Chinook Salmon Fishing in Friday Harbor, WA

Friday Harbor puts you in the middle of the Chinook highway. We cover 23 spots around the San Juans that hold these fish, including Hein Bank, Salmon Bank, Eagle Point, Cattle Point on San Juan Island, Belle Rock, Eastern Bank, Alden Bank, Colville Island at the mouth of Boundary Pass, and Iceberg Point off Lopez Island. The season runs in two parts. Resident blackmouth, immature feeder Chinook, hold through the cool months around winter herring and sand lance, giving you a broad bite from January into early spring. Numbers soften through late May and June, then jump hard in July and August as mature Fraser and Puget Sound fish push through Haro Strait. June through August is the peak.

Plan your day around light and current. Be on the water before sunrise and fish the first couple of hours hard, then come back as the evening light goes. Through the middle of a bright day the bite drops off. Fish moving water, too. You want about 1.5 knots or more, so work the run of the ebb or the flood and stay off dead slack.

Trolling does most of the work here. Run flasher and whole herring, trolling spoons or hootchies along the drop-offs and current lines in San Juan Channel, usually 60 to 120 feet down. Drift mooching a cut-plug herring on a banana weight works the rips and points, and metal jigs get down to fish sitting on bait in the deeper channel.