Fishing with Cliff

Puget Sound needs some serious help and it doesn’t look like Christine Gregoire is going to hit her goal of cleaning up the Sound by 2010 like she promised.  The fact is that the fish runs are declining, water quality is not good and something needs to be done.

Lawmakers agonizing over the expense and complexity of cleaning up Puget Sound need to know their efforts are backed by legions of eager citizens already hard at work on the challenge.

Hundreds turned out on a brisk Saturday morning for Sound Waters 2010, presented by WSU Island County Beach Watchers.

A six-page list tallied those who led the daylong program of seminars spread across the combined campus of Coupeville High School and Middle School. The aggregation of experts and topics was impressive. So was the overflow crowd that paid to learn more and find out how to help.

Restoration of Puget Sound is an imperative for Washington’s environment, health and the economy. We live, work and play around a glorious body of water, and our intimate proximity is the essence of the dilemma. All the easily identified pollution sources are either under control or on the radar. The rest come from how we live and develop the land.

Cleanup confronts a nasty trifecta: industrial and agricultural effluent, human waste and stormwater runoff. The first two are works in progress, but the latter scours and flushes everything.
Read the full article.

I would definitely like to see more done to bring back the Salmon runs.  Lets cut off the commercial fishing and tell the Indians to go to hell.  If we don’t do something pretty drastic, we could see the end of Salmon fishing in Puget Sound in this lifetime!

This news out of Olympia, efforts to clean up the water flowing into Henderson Inlet have paid off and now commercial fishing for shellfish has been approved.  What this is, is a fine example of how we can make more money by protecting our environment.  Restoring the water quality, shellfish quality and the Salmon runs could mean big bucks to the area if we all work together!

OLYMPIA – Harvest restrictions in place since 2001 have been lifted in Henderson Inlet. Shellfish harvest is now approved for the area, which previously was closed to commercial shellfish harvest for five days after rainfall of one inch or more.

The state Department of Health recently reclassified this area of about 240 acres. The inlet drains heavily developed areas of Lacey, Olympia, and other parts of Thurston County. The southern part of the bay remains prohibited to harvesting due to pollution concerns from Woodland Creek.

“For more than 20 years, it looked like all of Henderson Inlet would be closed to shellfish harvest due to pollution. Thanks to area residents and Thurston County’s leadership, this is no longer true,” said Gregg Grunenfelder, assistant secretary for the Department of Health. “Without doubt, this is one of the state’s most successful shellfish restoration projects.”

Henderson Inlet is one of five inlets that form the southern end of Puget Sound. It’s located between Budd Inlet on the west and Nisqually Reach on the east. The five-mile long inlet is fed by a 30,000 acre watershed. Woodland and Woodard creeks are the largest of the five main tributaries to Henderson Inlet.

Declining water quality in Henderson Inlet led to several shellfish classification downgrades between 1984 and 2005. Thurston County formed a shellfish protection district to address the water quality problems in the watershed. A stakeholder committee of 11 citizens and local agencies made recommendations to address pollution associated with stormwater runoff, septic systems, pet waste, and farm animals. Actions to control pollution also include outreach and education, telling community members about water quality issues in the area.

Thurston County Commission Chair Sandra Romero says the level of cooperation it took to reverse the pollution in Henderson Inlet is significant. “County staff worked with many agencies including the state Departments of Health and Ecology on this effort and put in many, many hours of their own. But a lot of credit also goes to Henderson Inlet area residents for their individual efforts to reduce the impacts of poorly operating septic systems, and to the citizen members of the Shellfish Protection District Committee.”

also created a successful program that focuses on enhanced operations and maintenance for septic systems. It also provides education for residents with septic systems in the area. The City of Lacey has worked to reduce stormwater pollution in Woodland Creek and residents have taken individual actions to improve water quality in the watershed.

“This is good news for Henderson Inlet and shows we can and are making progress in our efforts to restore Puget Sound,” said David Dicks, executive director for the Puget Sound Partnership. “We have many challenges ahead, but if we all work together and focus our efforts we can protect, restore, and reduce pollution to ensure Puget Sound is both clean and healthy, and supports a thriving economy.”

The Department of Health has shellfish information (http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/sf/default.htm) online.

If you haven’t been paying attention to the news lately, there is a name change coming to the Puget Sound region.  Puget Sound along with the adjoining waters are being renamed the Salish Sea.

This move has passed the initial hurdles and is currently awaiting the approval of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names and the Canadians.  I am just wondering if if they are going to leave the individual names in place or if we are all going to become Salish Sea residents?

The move is actually fine with me, and I understand the need to have a coordinated effort to preserve the shared waters of what will soon be the Salish Sea.  May be this will help make a focused effort from everyone that enjoys the bounty of the Salish Sea, including the commercial fishermen and the Indian tribes, both of which I cast a accusatory eye at.

Stay tuned, a map change is sure to be in our future!

With the start of the Fall rains, I am going to guess that the Pinks will be heading for the rivers now, but during their stay in Puget Sound they have been a lot of fun.  Anglers from shore and boat have taken their share of what is said to be a run of about 5,000,000 Pink Salmon into Puget Sound.

Sorry for not looking my sexiest (yes I need a haircut) but even the FWC crew has managed to boat a few of these small but feisty fish.  Now it will be time for the anglers in the rivers to take up the charge, and from what I am hearing, they are doing rather well.

Plenty of people have definitely been out fishing for Pinks.  If you go to pretty much any sporting goods store, their supply of pink squids and white flashers is pretty well wiped out.

You would think that this would give some indicator of what sort a boon it is to have BIG salmon runs in this area.  It would be nice if our elected representatives worked a bit harder to promote the interests of the recreational fishermen over the commercial and tribal fisheries.  But that is another rant for another day.

If you haven’t gotten out and got in on the action, I wouldn’t wait much longer, or else head for the rivers.  Of course Coho season is on the doorstep, so if you have missed the humpies there is always their bigger cousins to go after.

Thomas and I got out Saturday morning for some Winter Chinook Salmon fishing in area 8-2.  I know area 9 just opened up, but considering the dense fog that was blanketing the sound, copious logs and trees floating in the water, and our shitty Lowrance GPS that has ceased to function, we decided to stick to fishing up around Hat Island.

Right off the bat we dropped our gear in 40′ of water and started a sweep of the shallows.  Not 15 minutes later my line breaks loose.  Much to my surprise, it is a 1.5# hatchery Chinook.  Not a bad way to start off the day.  Unfortunately that was our only hook up with a fish. 

We did however manage to lock horns twice with what looked to be old debris from fishing nets.  One chunk was even attached to a 10# chunk of steel.  We had a great time getting a barnacle encrusted rope, with a weight on one end and kelp and sea critters on the length of it, untangled from the downrigger wire.  Oh well, we didn’t lose any gear on it, so all is well.

We are headed out again next week, Hell bent on learning the tricks of Winter Chinook Salmon fishing in area 8-2.  Working from the advice I have heard for Steelhead fishing, we are picking a spot and working it until we know all the secrets.  So if you want to find us, look around Hat island!

P.S.  Video of this trip will be up soon!

Anyone that keeps track of these things, knows that fishing in Western Washington has been pretty rough lately.  The Winter storms blew out most of the rivers and turned Puget Sound into one giant mud puddle.  While Chinook fishing has been open in some areas, the results have been dismal at best.

But now, the snow has stopped.  The rain has ceased and even the wind has died down.  The word is that Puget Sound should be clearing out this weekend and that fishing is opening up in Area 9 for Chinook.  So, the Fishing with Cliff crew is heading out to see what sort of damage we can do!

Where do you think fishing will be best?  The West side of Posession Bar?  The East Side or may be right in the middle of the bar.  What about Hat island?  Chime in and let us know what your favorite spot is!  It isn’t like we won’t be seeing four thousand boats out there this weekend!

Having a solid list of sites to do research on Puget Sound Fishing Reports can definitely help solve the issue of ‘the fish will be here in two weeks’ or ‘you should have been here last week’ which is what we hear quite often when we go fishing on Puget Sound.

Here are a few of the tools we use to research Puget Sound Salmon fishing and find out if we should be catching fish or buying extra beer and munchies.

• WDFW Puget Sound Creel Reports
• WDFW Weekender Reports
• Steelheader.net Saltwater Reports
• Newspaper Outdoor Reports
• Salmon University Fishing Reports

So before you start planning your trip, take a look at the Puget Sound fishing reports and see what the fishing will be like and what to expect!

For a change of pace The Reverend and I along with some of my neighbors, trooped down to the Edmonds Pier last night to try and catch some Squid.  Yeah, the wind and intermittent driving rain made this a ton of fun along with utter lack of Squid.

After giving up on that we dropped lines for anything else that we could catch.  One of my neighbors managed to catch three Spotted Rat Fish which look pretty cool, but aren’t good for much else. 

At least the company was good and we could B.S. while we sat there and caught nothing.  Sad to see the water so devoid of fish, and it just reinforces the fact that we need to all work to improve the fishing in Puget Sound!

We took these photos a while ago and I see that people seem to be finding them by searching Flickr for ‘puget sound’ and ‘Sea Serpent’ so I thought I would post them here since it is Halloween.  Here is our encounter with the Puget Sound Sea Monster!  If you like creepy stuff like this be sure to check out the Florida Mystery Fish!

What is this Sea Serpent doing in
Puget Sound?

We dared to get closer to this Puget Sound Sea Monster
despite the danger of being attacked and eaten!

Perhaps this Sea Monster is why we
never catch any fish in Puget Sound

Gotta give a big hooray to Drunken Thomas for getting his first real Chinook in the net this morning.  It was a scouting trip out to Possession Bar and he got a big take down that turned out to be his biggest fish ever, a Chinook Salmon that we estimate out at about 20#.  By the way, the Salmon and Steelhead weight calculator on Piscatorial Pursuits is really handy!

The only bummer was that it was a native, so we spend a couple of minutes letting it rest before she swam off to the salty deep to go make more fishies.  I won’t give out all the details on where and what, but we were more shallow than you would think and a lot smaller than you would expect!

Sharks on P-bar are rough again this year BTW.  They have chased every fish we have hooked, all the way up to the net!