08/31/2009

Tides: Low tide is at 4:45 a.m. and high tide is at 11:30 and a second low tide at 4:30 p.m.

Crew for the day: Tim, Doug and Jimmy.

Starting Time: 6:30 a.m.

What We Caught

This was the toughest day of the season. We boated a very nice hatchery Coho around 9:00 and released 1 wild fish around 11:00. Only very small fish hitting after that. Just big enough to screw up the baits.

Where We Fished

We started at buoy #27 and ran the red line for the first pass. The wind and water were absolutely wicked! We had 4ft rollers at about 3 seconds and a 2ft wind chop. That combined with the tail end of low tide was so rough it was pulling the baits off. Around 8:00 it finally settled down enough to make it reasonable to head out to buoy #10. We made pretty good time and setup between buoy #10 and #12 around 8:30. It turned out to be a very slow bite with only a few fish being caught around us and a lot of very small ones at that. I think we got the largest fish out of all the fish I saw netted.

How We Fished

We got our fish on a very small, fresh bait at 22 pulls. I was fishing 17 to 26 pulls with 3 rods in the water. This was just one of those days that was tough to fish with a pretty small number of them entering the river.

What We Saw and Learned

Even in a very good year with good catch rates, there will still be tough spots in the river to fish. It is my hope that I will learn how to read the conditions better as the year s progress and have a better feel for how to adjust and where to move when the catch at the mouth of the river has a slow period.