A friend and I fished Sekiu for salmon Monday-Thursday morning. This trip was a huge learning experience for me. My first time fishing Sekiu for salmon; and my first time manning an electric downrigger (double stacking while steering the boat). First, electric downriggers are awesome! Probably the best investment I've ever made. Second, I didn't get to use it as much as I'd like because rough waters kept us on shore about half the trip. We fished 30-110 down in 40-350 feet of water (a lot of trial and error). We ended up fishing 50-65 feet down after we had a better idea of what we were doing; regardless of depth.
Monday was action-packed! Unfortunately the action came from shakers. I think we caught about 1,000. Well, maybe more like 12-15, but it felt like a thousand. Coho killers/plug cut herring/hoochies/Coyote spoons-- they liked em all. Our only keeper was a black rockfish we caught in the bay on the way to the docks. It hit a green Coho killer (pic 1).
Tuesday was a little better-- the shakers were out in force again, but my buddy got a decent hatchery king (pic 2) and also released an even decent-er wild king. I released a wild Coho, and lost what I assume was a big king while trolling back to the dock. I also lost my lunch in the Strait-- apparently multitasking in chop makes me green! We caught two more rockfish-- this time around three caves (pic 3). One hit a Coho Killer one hit a Kingfisher spoon.
Wednesday was pretty hard to get out in-- rough waters. Luckily after Tuesday I had my sea legs. When we did get out, we got batted around pretty good and only had a few shaker releases to show for it.
Thursday morning I finally got a glimpse of what Sekiu is all about! At three caves around 5:40am I landed my first keeper Sekiu King-- it was only about 30 feet down (pic 4). It hit on a green/silver Kingfisher spoon. Five minutes later my friend caught and released a wild king in the 25-30 pound range. It hit about 5 feet under the surface as we were about to drop the downrigger ball. It was the biggest fish he had ever caught. It hit on a large green speckle Coyote spoon. I caught a pink (pic 4, again) and we released at least half a dozen shakers before calling the trip at 10 am. It was hard to leave, Thursday appeared to be a beautiful day!
At any rate, it was a great learning experience, but overall fishing was very spotty according to the fish checkers. I didn't hear any numbers for Monday and Tuesday, but Wednesday my checker said "only a few" kings had come in due to the rough seas and Thursday only 5 boats out of 15 checked had brought in a king. Also, just from talking to folks it seemed like a lot of experienced people were averaging a keeper king a day. However, things seemed to be picking up Thursday with the improved conditions!