Keep or catch & release sea run cutties?

[n8r1]

I fished the Necanicum Friday afternoon with mixed success. On my very first cast, I got a 11" resident cutt on a sz 14 Elkhair Caddis:

I was excited, thinking it would be a good day, catching that on the first try. I even got a 9" cutt from the same spot on my 2nd cast, same fly. 2 minutes on the water, 2 fish...going to be a great day right? Wrong.

After that it tailed off dramatically. I caught about 10 more cutts but they were all in the 6-9 inch range. Even spots where there are usually some decent sized trout produced only little guys.

The river was lower than I've ever seen it before. It's not much more than a small creek in some spots. Go back in October after some rain and you would swear it's a completely different river. Check out this shot taken from a cliff 25 feet above the water. Those rocks a few feet from shore were completely underwater last month. This is usually a great spot but with the shallow water there were no fish to be found.


After spending a couple hours on the upper river, I ventured closer to tidewater. I fished around that last big riffle before you get to the estuary, near the golf course. No luck there whatsoever. I think that the water is just so low right now, we need some rain before those fish start heading upriver to spawn. This is probably my last Necanicum trip until the bigger fish start making an appearance next month.

 

[brandon4455]

i catch and release em. agree with markcanby . sear runs are infact still recovering from overfishing but it probably wont get any better because so many people target these fish for food. id like to see it c&r on all coastal streams for cutties. but then again a lot of them are fataly wounded by salmon and steelhead fisherman and have to either be retained or thrown in the water,which is a damn shame

 

[SmallStreams]

A fresh searun will have the same deep red meat as a salmon. Excellent rich taste!

On the Necanicum, they won't be running until early September or the first rains (I spent last August learning that). During the summer, I've heard you can find them in the bay below the 12th St bridge, but I've not spent the time to personally confirm that (hopefully will make the time this year). A few fat searuns will poke into the lower river above tidewater in late August, but you'll fish 2 miles of river to find one big fish and it usually takes a little rain shower before that will happen.

As the season progressed last year, I saw far more coho & chinook than searun cutthroat, but caught way more cutthroat. In fact, I only landed one coho jack (released) and one small unclipped steelhead (released) and hooked one chinook (it threw the hook as I was banking it). IMHO, the cutthroat are far more aggressive in attacking lures than salmon or steelhead.

Keep or release? At a limit of 2 fish per day, why waste it on 8"-10" fish that will probably go to sea soon? Use the bag limit for the big ones.