Went out yesterday and it was worse and better than I expected.

The weather was much better than predicted as far as wind. Just light winds until late in the day and even then it wasnt all that bad. Over all the seas were not bad. Certainly nothing close to small craft warnings, so the weather dudes and dudettes got that part wrong - for Port Angeles at least.

Turned out no one had a lick of sense yesterday or they were like me and decided to try it despite the predictions. There were at least a zillion boats out there! Driving through PA, there were exactly ZERO legal parking places for boats anywhere in town within at least a mile of the launches. Id also guess 99.99% of the illegal spots were also filled with trailers. I bet the city made a killing on parking tickets yesterday!

We didnt get there until almost 730 which was good in one way. There was no long line at the Ediz hook ramp. Just one boat ahead of us and plenty of room on the ramps for both of us. The downside was we had to park at least a 1/4 mile down the road from the ramp. Lots of illegal parking on Ediz too - in the bike lanes and right in front of all the No Parking signs :)

So we finally get out on the water and there are boats every where we can see. Since the water was nice and smooth, we decided to try out a ways first, so we headed out to 31-36 first. Thats about 5 or 6 miles north and slightly east of the hook.

The combination of winds and tides yesterday was near perfect. It made for slow easy drifts so you didnt need a ton of weight to stay down on the bottom. We got by with maybe 16oz weights most of the day for depths up to 320 feet or so.

Anyway, we tried 31-36, the Rock Pile, around the Can bouy, outside the hook, out from the paper mill, off Freshwater Bay and several places in the Green Point Area.

Zip, zero, nada, nothing. The closest we got to catching anything was one herring had the tail nibbled off by something with very small teeth.

I did see quite a few things on the sounder that looked like salmon and lots of nice bait balls. Of course, salmon is closed....

We gave up about 4:30 when the wind started to pick up and just beat the rush back to the ramp, so that was good.

Talked to the fish checker and he said lots of limits for those who got out early (not us) and lots of them were in the Green Point area. Slooooow later in the day or for sleepy heads like us.

We talked to several other bats on the water and at the ramp after we docked and up on the road while we were packing up. No one we talked to got a single bite. We did see one guy packing a small butt into an ice chest. It was maybe 24" long and 15# at most. Still made us jealous! :)

We had fun though.

One note - we heard LOTS of chatter on the VHF about boat disasters and emergency calls. More than one capsized boat and people in the water from all around the sound and coast.

We had a close call ourselves late in the day. We were in the Green Point area when a huge container ship came in from the east at hi speed towards PA throwing a monster wake. He had to blow his horn several times to get other idiot boats to move out of his way. He passed maybe a mile from us but I could see he was throwing a huge wake that was breaking badly as it got closer to us. The water was already getting lumpy so it wasnt realy obvious from a distance.

We had to pull up gear and turn into it when it got close. It was at least 6 ft hi and breaking. It was one heck of a ride going over that thing. Everything loose on the boat got tossed around and we got blue water over the bow. If it had caught us sideways we would have been upside down in an instant.

Right after we passed over it, I turned to look at a couple of small boats behind us that the wake was heading towards. They were also drifting sideways to its path and didnt look like they were ready for it, so I blew my horn and we started to get ready to assist. Luckily they were both able to get headed into it before it got there.

Keep your eyes open out there guys and be safe :)

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