Puget Sound Fishing Report: Winter Patterns, Blackmouth & Coho Action
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Puget Sound Fishing Report: Winter Patterns, Blackmouth & Coho Action
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About this listen
We’re sitting on a classic winter pattern in the Sound: gray skies, light southerlies, and a tide that wants you on the water early and late. According to NOAA’s Puget Sound marine forecast, winds are running south 5 to 15 knots with waves 2 feet or less, plus on-and-off rain, so it’s fishable but dress for a wet ride. The tide tables for central Puget Sound show a solid morning high pushing into the low teens, then draining off through mid‑day before building again toward evening, giving you good current windows around both changes.
Sunrise is right around 7:10 a.m. with sunset a little before 4:40 p.m., so your “work day” on the water is short. That low winter sun, combined with today’s solunar forecast from sites like Tideschart and Tides4Fishing, lines up best action around first light and the last couple hours before dark, with a decent mid‑day bump as the moon moves.
Water temps are hovering in the upper 40s, which means blackmouth and resident coho are plenty active but not sprinting. You don’t need to rip gear; slower trolls and subtle jigs are getting bit. Reports this week out of Elliott Bay, Bainbridge, and down toward Point Defiance have been steady: mostly legal blackmouth in the 22–26 inch range with some shakers, plus a sprinkling of feisty 14–18 inch resident coho, and good limits of Dungeness for the folks dropping pots on the edges of the channels. Local tackle shops around Seattle and Tacoma are also talking about sea‑run cutthroat along the beaches, especially on the outgoing.
Best producers for salmon have been tight gear: 3–3.5 inch spoons in green/glow, Irish cream, and cop car patterns behind a green or purple UV flasher, trolled 80–140 feet in 120–180 feet of water. Hoochie and Ace Hi‑style flies in green/white or purple haze with a short leader are working when the bait is thick. For jigging, think 2–3 ounce metal jigs in candlefish colors, worked just off bottom on the flood. If you’re chasing cutts from the beach, small olive and white clousers, 1/4‑ounce Kastmasters, and little sand‑lance style plastics are money.
If you’re soaking bait, herring and anchovy strips are still king for blackmouth—run them tight‑rolling behind a flasher or mooched slowly on the edges of the rips. For crab, fresh salmon heads, rockfish frames, or oily bait combos are outfishing chicken right now.
A couple of hot spots to key on today:
• Elliott Bay and the edges off West Point: work the contour lines and bait balls on that morning high and early drop, especially along the shipping lanes.
• South Sound around Point Defiance and the Narrows: classic blackmouth water—fish the bottom 10–20 feet on the flood and set crab gear on the edges of the channel.
Inside waters like Rich Passage and Yukon Harbor are good backups if the wind comes up; they’ve been quietly giving up a mix of undersized and keeper blackmouth plus some solid crab.
That’s your Puget Sound fishing report from Artificial Lure. Thanks for tuning in, and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss tomorrow’s update.
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