After a bit of a too much to do hiatus we got back on the throttle and went fishing. We decided to hit the South Sound, in part because you can still retain chinook and because almost 30 years ago I used to fish the area quite a bit and we thought it would be fun to re-explore the area. We started out running the gear at 45 and 60’ along the 90’ line off the mouth of the Nisqually. Nobody home so we looked at different depths up to about 150’ and only saw a few meter marks. We mover over to Lyle Point and tried the drift mooching thing for an hour or so. It was wide open fishing but all the action was dogfish (all released unharmed) so we moved back to the Nisqually and again started working the 90’ line. The conditions hadn’t changed so on a whim we headed north towards the Dupont Warf area.

The move was a good decision, there were pinks everywhere. They were puddling up in water that ranged from about 4’ to 20’ deep. Although we 6 rods on board we didn’t have any humpy gear and had to improvise. Anything pink in the boat was weighted and sent over the side. We caught one fish after another for about two hours when we decided to move for the tide change. In the two hours we fished the humpies I am not sure how many we caught and released but I think we had one or two fish on at a given moment the entire time we were there. It was like sight fishing on the flats in the Bahamas or in Florida Keys, you would see a group of active fish, lob a lure in their direction and wham-o fish on. We had a blast and all the fish we caught were safely released.

Going in to the tide change we moved back to the Nisqually flats and started trolling again. There were a few fish showing on the meter but nobody would come out to play so after a couple hours we decided to go back and put a few pinks in the box. Easier said than done but we accomplished our goal and headed for the next area we had planned to fish. We fished Solo Point (Tatsolo) for about an hour and again scattered meter marks but no fish. There were a ton of pinks up in the shallow water there also but we were heading in to the next tide change and I had a plan…

We moved up to the west side of Johnson Point for the start of the flood tide and our final stop of the day. There was lots of bait showing on the meter so our hopes of putting a Chinook in the net were high. We figured that we would give it 1 hour and then call it a day. After about 15 minutes one of the clips releases and there were a few tugs but the fish didn’t get the pointy end of things and was gone. Then about 10 minutes later, after we passed an excellent meter mark the clip pops again and this time it was fish on. After about 15 minutes or so the fish surfaces and we had the right kind but at that point we did not know if it had too many fins. A little while later the fish was alongside the boat and had the right number of fins so in the net it went. After a few pictures we buttoned up the boat and headed in with a nice, just shy of 22# king.

I won’t go into all the different gear we pulled through the waters of the South Sound. But we pulled everything in my salmon arsenal. The gear that worked was a green and red 11” flasher followed be a 3.5” cookies and cream spoon lathered up with UV/Anchovy Smelly Jelly. There was 60’ of cable out and the rig was running at 50’. Our trolling speed was in the ball park of 2.5 mph. The fish finder screen shot indicates that our trolling speed was 3.4 but that is a GPS speed and does not account for affects of current. For our boat when running at 1,000 rpm the over the water speed is about 2.5 mph.

It was a beautiful day on the water, we had fairly consistent action, burned less that 4 gallons of gas and hit Dick’s in Lake City on the way home (15 min detour). So overall it was an incredible day exploring and fishing the South Sound.

---