The weather was the story this spring as we’ve had some systems move through that have kept the wind whistling and the water churning. The good news is that there have been good numbers of nice cohos and the occasional king or lake trout offshore in 150 – 250 feet of water. Most of these fish have been caught from 90 to 130 feet down. Apparently they’ve been feeding heavily on freshwater shrimp, and that has the cohos well below their normal range. This is a new one on me, and I am curious as to how it’ll affect the fishery this season. For the moment, it’s good though as we don’t usually have this many coho in the area after the first week of May. Good numbers of kings and browns have been caught on a few occasions inside of 60’ FOW so far this month too with kings up to 16 lbs showing up in coolers.
Early in the month load up with your favorite steelhead spoons. My top choices are the Fireball, Rodman, Gold Bladed Orange Crush and Smash Mouth patterns on Stingers and Super Slims pulled on short lead cores of 1 – 5 colors in length. I like to head out and work the surface slicks 4 – 10 miles off shore. A good tactic to try is to set up inside the colder surface waters at daylight with down riggers and divers set to work the 30 – 75 ft range in search of early morning, active kings. A white paddle with an Oceana fly on the deep rod and Hello Darlin and Blue Dolphin patterns on the higher out downs is a solid starting menu. Point the boat west, start trolling at around 2.3 – 2.5 mph and gradually increase your speed to as high as 3.7 as the sun comes up and the surface temp goes down. By mid-June, if we have normal weather, this plan will become nearly impossible to follow as the surface will have warmed and become uniform with few surface variations to find. It’s now time to work the bottom in 80 – 120 FOW and search for trout. Dodgers and flies, squids and Spin’N’Glo’s will be the primary choices when searching for these fish. A slow presentation in the 1.6 – 2.4 mph range will also be in order. By the end of the month, there will likely be good numbers of skamania hanging around the piers that will offer another option early in the morning.