Sockeye Wrap-Up

I didn't have time to send in a report during the season, as I tried
to juggle fishing, work and family without getting fired or divorced.
I kept good records of my trips, with depths, locations, hook color,
flasher type, etc. I put the data into Excel and did some pivot
tables to see if anything fell out. Hopefully this will help folks
(and me) remember what to do four years from now (or sooner)!

I managed to get out eight times. Once by myself, but usually with
one or more guests. We hooked 46 sockeye (had to be on long enough
to catch up to it and start fighting) and got 35 into the boat. The
kids lost fewer fish than the adults, maybe because they took a little
more time to fight them in!

We hooked 26 fish on red hooks, 10 on blue and 10 on black. Black and
blue worked best on sunny days or later in the day, but this may be
due to the fact that I believed that to be true and changed gear as
the sun got higher or brighter.

We hooked fish from 50 down to 90, going deeper as the day went on, but our most consistent depths were 70-80, which worked until noon, the latest we were ever out.

We fished above I90 only once, and had to work for fish. We fished
off the SW tip of Mercer island lots and did well. Later in the week
we concentrated our effort in the channel between Seward Park and MI, and caught ALL our fish in that area while trolling North, regardless of wind direction or sun/cloudy.

I set my black box to .740 digital, which gave me readings from .73
to .76 on my cables. I used the GPS on my Lowrance LMS350A for boat speed, and tried to keep it bouncing around 1.1 to 1.3 mph. We used 14 inch leaders to single 3/0 or 4/0 hooks, and ran the dodgers 3-5 pulls back of the clip.

Other variables like dodger/flasher type, prism tape, etc. didn't show anything significant on our catch. I also couldn't find anything when looking at the fish we lost versus got to the boat. We did have two fish roll on us and undo the leader from the curly-que snap at the end of one of our dodgers. We cut them off and put a Sampo snap swivel on the dodger, then clipped the leaders into that, which fixed the problem.

All in all, a very busy, fun season. I hope we don't have to wait four more years for the next one! All my kids will be old enough to go in a year or two!

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