Boat Basin Fishing Derby

Westports Annual salmon fishing derby is still going on. Only illegal fish is Chinook, since that area is closed for them.

Derby Rules and Fees are here; http://westportgrayland-chamber.org/calendar.htm

I live here and I won't fish in the boat basin coho fishery any more.  Its a ghetto scene fishing for the coho there. This circus turns the marina into a third-rate meat hole. Don't mean to sound negatory, but I hate it. Those fish have no where to go spawn. They swim around in circles, dodging the barrage of spinners hurled at them as they swim by, and the ones that don't get caught eventually turn dark and just die in there. I have seen old confused coho in there go belly up and die right in front of me. That's pathetic!

Tough to get those fish to bite, too, as they feel harassed already. I think it is a waste of time to fish there. Its just a fake fishery designed to draw people out here as the tourist season tapers off to zilch.

I leave the place to the local kids, old timers who fish for the jacks from folding chairs, several guys who might share the same name, "Upton Ogood," and people who work in the marina area and hit it on the way home from work. There is a crew of regulars that spend many hours there, and they will get a few of those fish, to be sure.

I don't get it?  I have been to Westport once, on our road trip this summer, and saw the boat basin.  So there is a "run" of coho that come into the basin and just "hangs out"? Are they just a bunch of strays that get turned around and trapped inside the breakwaters? Or did they raise and release smolts out of net pens?  Is the basin fed by a small creek etc that used to sustain a run?  I guess my question is why/how are the fish there?  Seems like they have reduced a NW icon to planter trout status

Hatchery coho fingerlings are raised in net pens inside the boat basin and released there when they attain smolting size. They come back and    Its a "fake" coho run. The fish have nowhere to go spawn. I've seen 'em trying to leap into storm drain pipes dumping into the boat basin during a rain storm. It has been suggested that some may stray back out into the Harbor and head up a local stream to spawn. That's no good either, as some of us don't like to see these fish trying to spawn in the wild.

Its almost always some local who hangs out and fishes there all the time that wins the derby, too.
You don't have to enter the derby to fish for 'em.
Best bet is to hit it early and bobber fish for the jacks with anchovies, anyway. By "early" I mean early in the season (mid Sept). The jacks are in the vanguard of the run. Bring your folding chair and cushion and spike your coffee because you aren't allowed to drink beer in public on the docks.

Fish there are getting old and dour there now, anyway. It peaked already.