Westport Salmon Trip

[GregE]

I'm working to get the Arima ready to go offshore but waiting for fuel sender parts and Bandaid has a shoulder surgery scheduled for July 20. After working on the garage most of Saturday it hit me that I should take her on a charter. Looking at the tides it was high at 6AM so the bar should be much more comfortable than last year's high Ebb pounding.

Now optimism is calling Sat afternoon for two spots on Sun but Westport Charters just had a cancellation. Trying to organize for the trip and get to sleep for a 3:30 wakeup is frustrating but at 5:25 I'm in line cheking in for the MIss Nickle and soon we are following the pack heading across the bar.




We went out about 4 miles and fished just W of Oceon Shores all day. I'm plotting with my handheld Garmin and found that all the buoys are already plotted. The water was fairly flat until after low tide but the cloud cover stayed all day.

Several fish were taken on our first drift - mostly good size Kings with an occasional wild Coho that stayed in the water CPT Robert would repostion back near the same spot many times and other than one triple things were fairly slow- especially for the 5 of us on the bow of the boat. Nothing other than one Pacific Hake I caught ( yeah I was going a little deep exploring but 80 pulls in 150' of water shouldn't reach the bottom dwellers )



Finally BAndaid hooks and lands a nice King. Here she's trying to 'long arm' her fish



And a more accuarate perspecitve:



Then things were slow for a couple hours with an occasional dogfish keeping the young guys excited..

I'm tired and sitting on the bench at the front of the cabin when Bandaid announces my pole is bouncing a bit. Reeling up the slack I feel weight and set the hook and announce "it doesn't feel very big" which must have insulted the fish who took off for Japan. Following along ducking under other poles is always a challenge but the deck hand Alex and Cpt hustled along keeping things clear and soon we had this football laying on the deck. This crew is top notch and I really recommend them if you are looking for a a charter.






A couple more fish were landed before it was time to head in resulitng in 14 kept for 21 poles- not a steller performance but all of them were good size including a couple that probably went over 20#. This was the first King I've caught in over 40 years.



Ours weren't the biggest but will be a nice addition to the freezer and I spent much of the day watching how the numerous small boats conducted themselves. "One of these days" we'll be out there among them.

[GregE]

I did not get a weight but the hen was 30 7/8" L and 22" G. the buck was 31" and 19".



A nice pair Tup:



I think the color is great too. Gonna have some for dinner tonight.



We ate some last night.

[Reflex]

Wow, that looks like a lot of fun!