Photo by Dave Vedder

You don't have to be a grizzled old-timer to remember when succulent, nearly indomitable, 30-plus-pound Tyee Chinook salmon were the prize early summer catch in Washington's coastal waters. As recently as the early 1990s, it was still possible to target mature early returning Chinook in some Puget Sound waters. Spring and summer Chinook populations have been in decline for many years, however, and even when waters such as Middle Channel Bank near Port Townsend remained open, traditional summer Chinook destinations such as the eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca, San Juan Islands and north Puget Sound were consistently closed until fall Chinook appeared in August. The other shoe dropped in 1999, when the federal government responded to the regionwide decline of all wild Chinook by listing Puget Sound and lower Columbia River Chinook as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Since then, coho have provided the overwhelming bulk of the summer salmon fishery in coastal waters and the western Strait, both in terms of the number of fish taken and in angling effort. Saltwater anglers closer to Puget Sound have focused most of their early summer angling attention on hatchery blackmouth. For the last decade, the best place for Evergreen State salmon fishermen to connect with a spring or summer Chinook has actually been in fresh water -- in southwest Washington's Cowlitz, Kalama and Lewis rivers.

It hasn't received that much attention, but anglers still have a chance to fish for early summer Chinook in saltwater in Washington. The fishery takes place along the Washington coast, and it is targeted at adult Chinook migrating south in late June and July. Unlike Puget Sound Chinook, the kings that return to rivers that drain the western flanks of the Olympic Peninsula are not listed under the ESA. And while southwest Washington Chinook stocks are listed, there is little natural production in the region any more, and nearly all of the salmon returning to Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay streams are cultured fish. Even more significantly, the vast majority of early-timed Chinook that support the coastal fishery are actually bound for the Columbia River or other rivers to the south, and they are also overwhelmingly hatchery kings. As a result, the state has been able to open a targeted, quota fishery along the coast without a significant impact on wild fish.

COASTAL FISHING TODAY
Of course, anglers old enough to remember the glory days on the coast won't have any problem confusing fishing in 2005 with the 1960s and 1970s. In 1974, salmon fishermen took 30,000 Chinook out of the Westport/Ocean shores area in June alone and 24,000 in July. The harvest at Ilwaco was slightly less -- 21,000 in June, nearly 16,000 in July -- but the harvest rate in early June was the highest on the coast, at nearly three Chinook daily per angler. In recent years, fewer than 15,000 Chinook have been recorded annually along the entire coast, and those numbers include fall kings as well as summer fish. Those numbers reflect both a decline in participation in the fishery and today's smaller bag limits.

Any way you look at it, having the chance fish for summer Chinook is a lot better than not being able to fish, as anyone who has ever tangled with a 30-pound king will tell you.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife manages coastal waters under Marine Areas (MA) 1 through 4, and they have all opened to Chinook fishing for several days in late June in recent years, and they remained open through summer unless quota numbers were attained.