This is Artificial Lure bringing you today’s Puget Sound fishing report for Friday, August 15th, 2025.

Sunrise hit at 6:05 AM, with sunset coming up this evening at 8:20 PM. If you’re headed out, tides are gentle today, with an early morning high around 7:30 and a mellow outgoing through noon, giving you prime water movement for salmon plugging or casting jigs near local beaches. According to the National Weather Service, we’re under a small craft advisory till tonight, so expect rain and those south winds gusting to 20 to 25 knots, with waves mostly under 2 feet inside the Sound, but play it safe and keep an eye on the flag if you’re in a smaller boat.

This is the meaty middle of August – salmon season is red hot. Early morning reports like the one from the Doghouse charter show limits of salmon by 8:30 AM. Twenty coho and pinks boxed before most of us have finished our coffee, with action so steady even the deckhands broke a sweat. Fresh fish are still pushing in, and both pinks and coho are in top shape. This is an odd year, so pinks are riding high: look for them close to shore, especially on moving tides.

Coho are chasing bait just a hair deeper – 40 to 80 feet on the downrigger has been the ticket from Edmonds down to Browns Bay, and over to the mouth of the Nisqually. Early risers are seeing the most consistent bite, so get lines down before the sun’s over the ridge.

FishingBooker and recent Bremerton charters report August and September as prime for big coho and huge pods of pinks, especially for shore-casters at Point No Point and Lincoln Park. Beach anglers: grab an 8 to 10 foot rod, tie on a pink Buzz Bomb or Rotator, and cast with a steady retrieve. Jigging works best early when fish are shallow, but as the tide falls, switch to a 2-inch spoon – silver or chartreuse – to mimic those frantic baitfish. For boaters, trolling herring or small hoochies behind a flasher is steady money, but don’t ignore pink plastic squids or mini Rotators tipped with a tiny chunk of shrimp for pinks.

Commercial trollers offshore, as reported by the coastal fleet, are scoring big on coho and albacore, but all that action is filtering into the Sound as schools ride the current in. Expect more coho piling in with every tide over the next couple weeks.

Dungeness crabbing is still open in many Marine Areas and harvest has been fair to good, with Gone Fishing Northwest offering up advice: chicken backs or salmon heads in your pots, dropped near eelgrass beds, and give them a solid soak to outcompete the neighbor’s gear.

Chinook numbers in Marine Area 5 reached 86% of the catch guideline after August 3, so expect some selective closures or retention adjustments, but there’s still plenty of action to go around, especially early and late on the tides.

For you fly folks, the morning low slack in nearby estuaries or tributaries like the Snohomish are producing sea-run cutthroat and the odd chum looking for an easy meal. Small epoxy minnows or sparse Clousers in olive and white have been reliable producers.

Two hot spots today:
- Point No Point for epic action on beach pinks and coho, with tide changes and an incoming push igniting bite windows.
- Brown’s Bay and the Edmonds oil dock edge for boaters trolling 40 to 80 feet, especially if you can dodge the rain and ride the soft morning south breeze.

And one more tip – as the weather keeps things wet, fish stay active longer into the day. Keep rain gear handy and work your way down the current with the tide for best results.

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