Difficult to find a current report on chum fishing at Hoodsport Hatchery, so my buddy and I drove in from Lacey since the tides looked right and the winds were down. Fish were everywhere in good numbers. I was using small herring about 4 feet under a float. My neighbor was using a greenish jig. He was hooked up almost immediately but it turned out to be a snag of the top fin. We released the fish at the boat.
The morning low tide was at 4:30am with a high tide at 11:45am. The fish seemed to bite better (the herring) when the water was moving. When the tide went slack, the float bite died. My neighbor hooked and released about 12 nice chum salmon with the biggest going about 15 pounds. Around 2pm the water started moving again and I caught 4 nice chum in about 30 minutes using herring. Since I had run out of small herring, I was using my frozen leftovers from coho trips (green size with blue coloring). I also used a bait that was black size successfully and the chum did not seem to mind the larger size. My total for the day was nine fish mouth hooked, landed, and released.

As far as fishing pressure, there was only about 8 boats fishing around the hatchery. We were actually 200 yards north of the buoys and 50 yards from the shore in 8 feet of water.

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