Northwest Fishing Reports

I was wondering if there was any special method for catching shakers off of shore I heard salmon eggs under a bobber works or a strip of hering under a bobber I will probably fish at des Moines peir and just want some small resident coho to c&R on trout gear.

Small, thin spoons should do the trick, cause those small fish do not eat much bigger things then small candlefish and baitfish of the like.

I'm sorry, but who in their right mind would want to fish for shakers? If you are using bait then they will probably swallow the hook and you will end up killing them anyways. I have caught shakers on accident fishing for bullhead with herring chunks and they always die when they swallow the bait. Honestly I wouldn't recommend fishing for shakers because you will end up killing them before they even have a chance to grow big and spawn. I can't believe anyone would even post something like this. Just another meaningless way to decline the salmon populations I guess.

I was down there last Thursday and it seemed pretty slow. If I were you I would go down by the the creek that flows right by the pier. I know there are some salmon in that creek right now. As for bait, I have caught a bunch of shakers off that pier just on regular sized buzz bombs. They really dont seem to care on the size of the bait. There are some decent sized shakers out there, we caught some last year in the 2 lb range.

On a trout rod it should be fun geting some fish in the 1lb range, as for swallowing the hook, if you just cut the line then the fish will probably live I have caught multiple trout with as many as 5 or 6 hooks in their bellies.

Another spot you can try is the green. The last 2 times we went we caught nothing but small fish. We also had a bunch of bite and followers. My buddy even had a nice sized fish on, so there is always the possibility of hooking up with something nice as well.

They are only shakers if they are chinook (minimum size 22" as I recall.... but this may be off by an inch or two)....

There is no minimum size on the resident coho (at least not in Area 13... it may be different further north).....


SRC's have to be released regardless of size so the notion of "shaker" doesn't apply in that case.

I agree that if you are going to target them, use hardware.
Even if you cut your line (that does help, I do the same thing) alot of the fish are already bleeding to death. Hardware like small (like Sam said) gold spoons will probably outfish anything else anyway. I spent alot of time wasting good eggs in the salt with very little success... Unless you are targeting bullhead Herring is a better bait...

"Shaker" is a term used to describe a fish that is too small to keep either legally or just because it is just too small and you are going after a bigger fish.

EL is getting a bit technical on us but it's a minor point.

Regardless of your own personal definition of shaker the best bet here is to avoid
bait (even though it can be very effective on the SRC's) and use barbless hooks.

I do a lot of cnr bass fishing and you really don't need barbless hooks for that kind of fish.

Just grab them by the lip and pull the hook out.


For any kind of trout I think survival is much more likely if the hook is barbless and removed without
taking fish out of the water.


But, despite my bass fishing interest, I finally took the plunge a month or so ago and just made every lure in
my tackle box barbless. It took me several evenings to go through everything and remove all the treble hooks, replace
them with single barbless, and remove barbs from each hook. It was a pain, but now I feel more comfortable fishing in the saltchuck and on all the waters where barbless is required.

And I think this is going to be our future. There will come a time when all the hooks sold in tackle stores will be barbless.