October was a life changing month for me. I took and passed the equivalent of my journeyman test, bought a house, got married and went on a honeymoon. Needless to say, fishing was out of the question with so much going on. With everything done and out of the way, I was getting the itch to get out and chase some fish. After some serious consideration, I decided to hit Area 11 to see if there were any blackmouth around.

I got to Redondo at 0700 and got an instant reminder of what November 1st means….the docks were in the parking lot and there wasn’t a soul to be seen. Perfect. Launched and beached the boat and was on the water by 0715. The tide was incoming from 0600 til 1313, so I just headed toward Dumas Bay with the tide. Found the 120’ mark and bounced the ball off the bottom all the way down and got nothing. With no signs of life, I decided to move north past Robinson and hit up Point Beals. Made the 15 minute cruise and was line down around 1000.

I was glad that I made the move because I was marking fish, bait and even saw some herring surfacing. I found the 120’ contour again and pounded the bottom. I was able to catch 3 shaker blackmouth around the point in about an hour, so I knew that there were signs of life. 2 were smaller (around 12”-18”) with one larger at about 20”. I kept trolling south with the tide and had a few more takedowns, but all smaller fish.

When the tide changed at 1313, I turned around and headed back north toward Beals again. I decided to give the shakers a break for a bit and try for some coho in deeper water. I kept seeing fish surface out toward the shipping lane, so I wanted to see if any of them would play for a bit. I had nothing but a small shaker coho after an hour or so of trying. By this time, I was already back to Beals, so I decided to go back to blackmouth mode.

I dropped my ball to the deck and was pounding that 120’ contour again. Within minutes, I got a hard hit. The rod dropped but didn’t pop. A second later the rod dropped hard and popped. I absolutely love to watch a clip pop and a rod just load up. I grabbed the rod and it took just a bit of line with a couple short hard runs. After a brief fight, I had a decent 24” hatchery blackmouth in the boat. I marked my card and quickly got my line back in the water. I circled back through the area and within another 5 minutes, I had another takedown. This time it didn’t feel as big, until I got it close to the boat. It tried to give another quick burst to get away, but I was able to get it into the net. This one was a little bigger than the first, but with the extra fin, was released quickly. I once again quickly put my line back in the water. I was a little excited and tightened the reel down too much and it popped the clip. I let it sit for a second and then gave it a light reel. Sure enough, on the pause, I got a takedown. I got quite a few headshakes and a bunch of resistance, but 30’ away from the boat the tension was gone and so was the fish. I circled the area for a bit longer, but was unable to coax anything to bite.

Overall, it was about the best day I could have asked for. There was constant action from shakers and flounder, and a few decent sized fish mixed in. Most of the time, blackmouth fishing is pretty boring without much action. It is always nice when you happen to be in the right place at the right time and you find yourself in the middle of a hot bite. It’s also nice when the weather cooperates and you can stay dry.

All the bigger fish toward the end came in 120’ of water while bouncing the ball off the bottom every few minutes. I was using an Irish Flag Tailwagger behind a Glow Red Racer Flasher with a little bit of Herring (Salt) Smelly Jelly.

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