Bottom Fishing is back!

This time of year in Astoria is simply amazing. The August crowd's haven't arrived yet and quick limits are as regular as a Rolex. Today we left the dock at 6:30 to get across the Columbia River bar before the tide went out. My clients were a grandfather and grandson. The grandfather had fished the area quite a bit, however he retired, sold his boat, and moved to Arizona. He wanted to show his grandson what salmon fishing could be like. After a run out and getting the rods in the water I aimed for a current seam and fairly quickly a rod started shaking and pulling towards the water. The first hatchery coho, and the grandson's first ever salmon had made it to the boat. A quick debate on whether this was a "fish to keep or release" happened and we brought a 5 lb coho on board. That would be our smallest kept fish of the day. Throughout the morning we worked through several double and triple hookups and sorted through about 15 fish in 3 hours to choose our limit. We released 3 hatchery fish and significant number of wild spawned fish before finally tagging a nice for July 10 pounder to finish out the limits. A not so quick (and a bit wet) run across the bar during the ebb tide finished off the day. While grandpa and grandson retired to the motor home for some dry clothes I got to work filleting the fish. It's not just anywhere that you can go out before breakfast and have a boat limit (including me tagging two) of coho in time for lunch. I can't wait for the next trip!

Today was an awesome ocean day with a run down to the Tillamook Head lighthouse to load up on bottom fish. We were joined by a pod of Orca part way down, including a relatively new calf! The rockfish were more than happy to hop on our lines and we found a quick limit of black, canary, and copper rockfish as well as a beautiful kelp greenling. With only a few ling cod around it was time to make a move back up north. Whales made an appearance there as well with a gray feeding just south of the Columbia River. Once we got the lines out we quickly landed several nice lings and even got into a double. Two blue ling cod even joined us to add to the red colored canary and copper rockfish for a full spread of fourth of July colors. We finished up the day with a full boat limit of rockfish and several limits of ling cod. More importantly we broke a 20 year long dry streak of not catching any fish on the part of one of our crew. I'm super excited to see these guys on the boat again :)

The ocean's been a bit rough lately but we took advantage of the window and ran out past the jetties into the ocean today! Within a couple of minutes of getting the rods in we had our first fish on. A small chinook that had to go back, but a good sign for the rest of the day. With the fog making it difficult to navigate we pushed on and had several more on and lost. Finally with a little practice we managed to get the first keeper on board. A few more passes on the same spot and it was time to make a move. We dropped into another spot and within minutes we had another fish on. This one popped off but the second one didn't. That one went in the boat as well. The choppy water made it difficult to find the seams but all in all we had 7 fish on and one drive by to make for an exciting morning on the ocean and while we didn't take any fish pictures, we have the scales on the boat to prove it!