Decided to take advantage of the favorable midday tide and drop my pots in the sound for the first time this summer. Traffic was light and I rolled into Shilshole at around 10:00am and was able launch straight away. Made the run over to the Jeff Head area and had my perch and cutthroat baited pots in the water by 10:30. I set one at 85', the other at 60' and geared up to kill some time by trolling for resident coho. I rigged up a 50/50 brass and nickel Abe and Al flasher with a cop car coho killer and sent it down 45' on the downrigger and worked waters between 120' and 300' deep. There was a considerable amount of bait in the area and I had fairly consistent action between 11:00 am and noon but is was mostly blackmouth with a few coho sprinkled in between. I was able to bring two respectable sized coho to the boat but was only able to successfully net one of them. The coho I did manage to net, spit out a green label sized herring that it must have just picked up, as it was in excellent condition. By 12:30 the bite died off, which coincided with the tide starting to run again. I kept at it for another hour with out a strike before heading back to pull the traps. The deeper set trap contained mostly males, a few that were softshell and 3 that were good to go. The shallower set trap had mostly females, a few undersized red rock and one hard shell keeper among a few soft shell males. The wind had picked up from out of the south as the day progressed and made for a wet crossing back to the Shilshole marina.

It was nice to get out and not have a million pots in the water, though I suspect it will return to normal tomorrow morning. Cleaning the fish I kept, I found another, even larger partially digested herring among the stomach contents. It's been a while since I've seen good sized herring in the area, so perhaps we'll see some larger resident fish a little later on in the season.

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