I had the honor of fishing out of rseas’s new boat, a 21 foot Thunderjet. He, myself, and Gringo Pescador fished Mid channel Bank on Monday, from Crack-O-Dawn to around 11:30. The chinook season just opened up on Sunday and Randy had already gone out with friend Tony and caught limits while releasing four nice un-clipped chinook, one pushing 30-35 pounds.

The marine forecast was for some pretty significant winds and the crossing from Ft Casey to Mid channel was choppy, but nothing Randy’s boat had any trouble handling. Once we reached the fishing area the water was very comfortable.

We decided to run two rods, with flashers and small, 4” needle fish imitation spoons. The strategy was to troll with the tide, at a 45 degree cable angle (that translated to around 1.8 to 2.6 mph). A little sardine scent was added. We would bounce the balls off the bottom and come up five feet, which I would guess put us around 4-5 feet off the bottom. The common wisdom is that the chinook are mostly hugging the bottom, gorging themselves on candlefish before their final push to native rivers (or hatcheries, as the case may be).

Within ten minutes of our gear going down to 139 feet deep we had our first fish on. Mark grabbed the rod and began playing the fish. I will say, I am totally impressed by how much piss and vinegar these fish have! I mean they really took some impressive runs!

As Mark was playing his fish the second rigger goes off and Randy is playing another nice fish. Meanwhile I’m trying to film the action so the two of them are on their own for netting duties. They netted Mark’s fish first which was a beautiful unclipped fish in the twenty pound range. Safely released, attention was turned to Randy’s fish which turned out to be a keeper of 17 pounds. He later noted the fish had a half pound of sand in it and was full of candlefish.

A nice start to the day indeed! We dropped the gear down and completed the two mile drift and then pulled gear up and ran back to the start of our drift. Half way down the second run the port downrigger releases and I’m into a pretty good fish which turned out the be a clipped chinook of around 10 pounds. Two fish down, one to go.

The action around us wasn’t red hot. We saw fish being caught here and there, but it wasn’t lights out. Around 10:30 Randy decided to run us around the east point of our drift, Fort Flagler, and work on the fish that had been pushed around this point. We noticed plenty of bait balls and fish marks on the fish finder so knew it was just a matter of time before our offerings enticed a fish to strike.

A couple of shaker later the fish we were waiting for popped the rod and Mark was battling another feisty king. Wow, what a great battle! Mark skillfully worked the fish to the boat and net was applied to a shiny 14 pound fish, just a tad smaller than Randy’s fish. This fish was caught in around 90 feet deep water.

Going back to the candlefish theory – not so much of a theory I’d say. Check out the picture of bait that Mark pulled out of his fish’s stomach. These guys are eating good and still hit lures!

The time is now to hit mid channel bank. It won’t be open for long. Get em while you can!

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