3RM Ep. 22 - How is the Fishing so far in 2026?

This week is just a QUICK Update on how the fishing is so far in 2026! 

Transcript

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Hi, you're listening to the Three Rivers Marine Podcast, a show that brings anglers and mariners down-to-earth advice that helps on and off the water. I'm Anthony Marisi, a fishing rep born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. I'm sitting down with the biggest names in fishing and boating to make your next adventure easier, safer, and more exciting. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Three Rivers Marine Podcast. I'm Anthony Morisi, the host, and as you can see, I'm here by myself today. I missed last week. I was pretty sick, so sorry about that. Feeling a little bit better, but kind of figured I would save my cold for myself. So I'm just here by myself and I'm going to do a relatively short update for everybody on some of the fisheries as we start kind of chugging along and having a little bit of different things to do. So there it is. The all-depth halibut fishing, so that means you know you can go offshore in areas one, uh, well, in area one, is expected to open for six more days. So we should see that announcement soon, but it should be June 8th, 9th, 15th, 16th, 22nd, and 23rd. So, you know, I think high gas prices and bad weather have kind of really limited people's opportunity to go fish halibut. I know that it has for me certainly up the coast, and we're not very close to hitting the halibut quotas, which is awesome. Um, I think a lot of people are also starting to wait since they open it up later in um August and September and that stuff for some nicer weather to go. Um, you know, our trip out there, we had we had very good halibut fishing, but we got beat up. So um, you know, that's pretty good. Uh in area one, anglers have harvested only about 6,000 pounds of halibut. So should be some really nice opportunity for halibut, especially as we get into those nicer summer areas. Also, this is the thing that I'm most excited about. Uh, area four got modified a little bit. So um the Dunsey and Duncan Rocks, which are the rocks just a little bit north of like Tattoosh Island, on a clear day, you can definitely see them both. They're not very far from each other. Those two rocks used to be outside of the 120 fathom uh or 20 fathom line. So you couldn't fish there on days that were close to halibut. Um, they changed that, so now it's open. Um, you can go and fish around those rocks. Um and yeah, there's there's a warning on there saying, like, hey, it can get kind of gnarly by the rock, so be careful. Um but you can go fish there for ling cod and rockfish and stuff on days that are closed to Halbut. So that I'm excited about. Um kind of that coast wide ling cod fishing has been really good, halbot fishing has been really good, rockfish has been good. Weather and cost of doing business have been bad. Um, so you know it hasn't been that crowded, but we have had good fishing. So if you know you can find a weather window and you feel like putting gas in the boat to go, I would definitely recommend it. Uh once you turn into the straits, area five. Um we fished in there a little bit. Halbit fishing was pretty good actually inside the straits. Um link odd fishing was really good inside. Uh you can keep three rock fish in there, but we really didn't fish rockfish inside area five. So I'm sure they're there. We just didn't target them. Um as you get down area six, seven, really all the way through. Link odd fishing has been a little bit more challenging from the people that I've been talking to. Uh a lot of the really, you know, locked-in charter captains are still getting their fish every day, but it hasn't been quite as much of a gimme as it has been in the years past. So um, you know, definitely come in, brush up on techniques. I know that fishermen's gold electric eels are still hammering fish out there, particularly in Sour Pickle and Greenling for the inside the Puget Sound. Um, but you are gonna have to figure out how to fish for them. Uh, you know, and the answer is not just get a spot lock bow mount, although that does help. Um, you know, you're gonna have to really maybe find some new bumps outside of possession um to go get Lingod, but that's just an added challenge. They're there, they're there for you to go catch. Uh, you're just gonna have to expand your skill set. Excuse me. Uh shrimp. Been pretty good. We went out for um the 24th and the 26th opener. We fished area seven. Um, and the 24th was fantastic. We hit our our tides just right, so we had full pots. We, you know, pulled one, limited the whole boat, and you know, went and did something else. Uh the 26th was we didn't hit our tides quite right, so we had to grind them out a little bit, but we did get all of our um shrimp limits and ling cut that day, but it was a full day investment to do it. It wasn't quite as um, you know, send the pot down for half an hour and pull up 500 kind of a thing. So excuse me. Um I think for the next set of openers, June 7th and June 8th, I will definitely be up in area 7 again. As I would recommend everybody else um who's shrimping to do the same. Although area six is gotta be probably some of the best shrimping in in the whole state. So if you know some uh spots on area six and the weather's good, you'll probably do just fine. Um June 1st is gonna be the Area 11 salmon opener, and that will open every day. So go and start salmon fishing, Tacoma, Vashan. Uh you know, come in. We got all the all the spoons, all the flashers, all the bait, anything that you could need to go and uh start fishing for salmon in Area 11. And remember, you know, the the area 10, area 9, uh Chinook is gonna be what it's gonna be this year. Um but we are gonna have really good coho opportunities. So, you know, let's keep fighting the good fight and take the wins where we get them. And the coho opportunity in the sound this year is gonna be awesome. So I'm really looking forward to being able to catch lots of silvers. Um, I guess uh go backwards a little bit. Area 12, Hood Canal shrimp was also good to great. Um a little bit more spotty in there. I did talk to some people that didn't get any, and then some people that said, Oh yeah, I mean, we had full pots in 10 minutes. So that's a little bit more just kind of like Hood, how Hood Canal goes. Um, but they're there if you want to go get them. There's there will be more additional days there, so um it's worth, you know, if you really like shrimp and it's worth learning how to fish shrimp um shrimp in Hood Canal, because you get a lot of opportunity there. Um yeah, I think lakes and rivers have been fishing fairly good. I think the sketch's starting to pick up for springers. So go take a jetboat ride and try and get yourself a spring Chinook. Um I think that's about all that I have for this one. Like I said, I'm gonna keep it short. Um and we'll get back more into the regularly scheduled programming and stuff like that as we get into next week. But hopefully just a nice little fisheries update for everybody, and uh feels good to be back. We'll talk to y'all next week. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Three Reverse Marine Podcast. We would like to give a special thanks to our sponsors, and run tackle, make your own bite window. Fisherman's gold products, everything we make, we fish ourselves. And Duckworth Boats, legendary adventure.