Fished by myself out of Everett on Saturday. I've been having motor troubles, so I slept in a bit so I wouldn't be in the mad rush of the Derby traffic if I had a problem. Decided to stay fairly close for the day.

Blasted over to Columbia Beach and trolled South from the ferry terminal. I had a Qcove flasher and a Coyote spoon. Ran them in the dirt or close to it. On my second pass south I had a nice hit and a good tussle with what turned out to be a 23 inch ling cod. Kind of fun and unexpected for the sandy bottom there.

Ran further North and fished from Langley back towards Sandy Point with the tide. I trolled over a pocket that had a bunch of fish arcs in it. No takers. Trolled back through it again and still nobody interested. It was by then pretty close to slack water, so I decided to break out the jigging pole and see what was there. Set up and dropped a candlefish jig to the bottom. Almost immediately got slammed. Not sure if it was a yelloweye or a canary or what, but this fish took a good run back towards the bottom when about half way up. Gently released it to go home. As I had this fish on, I still saw more arcs on my sounder, so I reset to try again. Some of the marks were 10-20 feet off the bottom, so I thought they could be salmon. Got another small rockfish, then another about the size of the one in the picture. Decided to head home, not wanting to impact more rockfish.

Nice, mellow paced day and things all worked pretty much as I wanted except I wanted a nice blackmouth for the bbq. Next time!

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