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First let me start out by saying that it pays to read the regulations and not just figure that you know what they say but more on that later. With a late start we didn’t arrive at the Keystone launch until 7:30 or so but no worries we had an all day tide change. The day started out with a repeat of my dropping something overboard. This time I dropped a 12# downrigger ball over the side. I am not sure what happened but the release clip got hung up on a cleat and when I went to swing the boom into position the ball rolled off the snap. Calamity aside, the fish gods had said we were fishing just one rod so I got to it.

On arrival at the west end of Mid-channel Bank I decided to fish one of my standbys, an 11” green and red flasher followed by a 3.5” cookies and cream spoon. We were running in 90-100 feet of water so I ran the downrigger down so the ball was running at about 90’ or 100’ feet of cable. With the current who knows what our over the water trolling speed was but I kept the angle of the cable at about 60 or so degrees. So it was gear down and instant fish on. Number one turned out to be a shaker but it was a good start to nonstop action. The next fish, a chinook was about 8 pounds. From there we lost a number of what I guess were larger chinook, caught and released a number of shakers, got a 10# hatchery coho and released a number of wild fish.

Speaking of wild fish and the regulations mentioned earlier. We had been releasing nice 5-7# wild coho all day long. At some point just before we wrapped it up for the day and on a whim decided to verify the wild thing for Area 9 in the WDFW Sports Fishing Rules. LOL, you can keep wild coho in Area 9… OK, I was officially in the dog house!

Doghouse, that reminds me. This was the first trip on the salt for our lab mix Minka. It turns out she gets seasick. The poor dog barfed up more food and goo than I thought she had eaten in a week. After an hour or so she seemed to get all four of her sea legs and all was better. Then after a pit stop to chase seagulls and sniff around for a while she was more than happy to get back on board for another round.

Lost downrigger ball and sick dog aside it was a great day on the water. We had action all day long, ending the day with a 8 pound chinook and a 10 pound coho. We released 3 wild chinook to about 30 pounds and 10 or so wild coho. We also caught many shakers. We saw the largest school of dogfish I have ever seen. In a swath of water maybe ½ mile long and a couple hundred yards wide there were thousands of dogfish puddling and jumping out of the water on a large school of bait.

Toni

8/12/2012 11:32:00 AM

Wow. What a trip! Nice fish!

rseas

8/12/2012 12:17:00 PM

Thanks Toni. Also, I forgot to mention that all the fish were packed to the gills with small candle fish and sand.

MotoBoat

8/12/2012 2:22:00 PM

Randy, do you really mean to say the the Salmon caught were stuffed with candle fish and............."Sand"? Sand shrimp is all I can think of. But I have not personally seen that in a Salmon's stomach. I think Candle fish burrow into the sand. With that in mind, the fish could have scooped up sand while feeding on the Candle fish. Was that a typo? I was not aware of a Wild Coho release regulation inside Puget Sound, only out in the Pacific Ocean. Nice catch by the way.

rseas

8/12/2012 2:51:00 PM

Not a typo, they were full of sand and candlefish. I figure the salmon had the feed bags on and were sucking the candelfish out of the sand. The day was a blast, it was like the good-old days!

Norm

8/12/2012 4:32:00 PM

Sounds like an awesome day of fishing. How long of a boat ride do u think it would be to get across in a 16ft lund with a 25hp?

'OL GREY DOG

8/12/2012 4:54:00 PM

i was going to say u suc for let'n the silvers go but .. then i started click'n on your pics ... THANKS for the puke pic ... worst part was with the newst thingy on the site there was nowhere to ckick to change the nasty thing or close it .... soooo i drug my cursor all over the pic a few times before i hit bk ... OMG MAN !!!!! ... look'd like some nice porn but was afraid to click on it lololol .... DOG

rseas

8/12/2012 4:57:00 PM

Norm, I think it is only a few miles. We did it in the fog in our 16' Lund in about 15 minutes.

rseas

8/12/2012 5:04:00 PM

Dog, LOL, I think...

bryanpeck

8/12/2012 9:56:00 PM

Great fishing day and nice report. Glad you got something back for your donation to Kahuna!

Idstud

8/13/2012 6:01:00 AM

Looks like a fun filled day. Ive set up a flasher with a spoon gooed it up and tossed it over. OH and forgot to hook it up to the main line. Ive been scolded from another fellow fisherman for keeping wild coho in area 9. I showed him the print in the regs and he said I was still wrong. Just smile and nod. I hope the trip to the doghouse dosnt last too long.

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