The salmon are here!!! I've spent a good portion of Monday on the water in front of the Edmonds marina. Started out at about 6:45 am and didn't call it a day until almost 4pm. The morning was very slow and it took a while to find the fish. They were just not biting all that much in the am. Things seemed to have picked up around 1pm. I hooked one, but it got away as I tried to play him a bit. My first mate took the blame for that one, as we were pretty close to the shore and she turned the boat too around too quickly, and I lost the tension on the line, letting the fish get loose. I felt bad, until I saw the boat next to me - he got the fish up to the boat and then lost him while trying to net the fish.
It was a nice fun day, people were catching fish according to my on the water survey (" hey, did you get any??").
It would have been much better but my electric downrigger decided to loose its clutch. Manually pulling 450 feet of cable with a 10lbs ball was not fun - all of it by turning the downrigger reel without the benefit of a crank.
Still, the fish are running really shallow, and a deep-six is all you need.
I might be out there tonight (Tuesday) trying again.

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