By: Mike Ainsworth The rain is finally falling in Washington! This means it’s time to start curing eggs for fall salmon and winter steelhead. While many factors lead to having quality eggs I believe anglers would have better eggs if they didn’t overlook the crucial care of eggs leading up to the curing process. To […]
By: Toby Wyatt Drano Lake was expected to have a down run this year and it’s been slower than normal. However, we are catching salmon daily. We aren’t setting any records, but we knew this was how it was going to be. The unfortunate truth is we don’t have a lot of options in Washington. […]
By: Mike Ainsworth On the heels of several average years Puget Sound is having a phenomenal year of king and coho returns. There’s lots of fish around and a lot of opportunity. The resident coho have been larger than normal and there’s plenty of early ocean coho in the mix as well. We’ve also released […]
By: Mike Ainsworth There’s no shortage of trout fishing opportunities to enjoy this Memorial Weekend in Washington. The Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife loaded our lakes with trout for the opener roughly a month ago and is busy restocking more of these waters this week. Most of our state’s waters are being restocked specifically […]
By: Mike Ainsworth January is primetime for catching hatchery and some wild steelhead. When curing eggs to catch winter steelhead in the Pacific Northwest I recommend keeping your cure simple, except for making it sweet because we all know steelhead have a sweet tooth. This is going to be a short and sweet blog. I […]
By: Mike Ainsworth After two poor years the Puget Sound coho fishery has rebounded. We’ve seen an influx of numbers and larger than average coho this year and there’s still more than a month left in our fishery. We started to see coho in July and they’ve continued to trickle in ever since. I’m expecting […]
By: Mike Ainsworth At the start of the season in July we were targeting resident coho, but couldn’t keep the king salmon off our lines. For those of you that fished North Puget Sound last year, you know this wasn’t the case. There weren’t many kings around last year. Fortunately, this summer has been different. […]
By: Toby Wyatt Although upriver stocks of spring salmon (those headed to Eastern Washington and Idaho) are struggling, Drano and the Wind River still have good runs of springers. Because of these two fisheries a lot of us fishing guides were able to salvage a season. These are two places that are thriving now and […]
By: Bob Kratzer Springer fishing on the Cowlitz River has been decent. It hasn’t been horrible and hasn’t been great. There’s fish here and we’ve had an uptick in recent days, but we are dealing with high and cold water and that’s made catching them more challenging. It’s been a long time since conditions were […]
By: Brad Wagner As our cold, snowy North Central Washington winter fades to a blustery spring Lake Chelan’s kokanee fishery is heating up as fast as the air. While we have been making the cold, long boat ride up lake the fish are starting their annual migration down lake to follow the food. Fortunately, those […]