My buddy Dan from work and I launched after the masses at 6:50 am and had lines in the water at the Shipwreck by about 7:20. Within about 10 minutes a fish takes my spatter-back hootchie and runs peeling line off the reel in a manner I’ve only seen a few times in my salmon fishing lifetime. At the same moment, Dan’s rod goes off and we are into a double. I knew my fish is big so I took my time allowing Dan to get a nice 7 pounder to the boat and into the net. My fish had made it to the surface about 40 feet from the boat and was slowing giving in to the fight while Dan waited with the net. I thought for sure based on the take down that this fish was hooked well but as I reeled the fish closer to the boat the hook simply came out of this very nice salmon’s mouth and that was it. Very fun, but also very disappointing! I’m guessing this fish was in the 15 pound range. We fished the Shipwreck, we fished across to Possession bar where we fished the green can (east side of the bar) and not another bump.

That was it for us. We fished hard until noon before heading back to the launch. It was a great day on the water but I believe we missed a good hour of fishing thanks to the “sunrise” time 6:58 am which I went by. I’m not much for navigating in the Sound when it’s dark but at 6:00 am it was light enough (for me anyway) to navigate while I was in transit to pick up Dan, when we should have been out there. Next time! Based on how our late morning went and the fact that we saw very few nets after about 8am, I’m guessing the majority of catchers harvested their fish from before dusk till about 8.

After this trip, we headed to Langus Park to fish the incoming and slack tide on the Snohomish. Report to follow.

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