What does a guide do for his day off? I got up at 3:00 a.m. to drive to Tillamook from Astoria to go fishing in the wind and rain.
Let me tell ya it was worth it.
I fished with my wife and two friends. We fished along the jetties and out at the jaws and we ended up keeping two silvers, releasing two silvers and the first "Tillamook Hog" for my boat on the first day out. My wife was the champ, she caught the first, most and biggest. Two silvers (released) and the 29# chinook. The other two fish were 10 and 13# silvers.
All our fish were taken on the bottom in about 50 feet of water with 12oz of lead. It's real important to use enough lead to stay right under your boat in these crowded conditions.
On our first pass we had a classic chinook take down, one of those steady pull, pull, pull, rod tip to the water bites. Just about when I was going to set the hook it popped off. In the morning we only saw about six fish taken for 30-40 boats but an hour before high the fish staarted to snap and we saw at least another twenty fish hooked, all silvers. Not bad unless you consider we caught 19 on my boat alone on the Columbia yesterday.
I'm glad I made the trip, we got what I wanted, a nice big old slab chinook in the box.
When we took out the checker had seen two chinook and a few silvers so far. A couple of guys came in to the public fish cleaning station with two chinook when I was in there. They said that they got them at Wheler on the Nehalem and that there were about five or six chinook caught there this morning.
Fall is just around the corner and it will be as good as this summer.
David Johnson
www.davidjohnsonfishing.citysearch.com
Opening day for Tillamook Bay
Linear Mode
