What a crabby day! The weather was near perfect and three limits of beautiful dungeness crab came in on the first pull. The harbor porpoises played nearby and we all had a good time. Sometimes waiting an extra day pays off. Thanks to Gezellig Seafoods and European Groceries for packing everything up and getting it shipped back to Wisconsin for my clients! We even got Talon Rods in on the action with some crab snares for a little fun while we waited for the pots to soak. It got me wondering if there's a market out there for crab snare rods

We snuck out in between the rainstorms yesterday and I may now have one my favorite Tongue Point sunrise pictures of the year. This guy jumped on the rod just after I had finished showing how to put out the gear. We had my client's limit and another fish released by 9:30, not bad for mid October Coho in the estuary! I have plenty of seats open for Coho and crab still. The top is going on the boat and the heater is going back in so we're now getting ready for winter mode!

With an uncertain weather forecast, we headed out early. Fortunately we landed on the coho fairly quickly for an early limit by 8:30 a.m.. We took advantage of the extra time and a break in the weather to take a scenic tour around Astoria and the Estuary including a few areas that I don't normally get to go. What a great way to spend a break in between the rains and the wind! The new Talon Rods did an awesome job of keeping the fish on a well. Awesome morning!

This was an awesome last minute birthday trip. We left at sunrise and got into our first bites within 20 minutes. The coho were on fire and practically chasing the boat! It's too bad the seals and sea lions were too. The action was fast with 19 fish on and three kept before everyone got tired and ready to head back to the dock for some lunch. This was a great trip and I hope to see these guys again!

The Chinook Season closed below Puget Island on August 6th, but the A and B runs of Coho are coming into the river and the crab are filling out quickly. My dad and I went out for a bit of a test run on crab as well as some exploratory coho fishing in a few "non-traditional" spots. We not only got into the Coho but the crab came in nice, with 17 on our first run of the pots mid way through the tides. We did have to release one small Chinook, but that was a fine price to pay for a fun day on the water!

We left at 6:30 in the morning with the mission to get Levi on his first salmon ever. After a little bit of a slow start the rods started dropping and the line started spooling. The first one was a beautiful hatchery Chinook that made me cry when we had to release it. Our spirits soon went up when we hooked into a nice 18lb upriver bright chinook that we could keep. Levi managed to get the fish to the boat and we had high fives all around when we saw it was hatchery! A few lost fish later we found ourselves in Coho city with more takedowns than we could count. After a set of back to back double hookups we had 3 more keepers in the boat and were working on my limit. The fish didn't want to let us catch our breath and soon reminded us what Buoy 10 is supposed to be about. We were limited by 12:30 and on our way back to the dock. This was "Good Old Days" style non-stop action. We set out to get Levi on one special fish and somehow he managed to reel in a whole boat limit and then some with the released wild fish. I can't wait to go fishing with these guys again!