Winter black mouth fishing isn’t for the slight of heart. When you’re winter black mouth fishing you’re bearing bad weather, rain, fog, wind, and you have to find a Point to hide behind in order to fish. Often times you have to put in many hours just to get one or two fish that are keepers. But winter black mouth fishing can be very rewarding if you put in the time to figure out the different holes that hold fish.

There are many areas in the Puget Sound which have good black mouth fishing. Starting further south, area 13 offers great black mouth fishing around Point Fosdick and, Fox Point, and Gibson Point.

Fishing Point Fosdick you will want to do this when the tides and currents lighter the day you are fishing. However, the night before you want to look for a good heavy tide pushing the bait into the area.

You can troll this area from anywhere from 50 to 100 feet deep along the shoreline and around the corner of Point Fosdick.  Always try to troll with the tide or across the tide if you can.

If you don’t see lots of bait, don’t give up on. Often times black mouth will be down on the bottom rooting out candlefish (also called sand lance). This means you need to look for angled fish marks on your sonar right on the bottom.

No matter what black mouth hole you’re fishing you want to be sure, like the old saying says, in the mud and match the hatch. This means right on the bottom even bumping the bottom sometimes and fishing with a lure that matches the hatch. If you catch a fish you can get the fish to see what’s in its stomach. This will give you clues for matching the hatch.

Gibson Point

There are a couple ways to fish Gibson point, trolling or mooching. Each of them are good depending on the conditions. If you’re trolling Gibson point you want to focus on the edges of the small plateau found right off Gibson point which comes up all the way to about 60 ft of water. Troll the edges of this and then you can also troll down The reef that extends out into the center of the channel towards the shoal. Be careful not to get too close to the show because there are fish restrictions, check your regulations to know how close you can fish to the shoal. Winter black mouth will definitely hold in this area with an occasional big one being caught. If you’re a mooching start south of Gibson point and drift into and across Gibson point. There have been many anglers who have caught winter black mouth using the same pattern of drifting.  Between Gibson point in Fox point is another great place for trolling. In this area I like to troll with the current, right on the bottom, at about 90 to 100 ft deep. If you don’t see bait pay attention to small clusters on the bottom with fish arches