My Fiance and I fished the Edmonds Coho Derby this past Saturday and it was Awesome!! I've fished this derby only once before and it was miserable. Not so this time!! We decided to avoid the crowds at the Everett launch (up by where we live) and launch from Shilshole instead. Great decision as it turned out someone had an accident at the Everett launch which backed up the launch for quite some time. We were in the water by a little after 6 am and had our gear down in the shipping channel just off Richmond Beach about 6:30 am. At about 7 am, we had our first fish at the boat. It was a Coho about 7 pounds or so. I wanted to release it and go for bigger fish, however, the fish decided to put up a fuss and ended up bonking itself against the boat. It wasn't going to live, so we kept it. It's weight after cleaning and gilling was 5 pounds 4 oz. We had our 2nd Coho at the boat about 10 minutes later. About 7 or 8 pounds. I released this one safely and continued our search for the "monster". About 5 minutes later another Coho to the boat, this one might be about 9 or so, but nontheless, I released it. Probably should've kept that one for Ann, but didn't think about that until it was gone. :( I just didn't want to keep our limit during a derby and she totally understood. At about 8:15 am, my pole got slammed and line peeled off a bit before I got it out of the holder. The fight was on and I could see my line running to the surface. One big SPLASH!! and there was my Coho. It decided to run at me so as to spit the hook, but I could reel faster than it could swim thankfully. Keeping my rod tip up, I thought I might've lost it so I gave it a high tug. That just upset the fish on the other end of the line and it let me know that it was still hooked!! It peeled off more line and ran parallel to shore toward the front of the boat. Ann was anxiously ready with the net as I brought the fish toward the back corner of the boat. Passer's-by were watching and shouting encouraging remarks with all the splashing going on by the back of the boat. She missed with the net and regrouped and went for it again. I still had not actually seen my fish, so I really had no idea how big it was yet. I steered the fish carefully toward the back corner again and then . . . SNAP!! My leader broke and my gear went flying in the air as my rod tip went straight! The passer's-by let out a loud "Awww!!" and so did I . . . "Awww!!" But wait, I looked over at Ann and she was holding the handle of the net and was wiggling and squirming!! Ann had actually got the net under the fish just as it broke off!! YAY!! As she heaved the fish into the boat (with a little enthusiastic help from me) I realized that this was a very good fish. I wanted to get it cleaned and taken in for official weigh in ASAP. I threw it on my digital scale just to see about what it's weight was before I cleaned it. It registered somewhere in the 15's. We gathered our stuff and cleaned the fish then took in to Edmonds Marina for official weigh in. The guys at the scale said that was a monster and would definately be in the top 10. It's official weight was 13 lbs 2 oz. I wasn't sure that was going to be enough to hold me in the money. We went back out to fish 'til the end of the derby to see if we could better ourselves, but to no avail. At 4 o'clock, we headed back to the Edmonds Marina for the awards ceremony and to my absolute surprise, I took 2nd place with my Coho!!! That's 2 GRAND BABY!! Yeah!!
We are going out to try the Everett Derby, which Ann usually does better than I do this coming weekend. Hopefully we will have as good a luck or better!! Good luck out there to all!!
PS: Honorable mention: Ann's first coho that we had to keep ended up placing 349th out of 483! :)

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