Rudy's Fishing Blogs

2007-07-31T14:15:00.000-07:00

Ocean Salmon Fishery off of Westport Washington

Wow Almost one year later and I am posting. Folks, I know a lot of people dream about being a CEO or running your own company, but your free time sure suffers! Do you work to support your life or do you live to support your job? I really have to rethink my priorities!

Well Let's see, in the past year I can recall fishing 4 times. I did catch a nice steelhead in the Salmon River using my ultralight outfit. that was a blast. I should dig up a pic. Ah found one. That's a GLooims 4'6" spinning rod rated for 1 to 4 pound test. I cheated and had 8 pound fireline on it. But it still was a blast. Caught in on a black marabou jig with a pink worm under a bobber. It was dark out and we didn't want to use a flash so the pic is dark. But we guess it at 12 to 14 pounds. We don't know for sure because we released it.

I went out in the ocean in my boat once or twice. here's my wife with a pesky dogfish!
In June I went fishing with Calvin-san and managed some nice rockfish and Ling Cod off of Westport. Thanks Calvin!

But the excitement for the year was trolling for salmon 10 miles or so off Westport, Washington with Charlie. The first day we manage two nice hatchery cohos and a king. He invites me out again and this day changes many things about the way I thought about King Salmon fishing. As most of you know from my other logs www.alaskafishinglogs.com that I LOVE everything about fishing in Alaska. I guess you could say I was an Alaska snob when it came to fishing.

Then I moved down to the coast of Washington and wow...Alaska's great but it doesn't have the monopoly on the good fishing. First I learn that the silvers here are bigger by far than anything I was used to in SouthCentral Alaska. The fall cohos here easily average in double digits. What? You can catch Kings here too? Cool. Then I discovered steelhead fishing. Wow those fish battle hard.

But this last King I caught was simply amazing in many regards. First of all it took out more line than any other king I have ever hooked. I was using thirty pound test gear and it nearly spooled me. We were fishing downriggers in 200 feet of water with the bait down at 90ft. We used whole herring with a clip (helmet).

Imagine my surprise when I get a glimpse of the fish and it looked to be no bigger than 15 pounds. We get him in the boat and it is one of the oddest looking King I have ever seen. Turns out to be 24 pounds at the dock. The only kings that I can recall from Alaska that even remotely looked like it were the kings from the Yukon River. This fish was FAT! It almost looks like a spawner humpy except of course is it is chrome bright and its 24 pounds. The angle I am holding the fish doesn't do it justice. It has a huge belly on it and we cut it open expecting to see it just loaded with bait and the stomach is empty. the pot belly look was due to the fat in the belly. It is by far the best eating King I have ever had...period. I gave a piece to one of my friends and he just about burned his house down when he grilled on an indoor jen-air grill. He turned his back on the fish and it went up in flames because there was so much oil in the fish.

We manage another small King, and 6 or 7 cohos keeping two hatchery fish (Native Cohos must be released). Though most of the cohos are still 5 or 6 pounds, Charlie nails one that was 12 pounds. Huge for this time of year. These same 5 or 6 pound cohos will be in double digits by September. These suckers grow fast!!!! So we limit out and we are back at the dock by 1pm.

On the way back I ask Charlie to stop in a Bay so I can jig up some anchovies. He asks "why do you need bait?" uhhhh no.....Its funny because my wife prefers to eat the anchovies over most salmon. So we jig up a couple of dozen. My wife has a way of butterflying them out and cleaning them and taking the main backbone out without a knife. Deep fry them with a little breading and the small bones are soft enough to eat. Kids love them and they are a great source of calcium. They are tasty little critters but not much fight to them since they are only a couple of inches long! Actually with an ultralight rod if you hook 4 or 5 of them at once on a sabiki rig, they have some weight to them. But I suppose ya got to keep the wife happy!

Thanks Charlie! Hard to believe after so many years of fishing I got a whole new perspective in a field I thought I knew a lot about.

2006-09-27T19:34:00.000-07:00

Alright. I have to do a better job of keeping this page updated.

I actually have been fishing for the past 3 months. I have been using a boat I bought last year and running it around Westport. Not much to report. Mainly rockfish, undersized ling cod, dogfish, and LOTS of anchovies. I should have taken a camera but fishing by myself , I never seem to have it ready.

I do have one blog worthy entry. Sept 24, I fished Grays Harbor for Salmon. You can only retain Cohos right now. Because of the high water exchange between tides, the people "in the know" weren't too hopeful for a good day. But they were willing to show me so how could I pass that up? Well 2 minutes into the fishing, we hook and land a nice twenty something pound King. I manage a near thirty pounder. In about 4 hours of fishing, we hook 5, land 3 kings. I think that's a pretty good day. Of course all the Kings were released unharmed. I want to thank Francis & Calvin for taking time to show me this fishery.

As a note, as of Oct1 you can legally retain a King. But these fish are so valuable and this year it doesn't sound like there are a lot of surplus fish to make the spawning goals at the current forecast. I may keep a silver or two for the grill but I am going to do what I can to release those Kings out of Grays Harbor this year.

2005-10-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

First Salmon trip outside of Alaska in over 20 years! I had fished a bit of salmon in Canada a long time ago, but this was definitley something new.

Amazing but finally I went slamon fishing in the area. The Quinault River is know for its runs of salmon and Steelhead. I went out with a guest with the help of Frank who also works for the nation in the timber side. I had gone with Frank before and he definitely knows the river.

The rains had muddied up the river a bit but you could tell the fish were in the river. We started by throwing vibrax spinners in sizes 5 and 6. My guest Jim had the hot hands landing a King, a steelhead, and at least 5 nice cohos. His hot lure was a size 5 vibrax with silver blade and orange body. I managed a king and a silver during the trip. I also impressed everyone by not catching fish but catching 2 spinners and another salmon bait rig. At least I must have been near the bottom fishing which is where you need to be.

Given the number of fish we saw rolling and the number of commercial caught salmon being caught in the lower river, the action should have been better. But for a half day trip, it's hard to say that our total of 2 kings, 8 or 9 cohos, and a nice steelhead was anything but a great trip. We only kept enough to use fresh or to turn into lox.

2005-08-21T14:26:00.000-07:00

Second entry into my Washington state fishing Blog! WooHoo!!!!!! It should be my third but man am I getting lazy! Not good.

Well last weekend I went out and tried some more surf fishing. Took the camera but being drenched in saltwater, I decided against using the camera. I caught a total of 7 keeper surfperch in about 3 hours. Not bad. Caught a bunch more undersized dungeness crab and a few more smaller perch. I opted to use a lighter rod which limited my casting range.

The bite is definitely the best about 2 hours after low tide. The perch appeared to be in range of my lighter tackle for only about an hour but it was a lot more fun than using a rod that I would consider overkill for even the King Salmon in Alaska. I used clam necks on a size 4 gamakatsu hook. I also caught a few using a red and white crappie jig with a piece of Berkely Gulp artificial crab. I just tore off a chunk of the crab and sweetened the jig and it seemed to work well.

Well the story today is that I caught my first "real" large mouth bass. It was 18 inches and I guess it was 3 pounds or better. Nothing huge but it was pretty cool. It came on a 4 inch motor oil colored worm rigged texas style. I pulled it out of a bunch of lily pads. Snapped a few pictures then released it.
The other "cool" thing was that minutes earlier using the same worm, I caught a really nice perch.
The perch was nothing huge but the thing that allows it to make my fishing highlights is that it's the first fish I have ever caught on a rubber worm. Now that may not seem like a big deal but ever since I was a kid, I read about how everyone catches fish using the plastic worms. It took me forever to figure out how to rig the worm weedless style.

Until you catch a few fish on any new lure or rig, you just don't have the confidence in it. So now I can say I have confidence in the worm rig. It worked pretty much as advertised. Snaked through the lily pads without hanging up and when a fish hit, they pretty much engulfed it and held on for a few seconds allowing me to set the hook. I was amazed that my super ultralight rod had enough backbone to bury the hook, but it seemed to work okay especially since I had berkley fireline and gamkatsu hooks. Just goes to show you that even an old dog like me can learn new tricks!!!

2005-08-09T21:25:00.000-07:00

Well gang, I did something I said I would never do....I moved out of Alaska. I can't believe it myself. With the chores of a new job, I haven't fished at all for the past 6 months. Now I am back again thanks to my buddy Ryo who visited from Japan to get me kicked started again.

I now live in Grays Harbor County in Western Washington State. The fishing opportunities are tremendous here. Almost as good as Alaska. You can still visit my website at www.Alaskafishinglogs.com but I am going to try this format for a while to see how it works.

My first fishing was actually several months ago when I took a charter out of Westport to try my hand at some bottom fishing. We hammered black rockfish and ling cod all day long. Unfortunately we were using halibut rods, mono, fishing 150 feet down catching mainly 2 pound rockfish. While the hits were fun, it was cranking up dead weight as far as the fishing part went.

Thanks to my buddy Ryo from Japan visiting for the past week, I managed to catch a variety of new species. This time of year is relatively dead for fishing. But we still manageed to try a few different things.

First we head out and try our luck at the Quinault River. Summer Steelhead and cutthroat were the targets. We only saw one steelhead that followed the lure but didn't strike. We did manage to catch several dozen cutthroat trout. While they weren't big at around 12 inches, after 30 years of fishing I was still able to catch a new species so it made my day.

Over the next week we hit several different locations. We fished Duck Lake out of a canoe on several days. The best we could manage was a pound and a half large mouth bass. We also caught crappies and perch. While nothing was huge, they were new species for me and Ryo so it was worth the trip. We caught them on assorted rapala, spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, and top water poppers.

The best fishing was at Roosevelt Beach for redtail surfperch. The first day out, we managed 20 surfperch with the biggest going 2 pounds. Another new species! We caught them surfcasting using clam necks for bait. We also caught a ton of undersized dungeness crabs. All of them on a single hook and clams for bait. Makes you wonder how many of them are out there when we catch more crabs than perch.

The final fishing trip was on the Westport Jetty where Ryo caught a 17 inch cabezon and I caught several small black rockfish and one small greenling. The most amazing sight were the massive schools of small baitfish (someone said anchovies) and the seal and porposes they attracted. The rockfish were caught on small single tail white plastic grubs and Ryo's cabezon came on a small lead jigging spoon. I may have to head back with a few sabiki rigs to see if I can't jig up a few of the anchovies if the schools are still there.

Well let's see if I can't do a bit more fishing now. The big fish don't start until late August but that's just around the corner. The fishing looks like it could be as every bit as good as Alaska. I'd say this area of the state is more rural than most of Alaska on the road system. I can't wait!!!!