Sardines off the Siletz....

[Uglygreen]

We were salmon trolling out of Depoe Bay on Sunday, and fishing was slow.... Untill we faund large schools of Sardines feeding on large balls of Krill at about 30 fathoms off the Mouth of Siletz Bay. The Sardines were frothing the surface of the water in certain areas. Bait everywhere on the sonar. Needless to say an old frozen herring spinning along wasn't attracting the proper attention. We accidently snagged a sardene, baited it up and got stripped in about 30 seconds. Hmmmmm....

In the meanwhile, Marty on the Xta-sea (sp?) has shown up and being the prepaired guy he is, he has herring jigs on his boat and is pulling sardenes out 3-4 at a time. We borrowed a jig (HUGE thanks Marty - I owe you one, again) and started loading up the Sardenes. Sent one 50 feet down with a downrigger and got immediatly whacked by a 26 lb chinook. We finished our salmon limit out in about 10 minutes on the Sardines.

So, the Uglygreen is going to have herring jigs tucked away for possible future similar situations. I froze the leftover sardines for future quickfish wraps, and had we had 3 jig rods going I am sure I could have had quickfish wraps for the rest of the year taken care of. Just another lesson on being prepaired on the big blue lake, and having the ifish connection when your not. :smile:

UG

[ 08-11-2003, 07:53 PM: Message edited by: Uglygreen ]

[Uglygreen]

I was also wondering what albacore thought of sardines? If it worked our right one could head west with a bunch of live bait.... [img]graemlins/idea.gif[/img]

UG

[WildHawg]

I've always maintained you were a fishy bugger :tongue:
Could that be a hint of sardine I smell !!!
Seriously fellow formerly banned one--it is cool to be hooked up with such a fantastic pipeline of knowledgable people.
Thanks Marty for the help with Ug--it may benefit me in the future :grin:
We used to "make bait" off Winchester--mostly herring, with anchovies second, and the rare sardine a distant third.
Good call Marty and Ug!!!!!!!!!!

[Mark Mc]

UG..ya sure ya betcha albacore & bluefin love sardines. The live bait tuna boats in CA use whatever bait is available & best at the time. The last few years, since the 'dines have made a comeback, they have been a primary bait for the charter boats. You hook them differently than a chovie. For 'dines you go sideways through the nose instead of vertically through the jaws.

[The Bad Fish]

hey UG we caught 3 mackeral this weekend out of garibaldi. on a rotary salmon killer and a herring.. better get out there for that marlin bait.

[ANDYCOHO]

That looks like some high quality bait there UG.

I may just have to take a little drive to Depoe next week, sure beats paying for them!

[TWB]

Kind of an interesting story about the Sardines off of the Oregon coast. It seems that these fish disappeared for many years. Then a few years ago they showed up off the mouth of the Columbia.
An enterprising commercial fisherman came down from Canada to look over this fishery. He found a few old timers that new how to catch these fish and he took what they new and refined a way to catch them. Next he and one of canneries in Astoria built a new processing plant to handle the fish and he enlisted some other boats to fish for them. They use Alaska style purse seiners to fish them. The unique thing that they use is a helicopter that they contract to fly out and spot the school of fish and then seine the fish.
They deliever to the cannery and the fish are processed and frozen. Most of the fish are sold to the Japanese loneline tuna fleet for bait.

If you are ever fishing the river and see these seiners go buy or the helicopter go out, thats where they are doing.

I have watched them many times and this has been my observation. They go out about 9AM, fish until about 2PM. Usually its a short trip, insight of the bar. Then they deliver to Astoria.
It looks like one of the easiest commercial fisheries I have ever seen.

They feel that the fish will cycle and probably will some day again disapear. I have caught many salmon off the columbia full of these fish. For sure they dine on them.
Jerry