My son Matt, my friend Brad, and I hit the water to try for the winter blackmouth. We launched out of Edmonds for the quick run across the Sound. Started fishing about 7:45am. We focused on the bottom 20 feet, with the deep downrigger just off bottom and the next rig 10 feet up from that. Rigs were hoochie/flasher and herring strips. We also ran one rod with a whole herring/dodger at 40-50 feet to target chums.

The first fish hit within minutes of dropping our gear. Unfortunately it was a LDR by Brad. Within 10 minutes I hit a nice 26" blackmouth in 100 feet of water. The morning was shaping up pretty hot! Another couple LDRs and the action began to die off at 9:30am. I did see several other boats with nets up. I was also surprised to see a pretty good number of boats out today. At 10:30 the wind was beginning to bounce the boat around, and Matt was getting that green-gill look. So we moved back to the Edmonds side and fished for another hour, ending the day at noon. We had two quick hits and misses in 120-140 feet of water. So one fish and about 6 misses. Not very good stats but that one fish was sure sweet.

WDFW checker reported six boats in with each boat having one blackmouth.

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