May is the perfect month to put some great eating fish in the freezer and fairly easily if you have the right gear and are willing to explore Puget Sound for the toothy lingcod. This fishery offers a fun opportunity to catch some great eating fish that is not very technical but can be frustrating while jigging along the rocks and jetty’s. A sonar unit definitely helps locate structure where lingco...

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Can you believe it, its Springtime! As anglers, we all wait for the spring, and in Washington we are blessed with many fishing opportunities knocking at the door this time of year. Of course, we have our Spring salmon, our bottom fish on the coast is open, and who can forget about the multitude of seasonal lakes opening for some fantastic and bountiful trout fishing. After these opportunities are ...

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Salmon is a Pacific NW favorite and when cooked properly most would agree it’s one of the best eating fish to be found. Here is a classic recipe on salmon for your culinary chops. Remember, the essentials to a good cooked fish begin with proper care of the fish out in the field. Catch it, bonk it, bleed it, and put it on ice. Cut it up and eat it ASAP. Or, vacuseal it if you can’t eat it fre...

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Wondering where to go for the Lowland Lakes Trout Opener on April 24th? There wasn’t an opening day last year thanks to the six-week spring fishing closure imposed by Washington State at the start of the Covid pandemic. However, we can get some pretty good ideas of where to go by looking at the top lakes from the 2019 lowland lakes opener. All of the lakes mentioned are east of the Cascade Crest...

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2021 GET OUTDOORS LICENSE PACKAGE FOR SALE NOW This one-stop shop is your ticket to a year of hunting and fishing adventures! OLYMPIA — The annual Get Outdoors license package from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is available now for the 2021 season. It allows you to be ready for anything in hunting and angling this year and does it at a savings. What you get in the Get Ou...

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THE WASHINGTON OUTDOORS REPORT March 19 to March 26, 2021 OUTDOORS ROUND-UP PACIFIC NORTHWEST SPORTSMEN’S SHOW – The first sportsmen’s show in the Pacific Northwest went off without a hitch in Redmond, Oregon earlier this month and that sets the stage for what will be the largest sportsmen’s show in the nation to occur between March 24th and the 28th at the Expo Center in Portland. That ...

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Several parks east of the Cascades offer lots to do before summer arrives! CURLEW LAKE STATE PARK: Located north of Republic in Ferry County, this 87-acre State Park with a campground sits on Curlew Lake, a 5-½ mile long body of water known for good fishing. You can catch everything from trout and bass to perch and tiger muskies here. There’s also plenty of wildlife around. Deer are abundan...

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I’ve talked in previous articles about engineered structures and how important they are to the restoration of salmon and steelhead runs. Each engineered structure type is designed to fulfill a specific purpose. Many of them have multiple benefits. In this article I’d like to go into a little more detail about specific engineered structures that we have developed through trial and error. The c...

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Here are ten basic things you should do every year to get ready for the upcoming Bass season. 1 Tackle prep Pull all your lures out of their boxes, clean and inspect them all for cracks as well as damaged or rusty hooks. Check each hook for damage and replace all the hooks that need it, but also check that the hooks are sharp. If you can’t get each hook point to stick in your thumb nail ...

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With the announcement of spring chinook seasons in late February it is hard not to get excited about heading to a river and trying your hand at catching a few of these fish. Spring chinook are probably one of the most fished for, in hours per fish, then any other salmon. What would cause anglers to endure springtime conditions of wind, rain, cold and plain miserable weather for just a chance to ca...

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Preseason salmon forecasts, news from Washington State Parks, a new watercraft inspection station and fishing reports are all part of this week’s outdoors round-up. SALMON The salmon forecasts are in from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Starting off with the good news, a great run of 1.6 million coho salmon should be coming up the Columbia Rive...

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With the snowy weather in our rear view mirror at last, now is a great time to dust off those fishing rods and head out to your local lake for some late winter trout and kokanee fishing. While many lakes are closed until opening day in April, there are a few lakes open year round that produce yellow perch, crappie, kokanee, cutthroat trout, and rainbow trout. Fishing in the winter can be trickier ...

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