If you are someone that keeps hearing about Puget Sound Blackmouth over and over again throughout the winter and spring, then this article is for you! There is even some bonus content about how the legendary Joey Pyburn likes to cut plug a herring, as well as a recipe for some amazing grilled Blackmouth Tacos.
The author with a 2025 opening day Blackmouth.
When I’m out on the boat, the first question I almost always get is what is a Blackmouth? You will probably hear a few different things, but it is not really up for debate. A true Blackmouth is a resident Chinook Salmon. They are immature, meaning that they do not have eggs or sperm sacs inside of them yet, and they are released from their hatchery at a later and larger size than normal. This makes them imprint into the Puget Sound and they do not migrate out to the ocean to mature. They are always around, but our main time of year to target them is in the winter, and in recent years, the early spring. The later into the spring that the season gets, the more likely you are to find a Springer, which will have egg or sperm sacs starting to develop for their trip back to their natal streams.
An excited angler brings a Blackmouth to the net in Area 10.
Defining what a Blackmouth actually is will help you successfully target them as an angler. Knowing that these fish don’t leave the Puget Sound and they express different feeding and traveling behavior than their migratory counterparts will help you catch them. Blackmouth salmon prefer to hunt close to sandy bottoms where their favorite food (candlefish) live. A successful Blackmouth angler will spend some time to isolate sandy bottoms between 40-200 feet deep, which is the general depth range to target Blackmouth.
Blackmouth spend their entire adult life in Puget Sound.
Once you have identified a sandy bottom, and ideally the presence of bait on your sonar device, the next step is to present your offering on the bottom. Sometimes having your offering even 5-6 feet of the bottom will not get a strike, but lowering it to within a foot of the bottom will result in a limit of fish. For all the grief that Blackmouth cause anglers in presenting an offering, they make up for it with their willingness to bite a wide variety of baits and lures.
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How to make your own Cut Plug Herring… Joey Pyburn's way:
I was fortunate enough to get to take some pictures and share with you how the best cut plug fisherman in the PNW prepares a bait.
1. The first step is to get your angles correct. You can see in the first picture that the thin knife is held at about a 45 degree angle to the baitfish. There is also a slight bias to the knife down from the head to the belly of the herring.
2. The next step is to slice the herring holding those angles in one slice. Sawing the herring will result in a mushy, uneven cut that will throw off the spin of your bait.
3. The next step in rigging is to pull the guts from the belly cavity of your herring and rig the back hook through the belly and pull it through. Then place your second hook through the leading edge side of the herring. You can move it closer or farther from the spine to get your roll right. For Blackmouth, the tighter the roll the better!
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Most anglers use spoons, bait, or hoochies with a flasher setup (you can also see the new Silver Horde Slide Hammer Sliding Spoons and Retrofit Kit at this link).
My favorite way to fish for a Blackmouth is with a 4” kingfisher spoon completely naked, no flashers, no added scents. When the fish takes, you get to fight the fish without any added drag, and I think it results in a much higher landing ratio than when you have a flasher in your setup. In general, you will find most anglers using spoons, bait, or hoochies with a flasher setup. If you are using a hoochie, or spoon, I would recommend that you use a maximum of 3 flasher lengths of leader between your lure and the flasher.
A beautiful day and a limit of Blackmouth. Left to right: Joey, the author Anthony, Tom, Kasey and Brock.
If you choose to run bait, I would use a minimum of 3 flasher lengths of leader between your flasher and your bait. The reason for this is that spoons, and particularly hoochies, are improved by being whipped around by a flasher, whereas it is a hinderance to the bait spin when it is too close to a flasher. Sometimes I will run as much as 6 feet of leader between my flasher and an anchovy. Some days one method will fish better than another, but they will all be able to put a nice limit of Blackmouth onto your boat!
These two videos describe in detail the techniques and gear to catch Blackmouth in the Puget Sound area:
MORE GREAT ARTICLES FROM STS:
PLUGGING BIG WATER FOR FALL SUMMER STEELHEAD - THE SNAKE RIVER SOLUTION - BILL HERZOG
STEELHEAD BRUSCHETTA SCRAMBLE - TIFFANY HAUGEN