Wayne, Ted, Steve and the Man will be at it on Thursday and Friday.
Thursday the ocean is blown out, so we will hunt for halibut in the straights.
Friday looks good for the big water, my favorite.
We are using a guide service that Ted has known for years. Cheaper than dragging Ted's bot all the way up there.
36 Hour preunderways:
Weapons check complete - Sat
Weapons stowed - Sat
Documentation verified
and stowed - Sat
Lubricant/Fluid levels
verified adequate and
in periodicity - Sat
Sea Bag and personal
load out verified and
stowed - Sat
Larder loaded and
stowed - Sat
This sailor is ready to get underway!
The Man
We are back from the north coast. Words cannot describe how much fun we had and the piles of fresh loins we came home with.
The scenery is a whole nuther story. My phone was on the fritz, so Wayne took the pics. Amazing trip. We did get to fish offshore both days !!
Sounds like a fun trip. Glad it worked out so well
It was truly memorable. The North Coast corner is always special, my favorite place in the world; even more of a old world impression than Guam. We don't ever get halibut this late in the year, and so I got to see the corner during a couple perfectly clear days as opposed to fighting the rain.
Bringing home a lot of loins is like saying a Dodge Challenger Hellcat has a few horsepower. We got out on the open ocean and limited on 3 species 2 days in a row. Both days were sporty enough for some to decide no, but the boat we were on is a Uniflite Salty Dog with big new Yanmar diesels coming in at a svelte 14000 pounds, it dealt with a little bit of wind and swell like a champ and took good care of us.
As far as the fish, we were targeting the Wa standard Halibut, Ling Cod, and Black Rock fish. Tom (the Skipper,) knows of a hole that often holds big blacks and they were there on Thursday! I don't believe I caught my biggest black rock fish ever, but I came close with a bunch of them. We would have thrown back 3# fish if we caught any that small, and I just vacuum sealed a 1.9# fillet! (and that is no fish story either.)
We get 7 a day each, including the skipper. So 35x4 gives you quite the heavy cooler. We each get 4 halibut a year, and everyone but the skipper had room on there license, so we caught 4 halibut Thursday, along with 10 lingcod and the rockfish.
The skipper did a bit of a gamble on Friday, and it payed off. We were expecting it to be blown out and that we would have to stay inshore, but God smiled on us and delayed the small craft advisory until 10:00 AM. Tom burnt a lot of fuel and gave us a bit of an E-ticket ride to get out to the halibut grounds, and we took the first 4 that we got; which were, as the Butt Man often says, "Perfect Eatin' Size!" By the time we got the halibut and a few ling on board, it was getting a bit sporty, and we headed to the coast to get the black rock fish and finish the lings. Shortly after a lunch of Ted's amazing MRE albacore, we decided to get out of Dodge so that we miss the really sloppy weather and see if the East coast guys could get home by dark even though we were short two lings. Right before we got to Tatoosh Island, Tom came off the throttles, I reached for my rod just as he said "boys, we have to try." It took us just under a half hour to get our last two lings.
We got back to the barn, settled up, split the fish, gassed up and hit the road by 4. Wayne played photographer, and he'll put pictures to my story. I'm about 25% done vacuum packing fillets, and I'm at 32 pounds. The rest will get done tomorrow.
Just to let everyone know how die hard Ted and Steve are, they fished a silver salmon derby this morning on Ted's boat.
Epic
The Man
Thanks Ron, good report, we hope you smiled this time, cheers Don.
If U kids give me a bye week, I'll post the heck out of this trip when we return from Maui!!!
Jennifer & I are @ SFO with wheels UP @ 9:01 AM!
Aloha to all!!!
Our 1st Retirement Trip!!!!
Wayne & Jennifer
Well deserved my friend!
Hope the Aloha sun works out the kink in your elbow after all that reeling!
The Man
Can't wait to see the pics from this trip!! :d
Looks like another amazing trip! Enjoy the fish tacos!!
Jealous, a little, maybe, yeah a lot ;D Good report and great fishing. Bill
"The man" is holding back on ya'all. Rumor has it he just got home from an epic albacore charter. Hopefully it's not just a rumor. He did send me this pic.