Areas 10, 11 To Reopen For Chinook July 25-27; 7, 9 TBD

With enough hatchery Chinook left in the quota, Puget Sound’s Marine Areas 10 and 11 will reopen for three more days of July king fishing later this week, state managers announced early this afternoon.

“After reviewing catch estimates from the July 18-20 opener, we are able to reopen Marine Areas 10 and 11 for an additional three days, July 25-27,” said WDFW Fish Program Director Kelly Cunningham on his agency’s Medium blog.

The waters off Seattle and Tacoma were at 27 percent of the hatchery Chinook quota and 28 percent of sublegal encounters, and 9 percent and 2 percent, respectively.

Here are WDFW’s official fishing rule change notices for Area 10 and Area 11. (Note that the hatchery Chinook limit in Area 11 has been reduced in August and September to no more than one a day.)

As for Admiralty Inlet and the San Juan Islands, that is still to be determined, given these waters sit at 78 and 67 percent of their hatchery king quotas, according to WDFW.

 “We are consulting with our advisors to consider the situation for Marine Areas 7 and 9,” Cunningham stated. “With the record Chinook catch in Marine Area 9, we need to carefully explore the possibilities while staying within the available salmon harvest quota and/or encounter limits. We plan on making this decision later this week.”

WDFW reports 3,049 of the 3,900 hatchery Chinook available in the inlet were bonked over last week’s three-day opener, while 1,465 of the island’s 2,181 were during the same period.

This summer saw the king opener aligned on Areas 7, 9, 10 and 11, which stretch from the Canadian border south to the Tacoma Narrows Bridges, in an effort “to spread out angling pressure.” It essentially forces anglers to decide on fishing one marine area, or bordering ones, instead of spending early July in the San Juans, midmonth in Area 9 and late July in Central and South Sound. That may explain the relatively low catch of kings off Tacoma.