Chum fishing up, coho slows as salmon season heads toward winter

Local rivers are showing plenty of chum salmon available, while coho fishing appears to be as expected according to officials from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“From the numbers we got this week, there appears to be a lot more chum returning than predicted. And the coho numbers seem to be where we thought it would be, which is so-so,” said Mike Scharpf of the WDFW’s Montesano office. “And it looks like if you are targeting chum, it’s potentially much better than we thought it would be. But for coho, I think we did a pretty good job with providing a one-fish limit for coho.”

Scharpf said according to commercial sampling data, there is “quite a bit more” wild fish available than hatchery fish. He also stated that he is seeing a better quality coho salmon along the Chehalis basin.

“The quality of the coho coming back are larger fish than what we’ve seen in the past couple of years,” he said. “To me, that is a very promising, good sign, particularly for the future.”

On the Humptulips River, Scharpf saw an increase in the number of anglers typically fishing the river in September, but the numbers have dropped off over the past month.

“(The number of anglers) dropped back to a little lower numbers than what we experienced last year. I don’t know if that is because more systems are opening up or there were other opportunities going on,” he said. “The clam digs did bring some extra people, and the report was a lot of people stopped by the river after digging clams to see what they could catch.”

Scharpf added that he believes the fishing is on-par with what is normally experienced in local rivers based on the amount of phone calls, or lack-thereof, he receives.

“I haven’t heard from hardly anybody, and that tells me it must be OK,” he said. “If it was really good, or really bad, I’d get all kinds of calls. If I don’t hear anything, it seems as though (the fishing) is meeting people’s expectations.”

Looking ahead to winter, Scharpf hopes to see some rain push more coho into the rivers and doesn’t foresee a good steelhead season on the horizon.

“I know our steelhead numbers are going to be pretty poor, so going into winter I do not expect a very good steelhead season,” he said. “I’m hoping as we get some more rain events that will push some more coho into the rivers and that will increase our catch rates. We’ve really only had one or two fresh flows this year, and that typically moves our coho into the rivers. Early on, we had huge numbers from what anglers were reporting. … (the drop in coho numbers) is currently due to flows. We just haven’t had the flows.”