Around these parts, the modern benchmark for a great fishing year was 2001. In that year, Columbia river springers hit a 25 year high, Puget sound chinook & coho crowded area streams, pink salmon were "every cast" thick, nearly 300,000 sockeye streamed into Lake Washington and winter steelhead fishing was smokin'. Now, ten years later,…
TOKYO (Reuters Life!) – A bluefin tuna, prized by sushi aficionados as a high-end treat, sold on Wednesday for a record price of nearly $400,000 in the year's first auction at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market. With the ringing of bells well before dawn, an auctioneer launched into a rapid chant as rubber-boot wearing men signaled…
I'm lucky enough to have a wife that enjoys the outdoors almost as much as I do, so when she asked "When are we going to go to Forks?" I didn't hesitate to hook up the driftboat and get the steelhead gear ready. It was more like a sprint than anything. When your wife demands…
One of my favorite hours of the the show since we began almost two years ago was last Saturday. We began by just telling a few fishing stories, sharing our favorite moments from 2010. Some were of a big fish, some were stories of checking off a bucket list fish, and some were of special moments shared…
A foursome of young bucks fell upon some good luck earlier this year as they were pulled from the icy waters and swift currents of Stephens Passage by a group of locals out to enjoy the last few days of recent sunshine. The deer were found far from shore, presumably fleeing one of the many black bears…
BY JEFF LUND I’m a seven last-casts type of guy. I set certain conditions that hopefully will qualify as excuses to stay riverside, or contrastingly provide reasonable closure. Sometimes the criteria is demanding, last cast unless I hook one or get a bite’. Others, less optimistic, ‘okay, last cast unless I see a fish’. Either…
At Mar Don Resort the concept of an "Off Season" is unknown. Potholes Reservoir is open year-round and even if it freezes solid, there is always something to hunt and fish for. In fact, we visited MarDon the second week of December and the "dead of winter" was anything but dead! The walk down to…
"You couldn't get Tobeck to come?", asked Mike Meseberg of Mar Don Resort as we shivered out of our skin in our layout blinds/coffins in the midst of four dozen full-body Canada goose decoys on Wednesday. My reply, "Nope, he's a lot smarter than we are." I was trying to convince myself that I'd much…
This past weekends Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission meetings yielded some positive results and well, some things that aren't so good. There was also some comic relief from the commercial fishing industry as one bottom dragger claimed that bottom "destroyers" are actually heroes because they "clean" the bottom of Puget Sound. There was also…
Forks, Washington Guide Mike Zavadlov with a chrome Bogachiel River winter steelhead I've been watching all the coastal steelhead reports lately like a cat staring at a bird. Reports of hammer-time steelhead action were pouring in with regularity. By last weekend my tail was switching back and forth in anticipation of batting some steelhead…