Wanted to get the pictures out of the camera, but thought I should get the report out sooner...

This past weekend I rekindled my love/hate relationship with Westport. I love the fishing, the chance at a 40 pounder, the area and most of the local business folks we dealt with... I hate feeling queasy or sick all day and the traffic both ways from Seattle to Olympia!!!

We fished both Saturday and Sunday and limited for 2 guys each day, with 3 chinook and one silver each day.

Saturday we had a "moderate" bar crossing out, which even with meds had me feeling poorly for the day. We started fishing "straight out" from the green buoy line in about 180 or so. We fished there for a couple of hours and had one strike and about a 6 pound silver to show for it. We had friends further south doing well, so we picked up and headed down off of the North end of Willapa Bay in about 190 feet. I was running a Brad's Super Plug Cut in Blue Hawaiian. Tom was running a Hot Spot and a Coyote, then herring. From about 1:30 to 3:30 we had 6 fish on, all on my pole. The fish were just crushing the Brad's, and with no flasher it was a good fight! We ended the day with kings of 25, 15 and 12 and the silver... The magic depth was 50 feet. I had shrimp salt Smelly Jelly inside and smeared on the belly of the plug cut.

Sunday the Bar was calm enough to blast out at 20mph and the water was much better all day.
Given my previous day's success, Tom had me rig up a Blue Hawaiian Brad's for him, too. He ran his naked like I did on Sat, and I put a Hot Spot Agitator in front of mine with about a 6 foot leader... We started South. It took us until about 9:00 to get our first hit while watching those around us get fish, but then we got lots of bites. We got fish on both poles. One fish wrapped around the downrigger clip and popped off. The plug cut came free, and I was able to net it before it sank. We had kings of 20, 12 and about 9 in the boat by around 11:15 when I got a silver on. We debated keeping it or trying for another king, but given the time and need to drive home, we bonked it. Blasted back in at 20+ in good water.

For the trip, we didn't hook a wild coho at all, and only had one coho each day. Our kings were both hatchery and wild, with the 25 being hatchery and the 20 wild... I would have given the trip a "5" except for the rough water Saturday...!

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