Depoe Bay bottom fish report, 11/09/03

[fish assassin]

Wowzers!! What more can I say for a day like Sunday? After a chilly start
Sunday Morning my brother, his daughter and I got to enjoy one of the most
beautiful November oceans I have ever been on!!

We left the dock at about 8:am. As we motored under the bridge at Depoe Bay
I could hardly believe how flat the ocean was! Calm, smooth and about a 2' swell.
As we got out to the bell bouy we could feel the East wind ... Brrrrr!!!

Hung a North at the bell bouy and scooted up along the kelp line. When I got to
port first thing in the morning one of the locals (thanks Howard) had told me that
there was a pretty good ling cod bite "off the whale monument just outside the
kelp line". That's where we started fishing.

Dropped our lines and withing minutes I had the first ling cod on the line! I
handed the rod off to my niece telling her to "reel, reel, don't give it any slack".
She lifted the tip of the rod and dropped it back down without reeling and lost the first
cod. No problem. Need to work with her on pumping the rod ...

She hooked the next fish. With dad and I coaching her she put a pair of black rock
in the boat. Cool! Lines go back in the water. Ling cod start biting like mad. The
kid gets to land several ling and a mess of sea bass. She was smiles from ear to ear
as dad and I were praising her for what a great fisher-person she was. Finally her 13
year old arms gave out and she was handing her rod off to dad to bring her fish up.

The Cod were biting so well that we had to quit fishing on the bottom and make
long shallow casts and finally some troll action to get the bass. There was bait all
over the top of the water to the point that the (small) swells were shimmering silver
as they rolled by!

We fished for about 2 hours until my niece fell in the fish box and barked her shin ...
We decided to call it a day. We ended up with 18 sea bass, 6 ling cod and two largish
cabazon. All in 6-9 fathoms of water right outside the kelp beds! Took us
almost as long to fillet that mess of fish as it did to catch them.

Great fun! If the weather turns back to nice for a day next weekend the plan is
to take all 4 of my bro's kids out for a trip ... With the bottom fish closure looming,
fishing will still be open next weekend, right??

Have a great week, folks.

-assAssin- (the weird uncle that owns the cool boat)

[Phil Layer]

My understanding is it closes on the 16th, so yeah, you can do that same routine on Saturday.

[seasquid]

Zipped out of Newport both days for some bottom fishing -- both days were excellent, but as FA said, that east wind yesterday morning was cold...but did it change in a nice way.

You name it we caught it -- cabezon, quillback, coppers, lings, bass, china rocks, etc... as FA did, we also had to troll to catch see bass, and even then caught five lings near the surface and had one monster on that was hitchhiking on a seabass.

It was just me and my girlfriend Saturday, the first time she ever seriously fished for bottom dwellers -- once she got the hang of it, she did pretty well. I managed to catch one ticked off [img]graemlins/icon_argue.gif[/img] wolf eel (4.5 feet) -- wasn't sure if it was coming in the boat or my girl friend was bailing out the other side -- I managed to get the thing unhooked and released -- I know you can keep them, but I don't think that would have been my smartest move. I hadn't caught a wolf eel for years, so it was quite a surprise.

Anyway, it was a great ocean both days and the quality of the fish superb.

ss

[Metal Manipulator]

OH WHY OH WHY did I bring my boat home
Way to go catching the right day and good fish