Hey folks!
Here ya go :
Until Next Time, “F.O.B”
Tag Archive: Halibut
Morning folks!
Another quickie update on our fishing season thus far…
Wednesday, Lonny, Dad and I headed out to see what we could catch. The day started out pretty good, little overcast but tolerable in the temp department. We first tried the little cove right by the marina for herring, no luck there at all. We decided to head down to the long drift to see what we could pick up, I did something we normally don’t, I took us down toward the convergence first. Darn good thing I did, we found herring paradise. All told we caught 60+ herring of different sizes in around 30-45 minutes. It was awesome!
At that point I point us to our drift area for Lings. We get into our first drift Lonny first drop and BAM, F.O.B! Nice little keeper coming it at 27 1/2 inches. Now I’m thinking its gonna be an easy day… NOPE. Dad starts to pull up a fish, Rock Cod, I pull up a fish, baby Ling. That was how it was the rest of the day, Rock Cod, and baby Lings and Red Irish Lords. Not to mention the weather and the tides turning miserable on us. Bah score another one for Mother Nature and her finicky ways.
Yesterday was the opening day of Halibut, so that’s what we were going for. We headed out around 8:30. With such good luck the prior day at the convergence we decided to start there today and see what we could find. Just our luck, the party from yesterday had moved on. So we search and searched, we did pick up a few herring during our search but nothing compared to the day before. We decided we would have to forgo any more and shoot the pass while the tides were in our favor. Going through the big pass wasn’t gonna happen once we got closer, the tide had already turned mean and was churning up the water pretty bad. Oh well plan B, hit Canoe Pass! Piece of cake, blowing the puny horn the whole way we shot through without any issues. See sometimes we aren’t so bright, the pass being what it was should have gave us a hint of what was to come… we turned the corner to head out to Burroughs Bay and it was EVIL. Rollers and chop egad. Not little friendly 1 foot rollers and little chop that slaps gently on the hull to lull you to sleep. I’m talking 3 ft swells and chops that would be anything but soothing. Here again, read not too smart… we went for it. Tell you one thing though we took it nice and easy. We were tossed around quite a bit, but going slow and steady we made it out to the place we wanted to fish.
This year being our first year we are taking Halibut seriously, I don’t expect great things, its mostly going to be a season of learning what to do and not to do, where to go and what to use, how to use it etc etc. We anchored up and started preparing our rigs and bait bag. First lesson learned its not like Ling Cod rigs, tie and rig that shit at home, your will have much less frustration. Ling Cod rigs are bam bam done, Halibut rigs have many more moving parts and really shouldn’t be done on a boat that is being rocked around so much =D. Second lesson learned, bring a BIIIIIIG weight for the bait bag. Most people use their downrigger to send down the bait bag, which has a 10-12 pound weight on it, which in turn keeps it directly under the boat. When you don’t have a downrigger you improvise, we put quite a bit (close to 5 pounds) of weight on the line and in the bag itself, and it still wasn’t enough weight to keep the bag under us. Bah well we need to use what we have so we let it out and hoped for the best. Lesson #3 and a painful one, if you let someone use your gear, make sure they give it the respect and cleaning it deserves after every use. Last year I loaned out my Halibut rod to be used for Ling Cod, yes a little overkill but it had to be done. When I went to get my rod ready for this year I noticed the dreaded green corrosion on the eyes. Oh man whoever used it last didn’t wash it down with freshwater when they brought it back, and it sat in the garage all winter. Well after cleaning what I could and hoping there was no deep corrosion I decided to use it. Yep you guessed it, went to drop my rig to the bottom… snicker snack one of the eye rings popped off the mount. Determined not to have that ruin my day, I grabbed the pliers broke off the ring and pinched down the mounts. Don’t misunderstand me, the pole itself I found on sale for $25 and its not the best rod in the world, its a bottom of the line Penn. The whole point is, it shouldn’t have happened, 2 minutes of care and it would still be good as new. Now I have 2 choices, buy a new rod before we go out again or try to find an eye for it and get that on before our next trip. Not to mention I now have to hope that none of the other eyes that were exposed to the abuse don’t give up the ghost. Those were our lessons for this trip.
We didn’t catch anything yesterday, although I did have something messing with and eating my bait the whole time we were out there. Not only did we not catch anything, from what we could tell all the boats that were around and near us didn’t catch anything either. Lots of sad panda Halibut fishers.
Something nice did happen though… it mellowed out for us and got down right pleasant to be out there. We split a storm that evidently hit areas of the Island pretty good. Our ride back was stellar, other than having to dodge a bazillion shrimp pots.
Today we are going to be hitting the water again, this time Jeremy and Chris will be coming along and trying their hand at Ling Cod fishing. I am hoping we can get them into their first keepers, and also hoping Mother Nature plays nice today. I think she owes us a few nice days, since she has really put it to us this past week.
I have also picked up a couple of short stories this past week that I will share at a later date. So that’s something for ya’ll to look forward too.
That be all for now
Until next time, “F.O.B”
Hey there Ladies and Germs!
Good afternoon. Just throwing out a quick update to remind everyone that Ling Cod opens on the 1st that’s only 2 full days away. Also a WDFW update, those silly buggers hosed us down this year for Halibut! It doesn’t open til the 9th for the areas we fish, not only that the number of days we can fish are decimated =(.
Area 6 and 9: ——- May 9-May 10: Open Friday and Saturday ONLY. May 17: Saturday ONLY. May 22-May 25: Thursday through Sunday ONLY. May 29-May-31: Thursday through Saturday ONLY. June 7: Saturday ONLY. No min. size. Daily limit 1. (12 days total fishing!!! WTF)
For all the other questions regarding our wonderful regulations here is the link to the new 2014 Fishing Regs for the state of Washington its in PDF format:
http://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/01590/wdfw01590.pdf
Brad and Eric came up for a visit yesterday. Brad came to get his rod ready for the season, he needed to wrap the eyes on his pole. Lonny and I finished that up this morning, now all that it needs to do is sit there and cure. Eric brought up a bunch of wheel weights, unfortunately they were almost all the new style weights with zero lead. We were a little bummed, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Eric did get to have a bit of fun though, Lonny threw a few of our muffins in the pot for him and he was able to pour a couple dozen 6oz weights!
Spooled up my new Spinning Reel this morning! Picked up a Diawa 2500D last week for my herring rod. Now at last it wont drive me or the other guys crazy when we are getting herring. The last reel I had on there was a Shimano AX3000, if I remember correctly it was about 12 years old or so. So naturally it had its quirks, and its biggest one was the handle squeaked. No matter what I tried or used, reel lube, reel grease, WD40, Spit, water, gear lube oil, it would always squeak. Granted right after I moistened (read Spit) into the hole in the handle it would be silent for about 5 minutes. Sooner or later though… squeeeeak, squeeeak, squeeeeeeak. It became a running joke, its would be nice and quiet all of us fishing away, then squeeeeeeak, squeeeeeak, DANG IT. Spit, nice and quiet again. So for at least a little while, there will be NO SQUEAKIN’! Not only will I appreciate the silence but I’m pretty sure the other guys will too.
Also re-spooled my Abu Ling reel with 65 lb. Power Pro and put it on my Ugly Stik, so its all set to rock some Ling Cod world. Put my other Abu reel onto my Penn Mariner heavy Halibut rod and gave the rod its checkup. Looking good and now we are almost ready for the Halibut. Need to stop by Johns Sporting Goods on Wednesday to pick up some 80 lbs Mono leader and see if he has a new worm drive and prawl for my oldest reel. It finally gave up the ghost a while back, I figure it is time to get her fixed and back into action.
For those of you that live down in the Everett Area and do any amount of fishing, be sure to stop by Johns, not only does he carry exactly what you need for all the saltwater application fishing, the man is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. Here is a short example…
Lonny and I walked in down there one day, I was in search of a new fillet knife. We were looking at all the shiny pretty edged weapons of mass destruction just drooling. He had Dexter, Kershaw, Victorinox, suffice it to say there were some veeeeeeery nice blades in that display, and they had the prices to match. At this point most of you know that if I want something that is going to last me for any amount of time, I don’t have an issue spending a little more money on it. That day was no exception. I figured it would cost me in the neighborhood of $75 – $100 bucks for a knife that I can use for the next 10-15 years barring I don’t loose the dang thing overboard or something ridiculous. John comes up to the counter and asks if he can help, we proceeded to tell him what I was looking for. He reached down and brought up a Kershaw 9 in Curved Bone Knife. Told us that is the exact knife he uses and wouldn’t trade it for anything else. This is the wow part… The knife was $25! Yep even though he had all those expensive knives sitting there ready to go, also knowing full well I was ready to drop a bit of cash on it, he pulled out the $25 dollar knife. How many salesman do you know that would do that? NOT MANY!
If that isn’t enough…
I used that knife all that season, cleaned her up and put her away for the next year. 1st day we went out caught our fish, I was into the 2nd fillet when I pushed down a wee bit too hard and snapped the blade off the handle. OOOOOOOOOOH MAAAAAAAAN, that sucks! No worries I know where I can get another one. I had to go down to Harbor Freight for something anyway so I threw the knife in the vehicle with me to show John what had happened to it, when some dummy try to Magilla Gorilla a fillet. I walked into the shop, waited while he helped a customer, and was looking at the knives again while I waited. He finally came over, and said “Didn’t we just go through this last year?” I placed the broken knife on the counter and he looked at it like it was an alien artifact. “How the heck did you manage that!?!?!” I gave him the story, to which he started laughing. I told him it was an awesome knife and I would take another. He pulled out a new one, handed it to me and said, “Try not to bend this one in half!” He was grinning the whole time. I got my wallet, tried to hand him my card, he just shook his head and told me to have a nice day, that him and his vendor would have a good chuckle at my expense and we would call it even! Seriously folks that’s what I call taking care of your customers!
That is why I try to get some of my stuff from him. He is a bit out of the way for me, but when I am down that way or I need that specialty reel part, that is the guy I go to.
Alright, guess that will do it for today. I hope you all have a great week. I will most likely start the fishing updates/reports on Thursday, so that’s something for you all to look forward to.
Until next time, “F.O.B”
Hey there everyone!
Its that time of year again. Time to get in the swing of things, and get ready for some Ling Cod and Halibut fishing.
First off for those of you who are coming up or down to fish with us, you will need to get your new Saltwater Fishing License. For those of you who will be joining us later in the year for hitting up the river (whether it be the Columbia or Skagit or any other one we decide to try) , you may as well get your Combo Fishing License.
Don’t forget to check your gear, now is a good time to break down those reels and give them a good clean and lube. Check all the eyes on your rods make sure they are secure and not corroded through. Strip off the top 10-15 ft of your braided line, give it a good once over for snags, nicks and breaks. If it doesn’t look healthy look for the next healthy area and cut off the bad.
It has been an very eventful off season, not all of it was good, pretty bad health scare that we are hoping has resolved itself. Last checkup was tip top, so there shouldn’t be any interruption of Ling/Halibut season! Some of the off season was pretty outstanding. Sportsmans show was killer, few of us learned some new techniques and we are even venturing out into another aspect of the hobby.
“Lucky” Mike, landed a rod wrapping machine, and scratch built his first rod! Way to go Mikey! I have to say he did a very good job and it will make a great Ling/Halibut rod! Here are a couple of pictures of it…
Yes folks you see that right, its a bad ass WORLD CHAMPIONS SEAHAWKS fishing rod! Not only did he pick out an awesome theme for the pole, he also gave the pole acid/spiral wrapped guides!
Taking a cue from him. We found some eyes off a broken rod and Lonny and I rewrapped his old Ling pole..
Yep also Seahawk themed! Let me let you in on a little secret… rod building is FUN AS HELL! We are gonna pick up some bulk guides and rewrap a couple of the “Craiglist” rods that Lonny picked up. We always need some extra rods around when people show up to visit or want to go and don’t have their own gear. This will give us some practice at wrapping and let us fine tune our skills before we jump into building new rods for ourselves.
We also did our weight pouring and our leader tying, well I am still working on my leader tying, Lonny is pretty much done with his. Here are a couple pics for your amusement…
Looks like fun don’t it! Mikey came up last weekend and got in his “pour time”. While showing us the rod wrapping ropes.
Our favorite Canuckian will be down on the 30th of this month to hit up the first week of fishing with us. We always look forward to Mackie coming down for a visit, such a good friend and super fun to hang out with and have some fun. I know he is anxiously awaiting the time to hop on the plane for the ride down.
Lonny and I gave the boat her spring tune up/dewinterization last Saturday, changed the oil, fuel water separator, low end fluid, gave her a good once over made sure everything was in ready to fish condition. Hopefully we will have a couple of nice days between now and opening so we can take her out and put her through her paces, and maybe do a couple of scouting drifts at our favorite fishing spot.
I guess that will do for today. Look for more updates in the near future and hopefully a couple awesome fishing reports and pictures when the season gets underway!
Until next time… “F.O.B”!
Fishin with Winkstr 