FEATURE: Time to fly the friendly Sky for summer steelhead, Chinook
NEW June 22, 2009 / 10:45 a.m.

SULTAN, Wash. - The whisper of a hot summer steelhead bite hits the small town of Sultan, Washington like a Grateful Dead concert.

On off weeks, the hottest thing in town is the Frisbee-sized cinnamon roll at the Sultan Bakery. But 24 hours later - after the chatter of a hot steelhead and summer Chinook bite hits the internet chat forums - the gravel launch under the Sultan River Bridge blossoms with glowing red trailer lights and aluminum sleds as the Sky above the town of Monroe turns into the biggest side-drifting party in western Washington.

This particular section of the Snohomish River’s biggest tributary isn’t a fishery for solitude-seekers. Everyone from Tacoma to Bellingham is well aware that the Skykomish has produced a 2,000- to 3,500-fish steelhead harvest most years since the 1980s. Add a relatively new two-hatchery-Chinook limit to the mix and you have exactly what you’d expect from a productive salmon & steelhead fishery within an hour’s drive of 3 million people.

“Pressure can be monstrous, for sure,” says Scott Weedman, owner of 3 Rivers Marine in Woodinville.

Almost in the same breath, though, Weedman spells out exactly why it’s well worth the effort to fly the friendly Sky, even when the river looks and sounds like the final turn at SeaFair.

“Is this one of the best fisheries in the Pacific Northwest? I think so,” he says. “Even in the past couple of years when the steelhead fishing has been down, the Chinook fishing has been really good. And you’re catching them both side-drifting, fishing the same bait in the same water. It’s pretty cool.”

’09 and beyond: This season, perhaps more than anytime in the past 20 years, the pressure will be off the Sky, thanks to the historic July 9 Chinook re-opener on the Skagit River, and a new 45-day summer Chinook season in nearby Port Susan and Possession Sound.

Come July, when Snohomish and Skagit County fishing options blow wide open, Skykomish steelhead and Chinook anglers will have more room than they’re accustomed to.  

That’s just fine with Weedman.

“If I had to pick a month to fish the Sky, it’d be July,” he says. “We catch a lot of steelhead in July, and the Chinook fishing is at its best. We’ll catch more kings side-drifting in July than any other time. Plus, it looks like we’ll have good, fishable water all the way through July, where in past years it was too low to fish by Fourth of July.”

And in contrast to the past five years – when steelhead fishing has been a notch below its most recent heyday of the late 1990s through 2002 – several signs point to a strong summer-run opportunity this season. For one, the 2009 return class is built on a 2007 smolt release of over 160,000 in the mainstem Sky, which is consistent with releases from years when the Sky has fished the best.

Also factor in the return from the biggest smolt release ever from the Sultan River (28,000 in 2007) for a total of almost 190,000 outbound summer runs. Survival rates of Puget Sound steelhead have admittedly dipped over the past several years, but WDFW is still expecting a return of 3,000 fish, which is music to the ears of Sky vets (especially when you throw in 4,800 forecasted Chinook to boot).

“If we get 2,500 to 3,000 (steelhead) back, that’ll mean a real good, consistent year,” Weedman says.

Water level-headed: Recent history has served up the yin and yang of water conditions on the Sky, ranging from “too damn high, too damn dirty” to “too damn low, too damn clear”. When the Sky drops below 5,000 cfs and gets air-clear in early July, the bigger, deeper, boilier holes come into play as both steelhead and Chinook tuck in out of the clear, sun-blasted water and hunker down tighter to the bottom.

“When the water gets like that, you have to start thinking about different ways to access those fish in deeper water,” says Eli Rico of Hot Shot Guide Service. “You really can’t fish those bigger, boilier holes with an inch of lead like you do the shallow stuff, because your bait never gets to them. That’s when you might start thinking about putting on more lead, maybe back-bouncing to them with a 2-ounce cannonball, 1/0 or 2/0 hook and a 4-foot leader.”

Those bigger holes are where you’re most likely to tie into a bigger Chinook. While smaller Chinook (7- to 15-pounders) are about a 50/50 shot when you’re side-drifting shallow water for steelhead, the Sky’s bigger kings favor deeper water. And, according to Rico, they’re not necessarily going to hide out in big, slow-moving pools.

“I don’t personally think they’re as much like a fall Chinook as a springer,” he says. “I won’t spend much time fishing ‘lazy’ water for them. It might be a little bit contrary to what everybody else does, but I like to fish a little bit harder water if I’m specifically looking for Chinook.”

You can also switch up to floats and eggs and stay with the more mid- to shallow corners when water is skinny, but pay attention to spots that get a little early-morning or late-afternoon shade, and definitely downsize to smaller baits and Corkies, and fluorocarbon leaders. 

Ground Zero: The 6-mile stretch between the Wallace River – just above Sultan – and Ben Howard is Ground Zero for the North Sound free-drifting explosion, and it gets hammered plenty hard by both guides and private sleds.

It’s not like the Cowlitz, though. Boats here are spread out over a wider area, and you won’t see three dozen boats mindlessly fishing the same half-mile run a la Blue Creek, over and over and over and over again.

Rico’s answer to the heavy traffic here is to fish it in the evening, long after everyone else has re-trailered and split for the day.

“You do get a bite first thing in the morning, but those fish get picked off pretty quickly,” he says. “My money time is in the evening, from 4 to 7 p.m., when everybody is gone. If you wait until after work and get on the water around 4 or 5, you have 1/10 of the traffic and a prime-time evening bite. You have fish in lower river sitting below Lewis Street all day and they don’t make it above Lewis Street until afternoon or evening. That same group of fish is what the early-morning guys hammer on when they get there the next morning, but I’m fishing on them the night before, when nobody else is there.”

Movin’ on up: Above the Sultan, from High Bridge near Gold Bar to Wallace Flats, drift-boaters can absolutely massacre steelhead backing bait divers and eggs or shrimp.

“I think you could catch a limit every day if you floated from High Bridge, and nobody does it,” Weedman points out. “A guy fishing a bait diver from a drift boat could just hammer the steelhead, and he’d have to turn loose plenty of Chinook. He’d also do really well with smaller Kwikfish, like a K-11. That water up there is awesome, and it doesn’t get any jet boat traffic above Wallace Flats.”

Egg-biters anonymous: If you think you’ve heard the word “eggs” a dozen times already, it’s because you have. Plugs, jigs, shrimp … bah. Throw ‘em out the window. Yes, you can catch both steelhead and Chinook on plugs, and, yes, you’ll scratch out the occasional Sky summer-run on shrimp or a pink worm, but day in and day out, your only gotta-have-it bait is well-cured eggs.

“It’s all about quality eggs, and I find that the Sky fish prefer smaller eggs, like pink or springer eggs,” Rico says. “I like to fish the artificial stuff as much as anybody, but the guy who has quality eggs and the right presentation is going to hook fish consistently. You go fish it with something else one day and come back the next day with eggs, and it’s night and day. You go from ‘What, no fish?’ to ‘fish on, fish on, fish on’. The kings, especially, are all about the eggs here, and they have to be the right size, the right color, and with the right scent.”

Size and color are, of course, dependant on clarity. Early in the morning or later in the evening bright red, quarter-sized gobs of eggs and flame orange or bright pink Corkies are the best choices, especially early in the season when there’s some color to the water. That changes in the bright afternoon sunlight or when water gets low in July - then it becomes crucial to scale down to pinky-sized eggs in lighter, more natural colors and smaller Corkies.

“I get a lot of hits when I have two little berries instead of a bigger cluster, especially when that water gets really clear,” Rico says.

Rigging: Standard Sky drift rig is double No. 4 hooks, size 12 pink or Orange UV Corkies, 4- to 5-foot 8-pound leader to a 3-way swivel and up to 2 inches of 1/8-inch hollow-core lead. Weedman likes a 10-pound hi-vis mainline, Rico prefers 12-pound.

-JS