The day started out with another cloudy morning. although we quickly noticed what looked like patches of blue sky starting to break through. We headed out just past the limit of the bay into the Gulf to fish for salmon....we stopped in what looked like a parking lot full of boats all pulling salmon out of the water. things were slow at first but that didn't last long and within about 45 minutes we'd all caught our limit of 3 for the day - time to head out into deeper water for halibut!
The first stop found no halibut but a 6ft salmon shark (more on that later). 2nd stop was similarly slow; a couple halibut but mostly dogfish. Our 3rd stop (what the fisherman call a 'chicken ranch' since it's filled with plenty of small to average sized fish) was a halibut bonanza; everyone caught their limit of 2 within about an hour.
Since we had the extra time we moved on to another spot to troll for ling cod (what we called 'predators' - like the movie - since they're so freaky looking). You can only catch one per day; I dropped my line in the water and had a fish hooked in 30 seconds, so my ling cod experience was pretty short lived. I was psyched to get one though (37 inches, which believe it or not was the smallest one caught that day) since I'd had a couple on Wednesday that we had to throw back and I've heard they're quite tasty as fish n chips or fish tacos), and John got one too.
As you can see from the picture below we caught a MESS of fish.
All the fishing done, we headed back for the 2 1/2 hour trip back to port. On the way in we stopped at a rock to look at sealions.
We also passed this massive island that had a couple bunkers on the top which used to be manned year round to watch for illegal Japanese fishing vessels. Not a fun place to be stationed in the winter I'd imagine.
When we pulled into our slip a big tour boat had just let out and suddenly this mob of people developed around the boat to see the shark. Pretty funny stuff.
The sun was out all day as well; the first time we'd seen any sun at all this week. Although I have to admit, I'm going to be really glad to get back to seeing actual darkness and have my body on a regular sleep cycle!
Dinner was spectacular (as usual) at Rays Waterfront and we closed the evening with scotch (Clynelish 14yr) and cigars on the balcony. Spot on! View all the pictures here
No comments:
Post a Comment