WILD BLOG: Looking at salmon through untainted eyes ...
POSTED Aug. 20, 2009 / 8:30 a.m.

You know who you are.

Your unwavering prejudice. The nasty stares, the low muttering when we pass by. The distaste for being around those unlike yourself. The biased, dark hatred.

It’s all about being a different color.  

You are green. We are pink.

How does one develop such hatred?  From years of hanging with the wrong crowd: those who will fish only for Chinook. Nothing wrong with them - the darts, the hoochies, the spoons, all with some manifestation of green. All Northwest anglers love to target kings. But this passion begins and ends with one species of salmon.

Limited, and a bit sad.

Chinook-only anglers are missing a rare treat we only get for a few weeks every two years. Anybody who says that taking a light rod and twitching a jig or tiny Buzz Bomb and getting double-digit hookup days is not more fun than watching the Dallas Cowboys lose by 50 points is full of it.

When a pink is caught on a heavy downrigger rod, 25 pound test, and an 11” flasher ... yeah. A twisting irritation that must be removed, unceremoniously winched right in. Not  the least pleasurable and only moderately more exciting than a glob of seaweed.

Break out your heavy trout spinning rod or light steelhead bobber and jig rod and, well, totally different story.

Tainted, you king elitists are. You need to se this fishery through the eyes of those who, for the lack of another description, do not know any better.  The youth, the ones who do not live anywhere near the Northwest, and those who rarely, if ever fish. These are the wide eyed, the ones who know nothing more than a wild, chrome salmon is sizzling around, barking line off the reel.

Case #1: My 11-year-old son, River
Yes, he’s caught kings, right here by the house off Point Defiance. But try to keep a youngster used to the flea-on-crack frenetic pace of  Nintendo to watch a bent rod pegged in a downrigger for hours on end doing nothing. Yeah. You find ways to not lose his interest.

Fast pace is the only pace for kids. He loves to fish kokanee, only because the action is normally fairly fast.

Get him casting a 9-½ foot, 4 to 8 Lamiglas light steelhead jig-style rod with 8-pound test tied to a ¼-ounce hot pink-head jig with a bright pink mini hoochie, throwing into pods of rolling, leaping salmon and hooking 20 hot fish in a morning between 3 and 8 pounds and well, you will have created an angling monster like myself.

The non-stop excited chatter, the all-too-frequent exclamations (that illicit chuckles from nearby adult anglers) about the presence of salmon milling around. Yelling louder than anyone when he sets the hook. Dragging my ass out of bed, scurrying around a dark house yammering “Humpieshumpieshumpieshumpies Daaaaaaaaad, hook up Edgar and let’s GOOOOOOO!!!!!”

He gets it.

He loves pink salmon for what they are. For all the right reasons, untainted by the seemingly necessary chest-beating, member-measuring posturing by saltwater salmon anglers.

Case #2: My friends from southern California
They visit several times a year - usually for a winter steelhead trip and one for summer saltwater salmon -  and think the pinks are the end-all, beat-all greatest thing on the end of a 6 weight fly rod since, well, ever.

These are guys who fish tuna, dorado and in Cabo six times a year. Travel to Panamanian countries for sailfish. Florida for tarpon. 

They get it.

By the end of the month, the pink fishery will morph from simply being good at the beginning, great a week later. As I write this, the action is badass and in one week, one word cannot describe the hotness of the bite. Spectacular?  No. Ridiculous? No.

Specdiculous.

Write it down, the one word that describes the saltwater pink salmon fishing in south Puget Sound.  Yeah, you can use it on your buddies.

The 4-1-1 on Humpy 101
A bit on technique tips.

Humpies travel shallow and prefer a slow presentation. Casting a ¼-ounce jig is undeniably the most productive technique, and dare I say entertaining. Think of course hot pink as the primary color: hot pink jig heads, attached to a hot-pink mini squid.

One knot, cast. Let the jig settle for a second, then “twitch and reel”, hop the jig swiftly upward, stop a beat allowing the jig to sink, then repeat back to your position. The little salmon always strike on the drop. Your reeling pace should be one revolution of the handle every second. 

Fly anglers, use a lightly weighted small hot-pink fly on an intermediate clear tip, 8-pound tippet. Retrieve should be a “one two, one two” short 2-inch rapid strips imitating swimming krill. Cast 10 feet in front of moving fish.

Start your day a few hours before high tide.

Where? Sigh, okay ... the beach north and immediately south of Browns Point, Dash Point and Redondo for the bank bound. Boaters, try Redondo, the lower Duwamish, around the Tahlequah ferry landing on south Vashon Island or any of the waterways in Commencement Bay around the mouth of the Puyallup River.
 
And in review ...
Let’s review.

1. Nearly a million wild, chrome bright, aggressively biting scrappy salmon ...

2. within minutes of a major metropolitan area ...

3. that are borderline extravagant on the barbecue or in the smoker ...

4. with calm water and great weather.

Best of all, I cannot think of any other fishery, at any other time of year to introduce your young son or daughter to the adrenaline rush of a salmon strike. 

For those who still cannot get enough “trolling practice”, who will fish for kings only come Hell or high water, and who would rather have his tongue pressed to a belt sander than purposely target pinks, appreciate the humpy for what it does for our rivers. Thousands of carcasses feeding baby coho, steelhead, chum, cutthroat and yes, your one-and-only Chinook.

Can’t we all just get along?

Metal To The End,
-Mr. Humpy Know It All

“ The man who claims to know it all
Is the man who knows the least.”

-Oscar Wilde