The Dog's Big Weekend

[Flatfish]

Hit an unnamed ocean out of Garibaldi this weekend. Lumpy(fishing buddy) made me promise I would not tell which ocean it was. Here are my thoughts, in no particular order....

Got a friends' kid into his first salmon. The smile is always the same. He is getting to the age where he does not like to do stuff with his folks. But the fish took some of our adult "uncoolness" away for a minute. It made him forget about all that stuff( which is pretty much why I live my life the way I do) that he thinks matters.

Spent some quality time with Dad. Dawn outfished pretty much everyone( with the lucky diver), as usual.

Charlie( Lumpys Dad) showed me a couple more cool ways to rig herring. That man could catch salmon out of a bathtub in Arizona. An amazing fisherman.

The sea was very flat early on. The winds were calm til about 11 am both days. Then it would haul and start to blow til it sorta looked like popcorn out there. :lurk:

The fish were deep( 60 pulls was the fastest action) but almost a steady stream of biters. We averaged a bite every 9 minutes for a few hours Sunday. That does not include a triple that was only good for one keeper.

Lots of natives for you eco minded folks. I am happy to see them return and all....but it sure is expensive feeding a 3 to one ratio of nates. I wish some of the smooth back fish would bite my rod. I killed zero keepers all weekend. Was not for the lack of fish though.

Only had one good (big fish) chinook bite all weekend. Did not land it. But it put too big of a bend in the rod to be a silver. Unless it was Cohozilla.

Crabbing was good. We averaged 2 keepers a pull. Enough to justify the shad stink all over everything. Jeez those are stinky fish!

Saturday we trolled/ran a total of 44 miles. Sunday we did about 29 miles total( GPS is cool for geeky stuff like that). Chevron will probably send us a card on our birthdays and one at Christmas for our contributions. We average a little more than a mile per gallon with the big motor.

Gammie packaged leaders suck( Cheap line. Slip knots need constant attention). Eagle Claws in 2/0-3/0 on 25# test( little fish get little hooks) hooked double the bites than their expensive counterparts. Their knots only slipped when they should have.

Broke a brand new Cabelas rod on Sunday on a dinky silver. We will return it. A nice part of Cabelas is their return policy.

the big motor got tired Sunday on the way in. So we crossed( it was slack tide) with the kicker. Glad we didn't stay out a couple more hours before heading in. It would have made the dog really tired to get home that late.

Mark and the resting up for another weekend of fish filled fun dog.

[Gun Rod Bow]

Nice report "Spider Man".

Random responses in no particular order.

Boats with black dogs catch more fish.

Wives will always outfish you, usually because they were actually listening to your last 14 fishing stories and know which diver to grab and where to sit. She just acts like she's not litening to get the good info. Something they learn from their moms.

Old guys who know how to catch fish are cool.

Getting anyone into their first fish is cool.

Fishing and hunting are some pastimes where age makes absolutely no diff.

Shad smell really bad.

You should get motors that work someday.

Try a black one.

Bruce and the smaller than your dog with a really well proportioned head , but he's always sleeping so no one can tell...dog.

[jokester]

Nice post Flatfish. I always enjoy an amusing, random thought report Glad the dog had a good time too :grin:

-jokester

[skybuster]

My only question is why do you people take more than a dozen herring to the ocean?

Use hoochies and chunk bait and catch just as many fish. If those don't work go to hardware. Those coho will hit about anything you get in front of them.

Just my opinion.

Jim, and the I didn't know which color of dog caught fish so I went with one black and one yellow just to be safe dogs.

[Flatfish]

GRB,

LOL. Sorry I forgot to call ya. Spider webs in my head ya know. :tongue: Get a black motor? Can I just cake black dog hair on top of the shad slime?

Sky,

I like rolling herring. It keeps me in practice for Chinook season. Hootchies would have been a better choice this wekend( they were feeding on little baitfish). But the boat is only rated for 278456473 pounds of gear which was already taken up by mooching rigs, deep six's, the dog, and one of Dawns mega sized lunches. Maybe next trip.

Mark and the still salty dog.