Ling fishing Puget Sound

[jordanpaulmiller]

I just use a 25lbs mono leader. Nothing fancy but did the trick.

[westy808]

I've almost always fished for Ling under the Narrows Bridge. I now live near West Seattle, so launch from Alki, Blake Island seems the closest place to go. I've dove there, seen Ling, seems like good odds! I normally fish with live dabs, anybody have a tip on where to fish for dab bait near Blake Island?

[schu7498]

Nice job goodtimes! A Beauty of a beast!

[goodtimesfishing]

Nice job goodtimes! A Beauty of a beast!

Thanks schu7498.
Went out again today and caught another almost exactly the same size....barely under 36 inches! The one I caught today just came straight up with almost no fight, once I could see him I stopped reeling to grab the net(you don't want there heads out of water till they are in the net) but this one just kept swimming till his head was out of the water. He then went crazy...I was in 95 feet of water and my drag screamed all the way back down to the bottom without slowing down at all!!! My reel has a counter on it and was right around 85-90ft when I started applying extra presure to slow it down I didn't want it back on the bottom where it might get wrapped around something. Good strong fight bringing it back up the second time!!!

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[schu7498]

mmm nice slab of meat! What marine area are you fishing?

[fear_no_fish]

Mmm is right! gear is ready, boat is hooked up. Hopefully we can find one or two ringers like that tomorrow!

[goodtimesfishing]

mmm nice slab of meat! What marine area are you fishing?

8-2

[fear_no_fish]

Backside of hat island? we only found a couple little flounders today

[goodtimesfishing]

Had to deal with the wind today which made things a bit harder but managed to bring home another ling. Todays was a little smaller at 30 inches. Lost 3 that where just hitching a ride and decided to let go half way up, leaving my sand dab looking like swiss cheese.

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[goodtimesfishing]

Backside of hat island? we only found a couple little flounders today

ya, off hat island.

[SoDakboy]

Tomorrow I'm going to head south of blake island, we'll see how I do.

[fear_no_fish]

Backside of hat island? we only found a couple little flounders today

ya, off hat island.

What kind of boat were you in?
Guess we should have stopped and got some sand dabbies to fish with, oh well.
We are going to see if we can find a halibutt tomorrow out in 9, hopefully it works out.

[goodtimesfishing]

Backside of hat island? we only found a couple little flounders today

ya, off hat island.

What kind of boat were you in?
Guess we should have stopped and got some sand dabbies to fish with, oh well.
We are going to see if we can find a halibutt tomorrow out in 9, hopefully it works out.

Small bayliner capri (15ft)open bow. I only saw one other boat fishing around me and it took off maybe 10-15 minutes after I dropped my line. Looked like they might have just been fishing for bait??

What size flounder did you get? They most likely would have worked reel good! I have done better with the larger sand dab/flounder/flatfish, this year. 8-10 inch vs. last year I seemed to do better with the 4-6 inch size. I lost a few lings today because instead of being patient and letting them eat the big bait, I would start reeling and get about half way up and they would just let go of the bait. My rigs have about a 6-7 inch gap between the 2 hooks but I think I will make some to fit the bigger bait. I like to have a hook in the mouth and back close to the tail.

Good luck on the halibut, I here quite a few are being caught already. Wish I had a bigger boat, I would get after them too!
I will be fishing halibut in neah bay this July with a buddy with a bigger boat.

[goodtimesfishing]

Tomorrow I'm going to head south of blake island, we'll see how I do.

Good luck. Let us know how you do.

[fear_no_fish]

What kind of boat were you in?
Guess we should have stopped and got some sand dabbies to fish with, oh well.
We are going to see if we can find a halibutt tomorrow out in 9, hopefully it works out.

Small bayliner capri (15ft)open bow. I only saw one other boat fishing around me and it took off maybe 10-15 minutes after I dropped my line. Looked like they might have just been fishing for bait??

What size flounder did you get? They most likely would have worked reel good! I have done better with the larger sand dab/flounder/flatfish, this year. 8-10 inch vs. last year I seemed to do better with the 4-6 inch size. I lost a few lings today because instead of being patient and letting them eat the big bait, I would start reeling and get about half way up and they would just let go of the bait. My rigs have about a 6-7 inch gap between the 2 hooks but I think I will make some to fit the bigger bait. I like to have a hook in the mouth and back close to the tail.

Good luck on the halibut, I here quite a few are being caught already. Wish I had a bigger boat, I would get after them too!
I will be fishing halibut in neah bay this July with a buddy with a bigger boat.[/quote]

Hmm, well we were on the south side of the island fishing most of the morning, we ran to another spot and back so who knows. We could have been there at different times.
But one was probably 6" the rest were probably 12" or more. We normally do pretty well with our jigs, maybe next time we will try the sand dabs.
Yeah ive been hearing the same thing. My dad, his buddy and me have yet to catch one so it would be something else to finally hook up on one. Can only hope

[SoDakboy]

Well for starters I didn't find any live bait (we tried a couple of spots, using night crawlers), but I had brought along some green label herring and a half dozen twin tail soft baits in white and black. So we ran over to blake island right at high tide around 2. I don't think we had the technique quite right. I figured the line with a 2 oz pyramid weight would stop when we hit bottom, but I think we were drifting so fast that it was hard to tell. Also my fish finder was having a hard time looking through the water. Well it was an experiment, the learning curve was steep, I'll probably try again in two weeks. Going out to the Columbia river to do some quading next week, probably won't do any fishing though.

[SoDakboy]

If anybody is willing, I'm hoping for an extra seat on a boat, so that I can learn.

If I can find someone who is planning on going to blake island, great. But I'm willing to travel as well.

I'm willing to trade with some elk steaks and burger and I can help pay for gas. I can also bring some elk jerky and summer sausage to share.

I'm 27, active duty US Navy. I grew up in South Dakota flat line trolling with plugs for walleye (sorry I don't have any in the freezer right now)

I would be very grateful.

Tim

[goodtimesfishing]

Well I decided not to fish saturday due to it being the one day that you are aloud to keep any kind of shrimp and sure enough it looked like bumper boats out there. Glad I stayed off the water. However I made it out again today and although it was a bit tougher then my recent trips, I still managed to bring a ling home(4 for 4, plus 1 shorty).

I started off landing a 25 inch ling first thing in the morning and being it was not 26 inches, it had to go back. I then spent the next few hours losing 6 or 7 lings, getting them 1/2 to 3/4 of the way up and then losing them!! Very frustating but fun and exciting too. Sure is fun to piss those fish off, they have attitude for sure!

Finally landed a little 26 inch scrapper.....put up a good fight but barely a keeper. Several boats/people fishing the small area I fish and I did not see any other lings caught!!! and only one hooked up and lost. The problem is most of the people I saw fishing are using small little poles and small gear...and not getting to the bottom. If you want to catch lings you need to be able to keep your line vertical for the most part and be able to stay close to the bottom but stay off it or lose gear. If your line is not mostly vertical you need more weight. However I feel the most important part is using live bait!!! Yes I know you can and I have too, caught lings on jigs, but you will do much better with live bait and less wasted time with rock fish. Only one other person was using live bait and that was the only other hook up with a ling(he lost it though) everyone else was using jigs and all they are getting is rock fish. If you really want to use a jig I would recommend a very large one to help keep the rock fish off.

[goodtimesfishing]

If anybody is willing, I'm hoping for an extra seat on a boat, so that I can learn.

If I can find someone who is planning on going to blake island, great. But I'm willing to travel as well.

I'm willing to trade with some elk steaks and burger and I can help pay for gas. I can also bring some elk jerky and summer sausage to share.

I'm 27, active duty US Navy. I grew up in South Dakota flat line trolling with plugs for walleye (sorry I don't have any in the freezer right now)

I would be very grateful.

Tim

Hope the info I gave in the last post is helpful for you Tim. I am way to far from you to fish with you, but feel free to pm me if you have any questions.

[fear_no_fish]

Yesterday was bad!!! I could go on and on about all the shrimpers at the launch. The launch lanes at everett were worse then the coho derby!!!! and thats saying something. Running back to the launch from fishing one of them almost cut us off and hit us. I could have jumped into their boat while at speed.
Maybe im just upset because we didnt catch anything but man what a joke!
You made a good choice staying home.