OK, three days of fishing hard and I admit, I’m tired!

Today I met Nate Treat and Gringo Pescador and we launched out of Edmonds at 06:15 in search of ocean coho.

Conditions today were a bit breezy, which made things challenging as the day progressed. The early bite was spotty. We saw a few nets come out, but for us, nothing. I’ll admit to be a little worried. I sure wasn’t expecting skunk city, but things were looking grim. Then, 8am rolled around and we started hitting fish. Our setups were: Nate on the deep rigger at 65-75 ft, lg red flasher and magnum green hoochie. Me on the shallow rigger, 47-57 ft, lg green flasher and green glow hoochie. Mark on the Deep 6, 45-60 pulls back, sm red flasher and yellow/glow hoochie. All rigs with herring strip for flavor.

First fish came at 8am, Nate hits one at 65 ft. That’s the ticket, skunk out of the boat! Mark’s rod explodes a half hour later at 60 pulls. My rod goes off 15 minutes after that at 57 ft down. Trolling speed around 2.2-2.6 mph.

OK, now we’re in business! Unfortunately, that was it for bites off Edmonds, and by 10am we decided to move to spot number two.

I’m not sure why Possession was devoid of boats. Maybe it was too breezy, maybe it was too expense to burn gas to go the 5.6 miles, but whatever the reason, we had the place to ourselves. Which is weird to me, because in years past this was THE place to fish for incoming coho salmon. In any case, the birds were everywhere, the bait was marking, and the fish were there (sort of). Within 15 minutes of arriving Mark’s rod starts bouncing and it’s “fish on!” Sad to say, “fish off” was next as it came unglued. Then, Nate gets a rod shake, but the fish does not commit. Finally, Nate again has a rod down, and this time it’s solid, as he brings in a nice hatchery fish at 75 ft on the rigger. It’s 12:30. We pound the water for another hour, but now conditions are getting pretty rocky, and we elect to head back to Edmonds. When we get back, the water isn’t any better. Figuring four fish is a pretty good day, and knowing my boat will need a major cleaning job, we call it a day.

It wasn’t lights out for us today, but it was pretty good. Four bright coho in the cooler! Thanks to Nate and Gringo for fishing with me and enjoying the day. Looking forward to our next outing. Fish On!

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