It was a great sockeye season for JoAnn and I, but with the recent reports of pinks starting to show in greater numbers in the Sound we decided it was time to switch gears. We both love fishing Puget Sound in late summer and fall. The days can be incredibly, as this one was. It was sunny, perfect temps in the upper 60s, and calm waters. The smell of the salt was calling with the promise of “Fish On” soon to occur.

We arrived at the Edmonds sling, second in line (JoAnn was anxious to get there early!). Soon, Gringo Pescador arrived with his group. Looks like we got a us a convoy. We discussed strategies and ran down to Picnic Point, south of Shipwreck. JoAnn and I started more mid channel, Gringo and his group closer to shore as they were dropping crab pots.

Our gear to start off was a pink Artic Fox trolling fly with wiggle fin, no dodger or flasher, set about 15-20 feet back from the DR ball, at 35 feet. I did have a string of three dodgers running off the DR ball for a little attraction. I doubt it was even needed. On the second rigger we ran standard 8” white flasher and a medium sized pink hoochie, run at 50 feet. Both lures had a small strip of brined herring.

We immediately began hitting fish, as did Gringo in his location. I decided to troll us over to his location. Oh, HT was 7am today, and we started about 6:35am.

I would say that the Artic Fox did equally as well as the flasher/hoochie combo, verifying owner Denis Peirce’s instructions on use and to not worry about no flasher. I will say, it’s a lot more fun catching pinks w/o a flasher or dodger!

All the time we were fishing pinks were jumping around us. Over on Gringo’s boat his net was constantly flying. As we steadily filled up our cooler trolling I decided to run just one downrigger line and do some jig casting of a wannafish a lure in ½ oz. I would cast it, countdown 7 seconds, and begin a jig/recovery. Takes would not be a slam, more just a sudden weight on the line. And fish on! Water depth in this area varied from 150 to 300 feet deep.

On a side note, we lost a lot of fish today. I also lost a downrigger ball as the ball retrieved without stopping and Snap! Off it went. So we had some frustrations but I had no doubt we’d easily get our limits. I would say we never had more than 5-10 minutes max without a fish biting. We had our limits by 9:15am. If we hadn’t lost so many fish we could have been done by 8am.

The fish are defiantly running small this odd year cycle, but there are unreal numbers of very cooperative fish, more than I remember from two years ago. I would recommend as always watch for jumping fish and target them, either running in circles if trolling, or drifting with the pods if casting. I never saw a blank screen between 20 and 50 feet, it was alive with fish. You should easily get limits in the salt for the next couple of weeks.

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