them to it. I'm sure some of those folks caught, but I guess I'll never know.

I think I'm done fishing on weekends until it rains... a lot. Even if we don't get a bunch of new fish, we need something to spread out the angling pressure.

Anybody here happen to stop by the lantern to see if they're in yet? I stopped by last weekend, nada.

That fishery has eluded me every time, so don't ask me. Cool place to go, though, and as a bonus, you could dig clams afterwards...

Okay had breakfast and looked at the Chehalis tribal netting and after daylight low outgoing salmon and sealions stacked up at the 101 bridge sealions got more than the fishers. This afternoon was much different and I watched three drifts not much but I did see one set net get 10. Sealions are still there but not doing much catching going on. So mixed bag but recs should benefit from the push with the tide. So again my bet is the coho run of 111k & change is not here yet!

Around the 14th and 15th we are supposed to get rain. It looks to be a several day event and flows are supposed go from 323 cfs to around 900 cfs on the Satsop which is a little below average for date time. The Chehalis side not so much with Porter going from around 350 cfs to around 700 cfs which is well below average.

Today not much around the bridge on outgoing but damn there are a lot of sealions and seals in tidewater, I mean a lot of the furry devils. Watched two drifts and one zero catch the next two fish.

Spent yesterday on the Lower Satsop with about 50 of my closest friends. Looks like a lot of the kings have moved on (a good thing), and there are a few silvers showing up, but predictably, with nets in the water, it was pretty slow. Managed one chromer buck and saw a few others caught. One guy showed up at the hole I was fishing and caught two really nice fish in about 10 minutes using a custom Wicked Lure in black and green. I tried several colors, but mine are all the crazy, bright colors we like in higher water, and the fish weren't having it. Low water... think small and sneaky.

And yes, rain would be great.