Another trip to Area 9 and with the WDFG early chinook closure on Monday probably my last salt water chinook trip for the year. Friend and fellow WashingtonLakes regular Idstud were the first boat out of the Keystone launch on Saturday. With the pea-soup thick fog we did not arrive at the south end of Mid Channel Bank until about 5:45 but had a fish on immediately after gear down. Running a green/red flasher 42“ ahead of a Cookies-N-Cream Coho Killer spoon I had just got the gear down when the clip popped and it was fish on. The fish turned out to be a gorgeous 20-25# wild chinook and had to be released but it was quite a way to start out an action packed day.

Generally we were running a green/red flasher 42“ ahead of a spoon of some sort. Our spoon of preference for the day was the 3.5” Cookies-N-Cream or the Cookies-N-Cream Coho Killer. We did run other spoons with some success but the Cookies-N-Cream was our go to for the day. Trolling 2.5-3 mph I tried to fish the 90-120’ zone keeping the downrigger balls with in 5’ of the bottom. We had action all day long and if I hadn’t released a number of 2 to 4 or 5 pound coho (I know we could have kept them) we would have finished with early limits.

The only hick-up for the day was on return to the ramp I found a parking citation on my rig. A phone call or two are on tap because I was on the gravel in the trailer parking area, had paid my 7 bucks for launching and had my discovery pass out so I am not sure what the deal is. I included a picture of the citation. Other pictures are of some of our catch for the day and a ghost ship. We had a great time, lots of good conversation and caught some nice fish.

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