Gotta love it when a Plan works out the way you hope it will.

JoAnn and I launched out of Edmonds today for some end of summer coho fishing. I was hoping we would have another morning like we did last week. The low tide was 9:45am and what I had in my mind was to run over to the west side of Possession if it wasn’t too windy, get our coho, and then go over to Shipwreck and get some pinks. Well, conditions were just right as we had a very light breeze and calm waters, so I set course for the SW corner of the horseshoe.

We had our lines running at 6:45am. I ran the port rod with a magnum green flasher and magnum pearl glow hoochie at 50 feet on the cable. Starboard rod 60 feet of cable, and a UV green flash magnum flasher, with magnum green/glow hoochie. Both hoochies had scented herring strips. I trolled us due north/northwest with the outgoing tide, at a crisp 3.5mph on the GPS.

Within five minutes it was “fish on” the 60 foot rig. The fish fought hard and was a solid 5.5 pound silver. Imagine, in a few weeks these guys are going to be a couple pounds bigger! After that it was non-stop action for the next hour and fifteen minutes. Here’s the breakdown:

6:50 – 60 ft, coho, 7:15 – 50 ft, blackmouth (released), 7:30 – 60 ft, coho, 8:20 – 50 ft, blackmouth (released), 8:35 – 50 ft, coho, 8:48 – 50 ft blackmouth (released), 9:15 – 60 ft coho – Limits in the boat!

In-between we had a couple lost fish as well. The blackmouth surprised me and were all cookie cutter 20” fish, very strong and put up great fights. So 9:15 we pulled gear and ran over to Shipwreck to try to get some bonus pinks. We fished the area until 10:40. I saw a few caught and a lot of jumpers, so they are still around. We had no bites, despite futilely chasing marks. Figuring a coho limit was what we wanted anyway, we called it a day.

A couple more things: We trolled about two miles starting from the 150 ft depth line and ended up in 500 ft of water. I did not try to troll back up into the tide, rather, we brought gear up and ran for 5 minutes back to the starting point. It was a lot easier and obviously more effective, instead of trying to run into the tide. Also, 95% of the boats were in the NW corner of Possession off Scatchet Head. I have no idea how others did, but it was pretty sweet being realtively alone and catchng all our fish. We only had to run back up once to get our limit.

I marked the Hotspots marking our beginning and end points.

Our first two coho trips this year have been outstanding and I think we are in for an amazing coho fishery in the next month. We have our dates all set in ink on our calendar!

---