new to saltwater fish. what those at Mukilteo pier...

[babish]

Hello everyone. New to the foum, but looking forward to learning alot from you all. Not much of a slatwater fisherman, more lakes and rivers and really into wade-crabbing. wanting to start with salt water fishing as I am getting a boat in about a year.

so yeah, I am going to try my luck at flounder/slore pretty soon and have been checking out local piers and reading what I can find. I am probably going to try from shore, not a pier, as I see them bottom fish while I wade-crab and hear they are good eating.

I was at the main Mukilteo pier a few weeks ago and I looked down between two close pilings and saw maybe 50 fish swirling and attacking the pilings for food (mussels/barnacles). Some of them looked rather large, like maybe 14-18" . Anyone take a guess as to what they were? I thought they might be some bottom fish because they were dark, but then they would twist when they bit the piling and they would be pretty bight on the flip side. Not sure though.

All of the pier fishers were at the end of the pier casting out. Where I was nobody was fishing and it was only half way out to the turn. Seems like they'd be easy to get there, but I am new.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[TrackerPro16]

Now I am watching this thread as I have no idea but am interested. One of these days I might go salt water fishing!

[losaturn]

Sounds like Striped Surfperch. I've caught them around docks with shrimp and Gulp Camo Sandworms.

[Shad_Eating_Grin]

Flounder and sole will munch on the barnacles, as well as the sea perch.

When you see a dark fish that "turns white" when it flips around the pilings, those are most likely sole/flounder.

The pile perch are also "light colored" and can be seen eating off the piling.

[nwtoolman]

Those are Pile Perch, I used to catch them when I was a kid. They usually show up about 45 minutes before high tide. The best bait are the little crabs you can pick up from shore.

[spokey9]

We're not allowed to use the shore crabs anymore. Since the dept changed the wording of the unclassified invertebrate rule, we can't harvest any living thing off the beaches unless specifically stated in the regs. It sucks because I miss using a cheap fly rod to dangle pieces of pile worms in front of those perch. It was fun watching how fast they can suck in & spit out a bait.

[nwtoolman]

That sucks that was a lot of fun for us as kids, we also used the pile worms been bitten my fair share of times those suckers hurt. We would easily catch 20 or more in 30 minutes, then once the tide came in they were gone.