This report covers the Everett Coho Derby and is for Saturday and almost Sunday. First there is something about the Everett Coho derby that I love. Not sure if it is the coho fishing, the time of the year or the overall camaraderie shared between the participants. Whatever it is I try not to miss it. For various reasons I ended up fishing solo this year. Normally not an issue but being derby day it created a few challenges. I was at the ramp by 4:00 Saturday morning and launching went without a hitch. I was underway shortly thereafter. I had a game plan similar to last years and I arrived in the area of the Bait Box about an hour before daylight. I just metered around for awhile trying to determine if the fish were holding tight on the beach or out in the deeper water. I was seeing a lot of bait in 200’-300’ of water so I just stuck with the bait until the there was some daylight on the water.

Gear down somewhere around 7:00 I was chasing the individual meter marks associated with the bait. Before I go further; last year fishing the same area in foggy twilight I had hooked a large fish that turned out to be nice Chinook. While fighting it, a large twin engine Grady (28?) came blasting by and practically flipped me out of the boat as it sped past me on full plane and cut my fish off. I run a black Lund and I know it is hard to see in low light conditions but that was no excuse for poor seamanship. Back to this year’s adventure; almost immediately after lowering my downrigger to a nice meter mark at 58’ my clip pops and I have a crazed fish heading back to the ocean. The fish was relentless, taking line and putting on a nonstop aerial display. At this point I had taken the boat out of gear and had the net ready but the fish was still somewhere out in the twilight. Not by design but I was still wearing my headlamp when guess what? A large wide beam Bayliner making the run to the outer bar cut my fish off again. Although it slowed at the last minute (I was waving my headlamp at the boater) the boat still got between me and my fish. What really gets me is that the operators of many of the larger boats have very poor seamanship skills, or maybe it is a plain disregard for the safety of other boaters. In this case the boat knew there was an issue but never stopped to see what was going on or apologize.

Rant over and back to fishing; still working the bait on the meter I have a solid arch at 120’. Figuring that I had 15’ of blowback the downrigger goes down to 135’ of cable. Bam! The clip pops again and I am into another nice fish. After a number of big runs and a couple of gear out of the water jumps I slide the net under a solid coho. Card punched a picture or two and the fish on ice I got back to business. I had seen a couple meter marks at 120’ and created a waypoint on the GPS. I circled back around but had a nice mark at 38’ so up came the gear. Again my clip pops and I am into another nice fish. No jumps, just long heavy runs and right from the get-go I knew it was a chinook. I fought it for about 15 minutes and ultimately released a 15# or so chinook alongside the boat. Oh man, nice fish but I was looking for coho.

Back on the hunt, I went back to my waypoint and dropped the gear to 120’ again. In circling the area I found the bait ball and again the clip pops. After a short but energetic fight I lost the fish at the net. Back in business I tried working the same general area but I had lost the bait and I was not seeing any meter marks so I moved a bit further south. Now down in 300’ to 350’ of water off the SE corner of the bar I have a solid meter mark at 68’ and I adjust the gear accordingly. While my hand is still on the button the rod starts bouncing. I pop it out of the clip and end up losing another smallish fish at the net. From that point I make one run on shipwreck-Humpy Hollow then pack it up for the run back to Everett.

I was running a white Goldstar OLA12R squid with a Ace-Hi glow needlefish insert on 32” of 30# fluorocarbon and a herring strip. The squid was following either a purple haze or green/glow 11” flasher. When fishing coho I typically run at 1,200 rpm or 2.7-3.4 mph. I use a simple rock salt cure on my herring strips and to be honest I cannot vouch for their vintage, leftovers always go back in the freezer. I had planned to fish Sunday as well but it was not in the cards. My trim/tilt is out on my motor and with the heavy weather forecast I decided to play is safe and stay on the beach.

The awards show was an absolute blast, the “Bobbers” put on quite a show with their fishing related tunes and witty humor. The event is staged so that you are on the edge of your seat right up to the end. There were 2186 participants with 881 fish weighed in. the average fish was 4.54 pounds and there were 3,862 pounds of fish caught. The 10,000.00 fish was 11.31 pounds. At my end, I placed 73rd with a 6.43 pound fish. I received a very nice Fetha-Styx steelhead rod for my efforts. Again this year the organizers did an excellent job with the derby while establishing a standard focused on kids and the family.