A friend from high school saw my facebook posts of silver and pink salmon and called them babies. I had to agree, when I saw his pics of king salmon from the Oregon coast. We arranged a weekend to fish in the Tillamook area, but our location would be a decision in the moment based upon rains and salmon location. We ended up fishing from his boat in Tillamook Bay. Day one: On the water an hour before light, found our way to the inlet near the jetty and bounced herring with flasher off the bottom. The current was strong, requiring heavier weight (8 oz) and crabs were devouring our bait when too close to the bottom. Thankfully we didn’t stay there long. Back near Garabaldi our luck improved. There were several small channels that we trolled in. Depth was 6-12’ and much less when we drifted off course. Sea weed was prevalent and had to be cleared off our lines at least every few minutes. We abandoned the flashers and stuck with a dropper of typically 5 oz and only herring. Suddenly my rod began to bounce violently, and a salmon surfaced. She raced full speed at us and I reeled in as fast as possible to keep up. Next she went far left, then back to the right. Definitely a silver. A woman on an approaching boat was yelling at us, and as they came closer her message became clear. “You can keep silvers today!” We thanked her for that knowledge, because otherwise we would have released it. Nice 8 lb hen in the ice box. We fished for most of the day, and the catch was steady under clear skies and calm water. At the end of the day we had caught 2 bright, beautiful kings and 2 silvers. Day 2: We started an hour later and stayed nearby. My friend caught a nice king within the first 30 minutes. Then the bite went off. It was nasty all day with rain and increasingly windy. So windy that we harnessed it with our canopy to push us forward and reduced our weight to 1 oz with herring. That was when Moby Dick found my bait. WAMMO! He was big, and spooled my line for a moment, then allowed me to bring him closer. This went on for about 15 minutes. Twice we tried to net, but each time we failed. I had him close, but no way would he let up. I played with my reel tension to keep him near, but let him run if commanded. My friend was getting a little anxious due to the proximity of the approaching rock shore line, and he wound up the canopy to reduce our wind propulsion. I felt a slight surrender from Moby, called out for the net and down it went to scoop him up. Longer than the width of the net, but with a yell and a heavy lift he was hoisted into the boat! 25 lbs of King, with a mouth you could put your fist into, but would rather not. Biggest fish I ever caught. I just sat there and giggled on our return to the dock.

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