CONTINUED LOW RUNS of wild kings and certain coho stocks will limit salmon fishing seasons despite good coho projections, state fishery managers announced.
The state’s 2021-22 salmon fishing seasons, developed by treaty tribes and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife were tentatively set at the end of a week-long Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting held via webinar.
Puget Sound
It doesn’t appear that a winter blackmouth season will return to the Strait of Juan de Fuca in 2022.
Fish and Wildlife said that continued low returns of Stillaguamish chinook and Snohomish coho, as well as Skagit spring and Skagit summer/fall Chinook, will again impact fishing in several Puget Sound marine areas.
Winter salmon fishing will again be mostly closed in East Juan De Fuca Strait (Marine Area 6), Admiralty Inlet (Marine Area 9), and Hood Canal (Marine Area 12), with some limited hatchery chinook retention opportunity available in Marine Area 11 in November and December.
Conservation concerns include strict protections for Stillaguamish and Skagit fish, which are expected to reduce catch quotas for summer fisheries in Marine Areas 7 and 9.
There will be no salmon fishing in the Stillaguamish River in 2021, and instead there will be a game fish fishery.
Most Puget Sound marine areas will once again open for the summer season beginning in July or August.
The 2021-22 season also includes the return of pink salmon to Puget Sound. Pink salmon will be part of the two-salmon daily limit in all marine areas, and many river systems have bonus daily limits of pinks depending on the expected return.
Ocean angling
Neah Bay (Marine Area 4) and La Push (Marine Area 3) will open June 19 for a king-only fishery, then switch to a chinook and coho fishery beginning July 4.
North of Cape Falcon, the overall non-Native total allowable catch is 58,000 chinook coastwide compared to 54,000 last year and 75,000 marked hatchery coho compared to 28,500 last year.
Recreational fisheries along the entire Washington coast will have access to a 27,250 chinook quota compared to 26,360 last year, and a marked coho quota of 70,000 compared to 26,500 last year.
Despite the increase in coho projections, low expected returns for coastal coho limited quotas there, particularly on the north coast, so don’t expect a long coho season out of Neah Bay or La Push once again.
