Fish Report!

Up at 5:00 AM and to the boat by 6:00 AM, it was fishing day. The reports were not that good from yesterday, the fleet had struggled to catch their limits. A limit is two fish, two Coho or one Chinook and one Coho. They fish Sunday through Thursday for salmon, and then Friday and Saturday it is bottom fish only. Today was our only day for salmon. We got to the boat and everything was ready. Don’s deckhand, Norby, had arrived early and had everything ready to roll. The weather was not the best. During the night the wind had come up and the ocean was a bit unsettled.

Don takes Sachi over the "BAR".

Hang on Bugger!!!


Caroline and Norby inspect the catch.
King salmon were generally caught deeper then the Coho, and they fought quite a bit harder. Caroline can tell the difference in the two fish by the way they act when caught. Kings tend to shake their heads a bit more then the Coho.

Two Kings and some Coho.
We would fish a drift, usually working down wind through birds feeding on the water. Birds tell you where the bait fish are and the salmon are usually feeding on the anchovies that make up the bait ball. We probably averaged two fish on per drift and we usually had three or four hits during that same time. In the end we boated seven fish two of which were Kings. If I had to estimate how many we had one and lost I would say we lost about ten. There were many reasons for losing the fish,mostly they just shook off. Also we probably boated about five native fish that had to be returned to the ocean.

Caroline cleans the catch.

We were back to the port by about 2:00 PM with our catch. We didn’t limit out, but that was OK. We have more than enough fish for big fish feed at home.

We got home and cleaned up, and then Don and I went into town and picked up pizza. We took a Jacuzzi stuffed ourselves with pizza and then went to bed. The movement of the boat continued on into the night, we finally drifted off to sleep.