After suffering a complete skunk on Monday, we headed back out to MA10 for what would be our last trip this season. There was no fog at my house this morning but when we got to the Edmonds launch it was pretty soupy. Visibility was at best 75 to 100 yards and hats off to my wife for negotiating our trolling plan while avoiding boats that appeared out of nowhere. We began trolling in approximately 600 FOW, west of the oil docks, 75 feet on the wire with a Purple Haze blinks flasher OAL12R hoochie with an Ace Hi fly insert and herring strip. About thirty minutes later my rod starts bouncing and I was able to land a decent 5 or 6 pound coho. Things got quiet until 11:30 when my rod popped and I got to enjoy a good fight from a nice hooknose, caught on the same setup as the first fish, this one west of Richmond beach, again 600 FOW 80 feet on the wire. After a couple more hours with no takes we called it a day and we slowly made our way back toward the marina enjoying the sun that finally burned through. Suddenly my wife said “is that seal? or is it a whale?” She cut the engine and not 30 feet from our port side a gray whale surfaced briefly, turned away and disappeared underwater. It soon surfaced some distance away headed west and gave a goodbye tail wave.

By: Steve Lindjord with Barbara Lindjord and Ben Eggertsen

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