Photos
Details
This fishing report is for Saturday to Monday.
I got to go fishing with my friends Robbie and Gringo Pescador for a long anticipated spring ling cod trip to Neah Bay. I can safely say this was one of the most epic and fun fishing trips I have ever had! We stayed at the Snow Creek Resort (http://snowcreekwa.com/). If you’ve never stayed there, I can recommend it for its ambience and location. The rooms will hold five anglers, but the view is a source of never ending beauty.
We fished out of Neah Bay, and each day ran out to fish various locations along the shorelines from Tatoosh Island to Wadda Island and down to Seal Rock. I wanted to show my friends the beauty of this area and the weather accommodated us perfectly. We had sunny skies, mild winds, and warm weather all three days we fished. See the HotSpots for a few areas to check out.
Our techniques were to either drift and jig bottom, or cast small 3/8 oz jigs and plastics to the kelp and rocks. Basically we’d switch back and forth depending on how sore our elbows were!
This year the regs call for 22” minimum sized lings, 2 per day, and no fishing deeper than 120 feet (to help protect the quillback rockfish).
The ling action was pretty good, but we caught a lot of sub legal fish, and only three keepers for the time there. We saw others do better. Tried some live bait as I know how effective that can be, but for us it just caused lost gear. Jigging 3-6 oz minnow type jigs was more enjoyable, if limiting for the big guys. As to the sea bass and kelp greenling, wow, we could have caught and released hundreds (and I think we did). We limited ourselves to sea bass first over 14”, then 15”, then 17”, and still caught a whole lot of keepers. The sea bass would just go non-stop for 3/8 oz jigs (unpainted) with any type of plastic attached, with a slow twitch retrieve.
Fun times with good friends, can’t wait to go back next year!
(picture is the Monday morning catch)
Comments
Why is this comment inappropriate?
Delete this comment? Provide reason.