Day 4 of my Five Day Fishing Marathon.
We launched out of Edmonds. My wife JoAnn, and our friends from Montana, Bill and Joanie. This was their first time fishing for salmon. I wanted to get them into some non-stop pink salmon action at the Shipwreck, but two days ago I fished this area and we had a tough time getting fish to bite. So I formulated an alternate plan…
We ran over to Possession Bar, fishing in the horseshoe. It was relatively calm for an hour or so. Lot’s of birds, nice tide rips, and the fishfinder was marking plenty of fish. Got out the humpy gear and started trolling. Almost immediately we hooked and Joanie caught a nice humpy, her first salmon ever. The grin on her face said it all. “This is more like it” I thought, and hoped for more. We caught a couple dogfish, and then lost a salmon (assuming it was a humpy as well). Now the wind is starting to blow. Nothing too rough for a regular on the bar, but I knew it would be tough on Bill and Joanie so decided to move over to Shipwreck and find calmer waters.
When we arrived the usual crowd was working the waters. I saw no nets. Darn it! I got us trolling our gear and gave Joanie a spinning rod to twitch a jig. After a couple casts, bamm, a fish hits her jig right at the boat! Quite a thrill for her, unfortunately it came unbuttoned. A short while later my 50 foot deep downrigger rod goes off. Bill grabs the rod and reels in a five pound silver. That’s a bonus for sure.
That fish came around 9am. The rest of the morning was nothing, dead action, just like before. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong (if anything). Previous humpy seasons I’ve had no trouble getting limits and multiple hook-ups. For whatever reason this year has been tough, and not just for me. Just looking around it’s obvious others are not pulling them in like prior seasons.
We ended our day at noon, with one day left in my fishing marathon to go.
