HUNTING FISHING
Longtime Seattle fishing guide and restaurateur/bar owner Keith Robbins stands aboard his 23-foot Grady White. They can be seen on central Puget Sound waters with clients mooching the depths for kings and fly fishing the shallows for sea-run cutthroat, both rare techniques for the local charter fleet. (A SPOT TAIL SALMON GUIDE)
The Guide’s Life Even after 30 years and 2,500 trips, Seattle-based charter skipper Keith Robbins considers himself ‘the luckiest guy to walk this Earth.’ By Mark Yuasa
I
t started off like many summer mornings of a fishing time long ago. The salty air had a distinct pungent smell and seagulls cackled above the railroad trestle near the Ballard Locks Ship Canal, as we gingerly walked down the steep staircase covered with bamboo thicket bordering a rundown house on prime Seattle waterfront property. It was here on a slippery old floating dock tilting precariously into the water that I met Seattle native Keith Robbins, owner of A Spot Tail Salmon Guide (seattlefishingcharter.com), for the mid-July king salmon opener. Quite a fitting place, located a few doorsteps away from where the
venerable Ballard Bait House once sold live herring from a net pen during the fishing heyday of the 1970s and ’80s. After boarding his 23-foot Grady White boat, we slowly motored by the bait house’s tattered net pen before throttling past Ray’s Boathouse, another landmark now known for serving up kitschy seafood with spectacular waterfront views. But from the 1930s to the ’70s, Ray’s stood among 22 other longforgotten boathouses on Shilshole Bay and Elliott Bay hawking fishing tackle, bait, gas and more than 2,600 rental boats to salmon-hungry fishermen. During those long-forgotten summers you could literally walk across the bays filled with rental boats. In his younger days, Robbins and
his dad Burton would rent boats at Ray’s and fish off nearby piers. He was lucky enough to witness the tail end of Puget Sound’s fishing golden days, a time when you could plunk for steelhead below the Ballard Locks, salmon seasons were year-round affairs and catching a king wasn’t like today’s comparison of winning the lottery. “I’d go fishing a lot with my father and brother (Darryl) when I was a kid and this had a big influence on who I am now,” Robbins said. “I was so young I could barely hold the rod in my hands.” On many days each summer as a teenager, Robbins’ mom Norita would drop him off at the Golden Gardens fishing pier. “I’d be there all day, fishing off the nwsportsmanmag.com | AUGUST 2021
Northwest Sportsman 107
