The Complete Box Set

     Living in the pacific northwest, I'm no stranger to salmon fishing. Although in a strange twist of irony, I caught my very first salmon in California of all places (see this post for details).

My first salmon ever, circa 2000. Caught with my Uncle Fred (the one holding more fish than me...) in California's American River.

     But in North America, there are five different species of Pacific Salmon. I have since caught more Chinook, as well as sockeye, pink, and coho; but the last one, chum salmon, has eluded me for years. I've tried to get one a couple times (See this post for example), but my timing was always off. This has been killing me because I've always thought chums were the coolest looking of the salmon. When all decked out in spawning coloration, they're greenish with a black lateral stripe and garish purple and black vertical stripes. Also, one of their nicknames is "dog salmon" because of their large canine-like teeth. So basically tiger stripes and teeth to match! 
     When most people go salmon fishing, they plan on eating them, so they want to catch them as early in the run and silvery as possible so they taste better. This was not my objective. I had no interest in eating them. I wanted a big nasty male with a mouth full of teeth and attitude. A buddy of mine figured it out last year and he was kind enough to share his spot and some advice on timing and flow conditions etc. So as the time drew nearer this November, I got all pumped up reading reports, tying jigs, and dreaming of big teeth and crazy stripes.

Some big fluffies ready for action! The one in the middle and the one at about "10:00" ended up being the most useful ones.

     Once the calendar and water levels were where I deemed appropriate, I cleared my schedule and headed to the Green River near Auburn WA. I can tell you that much since it's a popular chum fishing river, but I won't divulge the actual spot. Having failed before at catching chum, I was ready to put in some work to get one. But as I hiked to my spot (to get away from the crowds) and got closer to the run I wanted to fish, I began seeing more and more fish. When I arrived, they were everywhere. I could see about a hundred of them doing their business in the shallows. I took care to cast out into the run itself, well away from the spawners, but even so it only took three casts for the first fish to decide to participate and I soon had the 14th member of the Salmonid family on my list flopping in the shallows at my feet. (For those of you who speak fish, Cottids and Cyprinids are the next most common families on the list, as might be expected.)

Species 113! A Female Chum Salmon. There's a suggestion of some teeth there, but that's not quite gonna cut it...

     So having added the species, my focus became not just catching any fish, but specifically a good size male with as much color and teeth as possible. And they didn't disappoint.

Now we're talking TEETH!!

     Most of the fish were smaller than I had expected, probably averaging from about 4ish to maybe 7 or 8 lbs. But luckily I got into three big males that were well into the teens, and for one of them there was even another dude there to take my picture.

This just might be my favorite salmon picture of mine so far.

Same fish, closer view. It's hard to do those teeth any justice with just a picture though. The tip of that lower jaw was sort of bulbous, so with all the teeth on it, it was sort of like a mace or maybe a flail for you medieval weaponry buffs...

My collection was finally complete!

Clockwise from top right: Chinook, chum, sockeye, pink, and coho salmon.

     Now the more ichthyologically savvy among you will probably point out at this point that technically I'm still missing one pacific salmon,  the masu or cherry salmon. To that end, I would point out that that's why I said I'd now caught all the North American pacific salmon. If I want to really top off the Pacific grand slam and get that last one, it'll require a trip to Japan, Russia, or Korea. I just haven't quite figured out how to do that in a weekend road trip yet. Maybe some day...
     But for the time being I was pretty happy with my box set as it stood. So, being that close to Puget Sound and having already accomplished the primary objective of the trip, there was no way I wasn't going to try out a pier or two. It's starting to get a little more difficult as the list grows, but I usually still scrape up a species or two from most piers. This time I ended up at one of the ones in Tacoma, and I put in as close to an all-nighter as I could muster. Squid were caught, as were the typical Puget Sound residents. But I also managed to rack up two more new species, the pacific herring, and the roughback sculpin!

The Les Davis pier is a crowded location all through the night in November. See, it's not just me!

If you're not familiar with squid fishing, here's some typical rigs. Glow-in-the-dark and spiky is the general theme.

The market or opalescent inshore squid. Goofy looking critters.

114! Pacific Herring. Sure, you can go buy them at most bait stores, but that wouldn't count as number 114 now would it?

Cute little roughback sculpin. That's 11 sculpin species now if you're counting along at home!

This roughback was smaller than the first one, but I like the picture better so I had to show it to you. You're welcome.

     In a state where I'm sort of running out of stuff to catch without getting really creative, three new ones, including one of the big salmonids, in a weekend is a raging success in my book.

To 100 and Beyond!

     Several months ago I got it in my head that I was going to go tuna fishing on the Oregon coast. I had done it once before, and it was easily in my top 5 fishing trips ever (See this post for details). So I called a few of my buddies and between our busy schedules we settled on one Saturday that would work for all of us. I knew it was unwise to not have a backup date in case of inclement weather, but that's what worked, so that was our plan. Anyway, long story short, the forecast for this particular Saturday ended up being 30 knot winds and 15 foot seas, not exactly conditions you'd want to motor offshore 40 miles in. So the trip was off.
      I considered my options, and that they boiled down to two: cry into my beard all weekend, or go fishing anyway. I of course chose the latter and quickly came up with a plan B. I would drive to the Washington coast and hit up some long overdue saltwater species, and sprinkle in a little pink salmon fishing somewhere in the Puget Sound area. So on Thursday afternoon I hit the road.

This bruiser along the way was kind enough to pose for a couple pictures before chasing after his girlfriends.

     Friday morning I made my way out onto the jetty in the town of Westport with one thing on my mind: surfperch. Most of them would be new species, and I was two away from reaching 100 species on my list, so hopes were high!

I don't know who Erick or Eddie are, but if it was safe enough for them, that was good enough for me!

The Westport Jetty

That little black dot in the water is a harbor porpoise (or maybe just a little black dot...). A big one and a baby kept swimming back and forth in front of me. Probably eating my fish. No fair. Fun to watch though.

     On one of my first casts into the surf I realized that there was nothing to be nervous about, as I brought in two small redtail surfperch (species 99) on the same cast!

I've since stared long and hard at this particular picture trying to turn this small redtail surfperch into a calico or even a lost barred surfperch, but I don't think it is to be. I think his spiny dorsal is just laid down in the picture, making it look shorter than it actually is... But this is nothing to loose sleep over. Right??

     Over the next few hours, I probably caught 30 more perch. Among them were some really nice redtails:

THIS is a redtail Surfperch. Disregard the baby in the last picture...

          But I was much more excited about this little guy:

Spotfin Surfperch!

     I had to look it up to be sure, but it was a spotfin surfperch! And more importantly, number 100 on my species list! Many of my friends thought that 100 was my goal... silly friends... On we go to 200! Then 300... 
If you're really curious, (I won't be offended if you're not...) click here for the full current list of all my species and subspecies.

Silver surfperch. Species 101!

Pile Surfperch. Species 102!

     Somewhere along the way I made friends with this gang of strange cats:

Is it bad when they rear up an hiss?

     In the afternoon I fished off of the pier in the harbor and was greeted by a variety of species, some old, some new.

I broke out the micro-gear to see what these tiny fish were under the docks. They turned out to be just more shiner surfperch.

Here's a pacific staghorn sculpin. These are like the bluegill of the pacific coast. They're everywhere. To the point of being annoying...

Sight fishing for these big pile perch was one of my favorites of the day. This one was my biggest.

White surfperch. Species 103!

     I was hoping for a sanddab or a starry flounder, so I began casting into some promising looking sandy bottom, and proceeded to catch about 4,000 pacific staghorn sculpin and exactly 0 flat fish. Did I mention that the staghorns are annoying? 
     I did manage one last species just before it got dark though. And it ended up being my favorite fish of the trip. It was obviously a sculpin, but I had never seen one that had antlers before! It was a buffalo sculpin (so named because of it's "horns"), and it was one of the coolest fish I've seen. It had horns, huge cheek spikes that it stuck out menacingly, a great big pot belly (even by my standards...), and seemed to have scutes like a sturgeon. Perhaps strangest of all was the fact that the whole time I was holding it, it was vibrating just like a cell phone. No joke! Apparently it's a defense mechanism to help scare off predators. Did I mention that it was cool?! He quickly became probably the most photographed buffalo sculpin in the history of buffalo sculpins, then after his photo shoot, he grumpily vibrated back out to sea.

If you're wondering, those are not just for show. They're sharp!

     I don't know about you guys, but six new species is a GOOD day for this guy!
     The next day, I had grand plans of fishing from the other side of the jetty and catching some some kelp greenling and some coho salmon that were just starting to come in, but the forecast for Saturday ended up actually being an understatement. Mother Nature was officially off her meds again. It was just too windy Saturday morning to fish in Westport, even for me. So I packed up and headed inland to go chase some pink salmon. I had caught pinks before, but didn't have a good picture, so it needed to be done.
     I ended up at the Snohomish River, about a 1/2 hour north of Seattle (depending on traffic...). I'll spare you most of the details, but except for the 60 mph winds that came through in the morning and all the trees that blew down, this picture about sums up the activity on Saturday:

     Sunday was a new day though. The windstorm was gone and it didn't even rain too much. I soon had a few pinks, although they weren't quite as plentiful as I had hoped.

A much more inviting Snohomish River after the storm.

Don't ask me why they're called "pink salmon". I think they should be called brown salmon. Pink is probably more appetizing than brown I suppose.

     After catching a few pinks and being satisfied that I had gotten some pictures, I packed up and headed home Sunday afternoon. In hindsight I'm pretty glad the tuna trip was canceled given the ridiculous storm that hit on Saturday. Maybe next year I'll get another crack at them. Until then I'll be chipping away at the quest for 200 species!

Brookie's Chinookie

     Sockeye salmon in the upper Columbia River basin have made a huge comeback in the last decade or so thanks to habitat restoration and fish passage restoration to some key spawning grounds. As a biologist, this makes me very happy. As a fisherman, this makes me itchy to go catch some!
     We used to live pretty far away so I hadn't had a chance to try it before, but now we're about 45 minutes from arguably the best sockeye fishery in the lower 48! A couple weeks ago I got invited to head out and try my hand at catching some for the first time. My buddy (who's boat we were taking) understood the sort of action we were likely to encounter, so he suggested that I bring along my older daughter, who is almost as big of a fishing nut as I am. I don't know who was more excited as we readied our gear the night before. We got up bright and early at a mind numbing 2:30 to head to the boat ramp. I expected a groggy grumpy 8 year old at that hour of the morning, but I gently shook her shoulder only once and she popped up, grinned, and said "Let's go!"
     We got the boat on the water just as it was starting to get light out. We motored out onto the Columbia River just outside of the mouth of the Okanogan River where 100,000+ sockeye were patiently waiting for the Okanogan to cool down enough to continue their journey upstream. This pause in their migration makes for some absolutely silly fishing. We set out three rods on downriggers, usually about 20-30 feet down and began to troll.

Lake Pateros in the morning

We'll have to work on her rod watching skills...

     Being from the Pacific Northwest, I'm no stranger to salmon fishing. A normal day chasing salmon to me is mostly hours of boredom punctuated by a handful of spurts of excitement - on a good day. So never having experienced this particular fishery I had tried to give my daughter appropriate and realistic expectations about waiting for bites and not being disappointed if we didn't catch much. So as we began to troll I sat back and got comfortable, ready to wait it out.
     However, this was not typical salmon fishing by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe 10 minutes into our day, the rod closest to the kid started bouncing! My buddy set the hook and handed her the rod. I may be a tad biased, but I'd say she battled the fish like a champ! It made a couple little runs, and almost got wrapped in the motor, but she brought it in just fine! Soon the first fish of the day hit the deck. It ended up being a little Chinook, and my daughter's first salmon ever!

This is an important milestone in the life of a young fisherman (fisherperson?)!

      It then soon became obvious that our previous 10 minute lull in action, was actually the big dry-spell of the day. For the rest of the morning, no more Chinook bit, but it was literally nonstop action on sockeye. My daughter reeled in three or four, before I finally got my turn and brought in my first actual sockeye salmon. I've caught hundreds of kokanee, but never the anadromous version so I was pretty pumped too! The action slowed just a tad as the day wore on, but even so, we got several doubles, and even a triple hookup before calling it a day!

I wonder why they're called sockeyes. Their eyes look normal to me.

Apparently the sun was a little bright by this point.

Anyone want to play a game of 'Count the Boats'?

     We called it a day well before lunch time, icing down three limits of sockeye (that's 18 fish if you're counting along at home) and one bonus Chinook for the kid! Those, in addition to all the ones that didn't make it into the net (more than I'd care to admit...) made for hands down my best day of salmon fishing ever! I do however fear that the kid will be forever ruined, expecting salmon fishing to be like that every time. As we motored back to the launch, she (while sitting on an absolutely stuffed cooler) summed up our day pretty nicely, declaring "I just have one thing to say - WOO HOO!"
I'm pretty sure it doesn't get any better than that.

The aforementioned stuffed cooler.