Labor Day Weekend in the PNW - Humpy Madness

Puyallup River Pinks

It must be Labor day on an odd year in the Pacific Northwest because you can’t walk along any river bank in the Puget Sound without getting whacked in the head with a pink buzz bomb or pink marabou jigs. It’s a beautiful time of year, when all the rivers around the sound are lined hip to hip with amateur anglers slinging humpy specials, the banks are littered with beer cans and old hooks, and the meat snagging season is in full bloom. 

With an enormous run of Pink Salmon returning to Puget Sound this year, people with little to no fishing experience are able to go out and get their limits of salmon. The Skagit River, Snohomish River, and the Puyallup River, are three of the major hot spots where people are filling their coolers. Any pullout where you can find a couple feet of casting room is as good a spot as any.



Snohomish Pinks & Pink Marabou Jigs

We spent Sunday September 1st chasing pinks on the Snohomish River at a small pullout just a few miles upriver from downtown Snohomish. This secret spot only had about 25 cars parked there when we arrived to the river around 8:00 a.m. At first, there many fish surfacing, but before we could get a line in the water, they were gone. It was pretty quiet for about two hours, and then fish started rolling in again. We managed to hook three in about 20 minutes. They key is to catch it when the tides bring in more fish and have your lines in the water when the schools start running. I was unable to coax any with the fly, but managed to hook two in a few minutes on some ¼ oz pink marabou jigs I tied up a few days earlier.  Slow multiple twitch retrieves seemed to work well. Everyone was hooking fish for about and hour and then it died again. We had enough fish in the cooler to put the fillet knife into action so we called it a day.



The next morning we decided to go explore down south on the Carbon and Puyallup Rivers. I have fished crowds before, but not like this. I am not sure what I was thinking when I packed two fly rods in the car, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Both rivers looked like a tasty cup of Nesquick with no more than 1" or 2” of visibility.  The banks were lined with large men that were jerking and twitching so much trying to floss fish it looked like some sort of redneck line dance. I’d rather swing flies in the Sauk River in the woods in a down poor by myself and not get a bite than fish like this. Unfortunately, guys were flossing and catching fish in the mouth making this legal.  Hoards of people with stringers full of pink salmon and the occasional silver or king were walking down the streets along Puyallup River.  Corkies, pink yard, two to three feet of leader and a chunk of lead was the only setup I saw being used on the Puyallup River. If meat is your sole purpose of fishing, then buy a whole bunch of gear since you will lose half of it to trees, snags, and other people's fishing line, and head to the Puyallup river. If solitude, nature, and actual enjoyment is what you seek, stay far away.

If you have the ability to look past the crowds, humpies are very fun to catch and a great way to learn to catch fish.  Break out the smoker and look up that secret brine recipe and head out to one of these spots. After all, the more people that stick to the lower rivers chasing humpies, the less people that will be standing in my nice steelhead runs further up river.