Depoe Bay Salmon Report 10/12-10/13

[fish assassin]

Mel,

The weather guessers were forcasting 25 for below
Cascade Head ... I'm glad they missed it. Made for
a great weekend of fishing.

corrirod,

You basicly needed to run the gear down to the bottom
and lift it back up 2-4 fathoms, although I was getting
fish up as far as only 14 fathoms deep ... However,
MOST of the fish were down near the bottom.

-assAssin-

[corrirod]

:shocked: So you run your riggers down 250-340+ ft. deep? Holy ##$@! What size ball are you using? If I get much past 150ft with my 12lb'ers they sway so bad I lose about 50ft.

I'm fairly new to the downrigger thing so any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

[Mark Mc]

Rod, the other Mark (Assassin) is using commercial gear. This would mean anywhere from 40 to 70 lb balls on the deep (inside) lines to stay on the bottom in 50 or 60 fathoms. In my commercial days, I preferred to go "light" with 40's and 50's, and troll real slow to stay on the bottom in 60 fathoms.

With your sport downriggers and only 12 or 15 lb leads, you might try slowing your troll to a crawl to see what kind of wire angle you'd have, with 40 fathoms out. If this still won't work, try mooching with 1 lb balls.

Good luck, Mark Mc

[fish assassin]

Nice weekend on the Central Oregon Coast!! The weather
was all you could ask for with light winds and small,
slow spells. The weather guessers had predicted 25
mile an hour winds for Saturday, but they totally
blew *that* forcast!

Salmon fishing out of Depoe Bay has been excellent
all week, with the charter skippers taking boat limits
almost every day and the commercial guys getting eight
to 52 fish a day (depending on the day). On Saturday
the three commercial boats took 20, 25 and 40 fish
and the three six pack charter boats took limits of
fat, bright feeder chinook to 30 lbs for customers
and crews!!

Sunday wasn't quite as good, with two commercial boats
taking 15 and 28 fish and the charter boats struggling
to fill tags for their customers ... however, the
fish were a better grade on Sunday with more of the
20+ lb. fish being caught.

What a gas! Nothing quite like fishing Chinook until
your hands are bleeding and your back is killing you!

The fish were out between 45 and 60 fathoms with the
highest numbers of fish being caught at 55-60 fathoms
and the largest fish being caught between 45-50 fathoms.
The fish were in the lower part of the water column
(for the most part) so you needed a down-rigger with
lots of wire.

Good weather, good fishing ... over all a *great* weekend!

BTW, whatever happened to the Ifishers that were going
to chase tuna Sunday Morning out of Dopey Bay? I was
kinda hoping to see a few of you down there ...


Sea ya,
-assAssin-

[Miss B Haven]

Assassin, the foreliers didn't blow it! They just sent all that wind up to me in the CR. :shocked:

[corrirod]

How deep were you running the riggers? I may try to get down there in the next week for a last salmon hoorah. Thanks.

Wak'm posted on another thread in regards to the tuna trip. He said they couldn't find any warm water and it started to blow pretty hard so they came back.

[fish assassin]

The other Mark is correct ... I'm runnin 45 lb.
cannon balls on my deeps so I can get waaaayyyy
down there where the fish are! The six pack charter
guys are running 20-25 lb. cannon balls for the same
effect. With only one sport line per down-rigger
you can get down a long ways with 20-25 lbs.

The commercial guy I mentioned in the earlier post
that got 40 fish on Saturday? He is actually a charter
boat that has four downriggers and is fishing them
all as deep lines. His "heavies" are only 30 lbs.,
but he is not running any flasher/hoochies. He was
using all spoons and blue lable herring. Mike told
me he went through a dozen packs of herring for his
40 fish and caught most of them down near the bottom.

Mark Mc is also correct about slowing the boat down
to as slow as you can troll. Makes a lot of difference
in the attitude of the wire ...

Good Luck,
-assAssin-