It’s nice now and then to see expertise rewarded. To see that Uncle Ferd, visiting from Iowa and on his first salmon fishing trip ever, does not necessarily always catch the largest chinook, win the cash and the new boat, and hop the next flight east, thinking “I don’t see what’s so difficult about this salmon fishing game.”
Sometimes experience pays off, as it did over the weekend for four longtime friends from Mount Vernon, participating in their 12th Roche Harbor Salmon Classic. David Reep, fishing with Bob Jungquist, Shannon Ford and Brian Dennis, nailed the first-place chinook and $10,000 aboard Jungquist’s boat, a 26-foot Osprey named — catch this — Tater Yott.
Jungquist is, of course, a potato farmer.
Reep, who works in Anacortes for R.W. Baird, a stock and bond brokerage, said the four friends came up together through grade school, junior high and high school, and that this was their third time in the prestigious derby’s top three places.
Reep’s fish weighed 22.03 pounds, compared to last year’s top chinook of 20.02 pounds, caught by Andy Holman of Friday Harbor. In second place this year was Eric Reynolds of Snohomish, at 21.13 pounds; third, Michael Surdyk of Bellingham, at 19.6 pounds; and fourth, Craig Hougen, also of Bellingham, at 18.4 pounds. The derby weighed 147 fish in two days for 338 anglers in 99 boats, compared to 172 fish last year and 196 for 339 fishermen in 2013.
Best boat total weight and $2,000 went to Larry and Michael Surdyk, and Jason Henning, with five fish at 64.3 pounds.
Weather on Friday was wet and windy, according to derby coordinator Debbie Sandwith. Sunday was less lumpy, but still wet.
Reep caught his money fish on Friday, about 2:30 p.m., on whole herring, at Thatcher Pass. “We had already heard of a big fish on the board,” Reep said, “and we were a little deflated, figuring we were probably in second.”
Olympic Peninsula derby
Dan Tatum, chairman of the Olympic Peninsula Salmon Derby, said the partial reduction of the winter season in Marine Area 7 would have almost no effect on his event.
“Area 7 comes down and touches Area 6, which will put the north portion of Hein Bank off-limits,” Tatum said, “but that’s about it.”
Tatum said Area 6, the area off derby headquarters at Gardiner, started slow this winter, but has been improving steadily since the holidays. “We’re getting close to prime time off Port Angeles, Protection Island, Discovery Bay and others,” he said. “Area 9 has also been good, but the fish seem a little smaller there.”
The derby runs Feb. 20, 21 and 22, instead of the usual President’s Day weekend, because “we wanted to stay clear of Valentine’s Day,” Tatum said. “We didn’t want to disrupt family time.”
This event is the largest (in terms of fishing area) in the state and, at 34 years, one of the oldest. It encompasses over 500 square miles of water and comes equipped with five different launch ramps. Tickets are $40 and available on this side of the Sound at Ted’s Sport Center in Lynnwood, Sportco, and Outdoor Emporium. Tickets can also be purchased online at $42.50 until the Wednesday before the derby. Go to gaardinersalmonderby.org for more information.
Prizes depend to a degree on donations, but last year’s first-place fish, 15.4 pounds, caught by Larry Quesnell of Mount Vernon, was worth $10,000.
Halibut seasons
The setting of fishing seasons sometimes grinds slowly, and halibut seasons, which involve the feds, grind more slowly than most. This year’s halibut seasons are available, but since they haven’t been formally adopted, are still “proposals.” State Fish and Wildlife Department coastal marine fish policy coordinator Heather Reed said she has never seen changes, however, once the numbers start through the system. So here are some selected halibut proposals which will almost certainly become formal seasons:
Marine Area 5, Sekiu, opens May 15-16, 21-24, and 29-30. Areas 6-10, all the rest of the Strait and inner Sound, open May 8-9, 15-16, 23-24, and 28-30. Areas 10-13 will remain closed to halibut fishing.
The number of fishing days and the quotas in these areas, Reed said, are the same as last year. In fact, all Western Washington 2015 halibut seasons and quotas are either almost the same or exactly the same, as last year.
The Neah Bay area, Washington’s premiere halibut fishery, will be open May 14, 16, 21 and 23, under the same quota as last year. The Westport area opens May 3 on a Sunday and Tuesday schedule, but is expected to last only 5 or 6 days.
Washington’s halibut fishery last year was a very good one, on the whole, and because the population is currently stable, this one is shaping up much the same.
Baker Lake sockeye
The public meeting Jan. 31 at the WDFW Mill Creek office covered last year’s disappointing Baker Lake sockeye season, the probable reasons for that, and the outlook for this summer.
Last year’s problems apparently stemmed from the fact that downstream commercial and recreational fishermen took their “share” right off the top of the run, leaving a reduced population entering the Baker Dam trap and Baker Lake. The situation was probably made worse by a lower than expected return of adult sockeye, and that discrepancy couldn’t be adjusted fast enough to give the lake anglers a larger share of the diminished run.
“Because sockeye tend to come in all together, in a bunch, it’s difficult to know the strength of the run until after the tribes have fished,” said Brett Barkdull, WDFW biologist.
Trying to get a fair portion of the run population past downriver fisheries, and upriver to the higher fisheries, is a problem Washington and Oregon salmon managers have been struggling with for years on the Columbia River system. They have finally settled on a “buffer” system, whereby the run is deliberately under-forecast to provide a buffer of “extra” fish to equal out the various fisheries if the run proves less than expected.
Barkdull said a contingent of recreational fishing activists, led by Frank Urabeck, presented a buffer plan apparently similar to that used on the Columbia. Urabeck is a longtime, and effective, sockeye advocate on the Lake Washington system, and his plan was designed to get more fish upriver to the trap and the lake fishery before the bulk of the run has already been caught.
Although no formal forecasts are out yet, Barkdull expects more adult sockeye back this year than last, if for no other reason than the number of smolts going out two years ago.
The majority of the returning adults are two-salt fish, Barkdull said. Two years ago (most of the adults due back this summer) some 758,000 smolts headed for saltwater, compared to 470,000 the previous year. That’s a big increase, and a new record for downriver smolts in the Baker system.
Whether or not a proportional increase is seen in adults returning to the Baker trap depends on a number of factors, including ocean survival and whether or not all hands are able to get together and arrive at a better harvest scenario.
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