Took my Arima to Westport with Tom StG and his buddy Marco in search of salmon. Ended up working pretty hard for five fish a day. There were tons of jellyfish and you had to clean gear constantly. We caught a lot of shaker Chinook and some unmarked silvers. Fished herring and spoons mostly. The bite seemed to be best in the afternoons.
Saturday was foggy and a bit windy. Navigating the bar in swells, chop and fog is not something that I enjoy, even with mapping gps's. It took a long time to get where we wanted to fish, and once there we had to keep a driver on the wheel looking at the compass and GPS all the time or we did donuts. We fished a herring in a helmet behind a Fish Flash, a Coyote spoon by itself, and a Kingfisher spoon behind a Hot Spot. Tom lost a huge salmon on the Kingfisher. It almost spooled him, we chased it down, then when it was maybe 40 yards from the boat, it just got off. We only ever saw it's tail. Oh well! He got a 12 pounder on the same rig and we took home two more smaller Chinook and two silvers. We got about half our hits on the herring. We were on the water 14 hours.
Sunday it was a totally different ocean! 4-5 miles visibility and fairly flat! We got out there in an hour less time! Ran the same rigs as yesterday. Tom lost another big fish. We chased it twice and had it close to the boat when the knot from the leader to the flasher pulled out. Ouch! I tied up a new leader for him using palomar knots and another Kingfisher. Forty-five minutes later, his rod tip buried in the water and line screamed out. The fish went down, sulked, then went out. We chased it down, got it close, and I netted the 40 pounder and hefted it in the boat. We got very few hits on herring Sunday. I replaced the Coyote with another Kingfisher behind a mini-hot spot. A silver crashed it on the surface as I was clipping it into the downrigger. I managed to get the reel in gear and bring the native to the boat for a good release. We also had a couple of hits on the deep line when I only had it down 10 feet to clip in the top line. Kind of a hoot! We fished in what I think is called "South Bowl". Most of the charters were NE of us in about 150 feet of water. It's a pretty good feeling to hit the docks with a 40 pounder!