I spent the last 3 weeks in California for work and not being able to fish was killing me. I got home late Saturday night and decided that I had to hit the water on Sunday to finally get my fix. High tide on Sunday was at 1152 so my fiancé and I decided to sleep in a bit and forego the early morning bite. Got on the water around 1100 and had pots dropped in Tramp Harbor around 1130. We started our troll heading north from Point Heyer toward Point Beals. The wind was a little stiffer than we had wanted, but it was bearable. With lines in the water, we patiently waited with eyes glued to our rods.
We fished for 6 or so hours with little to no action to speak of. There was an occasional flounder, but things weren’t looking too good. We marked a few bait balls too, but there wasn’t near as much bait around as I’m used to seeing. So after 6 hours of nothing, we decided to go pull the crab pots and see how we were looking on time and light. We pulled the pots, had a couple of red rocks and 1 keeper dungie and decided to put them back for a later date.
By the time we got done with the pots, it was 1800 and I decided that we had enough time to drop the lines one more time and try our luck at Point Robinson. We had our lines in the water and started our troll with the incoming tide. About 5 minutes into our troll, my fiancés rod started to do the dance. With such little action earlier in the day, she wasn’t paying much attention to her rod. I had to yell at her to get her attention, and I got it. She jumped up with a quickness, grabbed her rod and popped the clip.
As soon as the clip was popped, the fish made 2 short runs and made its presence known. Little did my fiancé know that this was only the beginning. After the 2 short runs, the fish simply TOOK OFF! I don’t know if I have ever seen anything like this before. The fish ran and took line like we weren’t even there. We started getting a little concerned because the line was just peeling off the reel for a good 2 or 3 minutes and it showed no signs of stopping. She tightened her drag a bit, but it made absolutely no difference. My fiance thought that there was no way that a fish could sustain that long of a run and had almost given up on it, assuming that she had just snagged some derelict gear. Fearing the worst, I pulled all my gear out of the water and turned the boat around. After we headed back to where the “snag” was, we realized that it was indeed a fish because it was still taking line. We chased the fish for a few more minutes and started to get some line back in between a few more short runs. It was 15 minutes of line peeling fury, but we finally got it close enough to the boat to see that it was missing an adipose fin. The fish made a few more runs at the boat but we were able to net it and get the 14 pound female in the boat. Success! The fish was a migrating hen that was FULL of eggs. More bait for river silvers!

The fish came at 60 feet on the rigger in about 200 feet of water. The set up was a red and glow flasher with a home made Irish Flag tailwagger with orange hootchie dipped in a little bit of Herring Smelly Jelly. The fiance was happy because she had picked the lure/flasher and depth. Normally I set everything up for her, but she made all the decisions on this particular occasion and it paid off. We have had a number of fish in the 5 to 10 pound range in the last few times out, but this was the biggest to the boat this season so far. Would have rated it a 4 if there was any action earlier in the day, but I chose 3 because it was the only hit of the day. I’m loving it now because I usually have to coax the fiance to go out fishing with me, but now she wants to get out as much and as soon as possible. Gonna give it another shot later this week and hopefully next weekend. Good luck out there…

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