albacore from La Push, WA 7/18

scotth · 07-19-2007, 11:23 PM

myself and 3 friends were planning to trailer 8 hrs down the coast from Forks, WA to Depoe Bay, OR to get in on the great tuna fishing, Wed – Sun fishing Thur-Sat, but by Mon night the forecast was looking dicey and by Tues it looked bad – we decided on plan B, stay local and fish albacore out of our home port, La Push, WA as the water was warm and blue by the satellites and we had some intel too

we launched at 0430 and ran SW towards the #s 47 41' 125 23', 37 miles out – a couple miles short it was looking good and I saw an arctic tern, my favorite tuna bird, so we stopped to rig up and dropped a swimbait for good luck – when we picked up to troll we had one on the swimbait

we trolled 6 lines with a variety of lures including a couple Archer superbars I just put together – we had good action with mostly doubles and a couple triple strikes, landed 3 more while stopped on troll fish, 2 on a 2 oz megabait and 1 more on swimbait – total 16 for the day, 18-22#, the biggest haul ever in my private boat career – we saw good life on the sonar, lots of plankton/micro-bait with scattered tuna in our productive zones, but we saw no surface action at all – the fish were mostly feeding on tiny squid 5/8" long, some baby anchovies 1.5" and one ate a 10" sardine - there were lots of birds and some dolphin and warm water everywhere, including on the inside where there were thousands of sooty shearwaters diving on bait everwhere, lots of humpbacks too – there were 6 or 7 boats total fishing albacore according to the fish checker (though we only saw 3 all day), we got about half the tuna so I think those spreader bars may have helped raise fish to our spread – fish checker also said salmon was good before the recently southerly flow brought the warm water in, there is a 1-day halibut opener on Sunday but it is supposed to be rough – it would be quite a feat to pull off a combo tuna/halibut trip

we gave the fish the Royal Star treatment with gutting and chilling in ice/seawater slush before icing down in kill bag – worked very well but the action was a little too fast for perfect treatment, bummer – cleaned fish when the action slowed down, my home-made cutting board salvaged from the beach worked good - the cut-out must have been over 150# because loins and bellies from my 4 weighed nearly 40#

with this southerly push we are having now the albacore (and exotic??) fishing should get good when it lays down – we will definitely be after these northern albacore more, but really want to get down to Depoe Bay still (maybe new moon in September?)

sorry for no action pics- too much action to get the camera

http://www.ifish.net/board/attachmen...1&d=1184919977

bait boy · 07-20-2007, 03:58 AM

Sounds like you guys did just as well as the average out of Depoe.. Nice job, and way to find the fish!!!

tracker · 07-20-2007, 05:18 AM

Did you talk to or see Jim on the Top Notch? Good job on the northern tuna!

Sea Jypzee · 07-20-2007, 05:23 AM

Good job on the Tuna, and by the way, Welcome to Ifish. I notice this is your first post.

Nice introduction story.

p:grin:

Cornfed · 07-20-2007, 05:26 AM

Very nice!

From your intel and temp. charts is there any warm water north of you worth fishing out of neah bay?

Paddler · 07-20-2007, 06:42 AM

Great news, Scott. I'll be there in two weeks. Make sure the tuna stay at 41/23, that's closer than I had to go last year. Maybe we can run together one day. Are the charters fishing albacore? I talked to Randy Lato, I think he has a trip lined up.

Tower Todd · 07-20-2007, 08:54 AM

Welcome to Ifish!

bassin · 07-20-2007, 09:23 AM

Welcome to I fish. Good report.

wdlfbio · 07-20-2007, 12:21 PM

Cool news. Sounds like a great time.

rkh · 07-20-2007, 02:43 PM

that is a mighty fine first post. Good to get tuna reports off the Washington coast.

fishindude · 07-20-2007, 04:36 PM

Excellent report. Full of useful details. Definately enjoyed reading your report. Good luck and welcome to IFISH

scotth · 07-20-2007, 05:32 PM

no on the Top Notch, yes on All Ways - but many will be after the tuna if they are available - it sure looks like this will be a summer of albacore

someone wondered about temps and blue water (chlorophyll) - if you do a google search on "coastwatch sst" and "chloropyll modis" you will find the noaa websites that compile and display those data in almost real time - takes some time to figure it out but they are pretty user-friendly and you can navigate from them

scotth · 07-20-2007, 05:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cornfed

Very nice!

From your intel and temp. charts is there any warm water north of you worth fishing out of neah bay?

and one more thing are the weather buoys, link to them from the Nat Weather Svc sites, we lost our best one at Cape Elizabeth in the winter and it isn't fixed yet which seems reprehensible on the part of the govt - but the La Perouse bouy reflects conditions offshore from Neah Bay although there are lots of banks and the Juan de Fuca Eddy that are big influences on how and where tuna water occurs - if there is warm, blue water though it probably has them