Steelhead/Sturgeon Fishing at Bonneville

Sorry for the late post, been busy all weekend. I had the pleasure of fishing with Gary (Imnaha), for some steelhead on Friday. We got up to the fishery around 7am and were suprised by the lack of trailors.
...Either that was a GOOD thing, or a BAD thing... yet to be determined...



We decided to head upriver past some recognizable landmarks, such as Beacon Rock,


and made our way to a secret locale we clever named the 'shad rack'

We anchored in 15' of water, put back a U20, and some spin-n-glos/shrimp combos.


first bite was on Gary's rode. The thing starts fighting more like a summer nook than a steelhead. larger with the long, pulling headshakes. Didn't fight like a sturgeon...but it was. Nice sized fish too, almost keeper size. Safely released and back to the deep depths of 15'.


Around 9 or so, my rod buries. safe to say this fish is hooked good. The fish rockets straight out of the water with three or four great acrobatic jumps. After her show was over, I grinded her up to the boat, to notice no extra fins.

BONK BONK! (Didn't take much for a 6 lb fish)



"Hey, look at the holdover trout I caught up here at the lake!" is what I felt like saying holding it up.


...just seemed so tiny compared to salmon/tuna/halibut as of recently. But still great fun, don't get me wrong!~ Sometimes its good to scale down.. Its like tying on a #18 caddis to a 4wt and hittin a small creek the day after bloodying the boat with tuna 35 miles out on the Big Blue.
....Brings things into check.

Meanwhile, absorbing the rays of the sun, Gary is brought to his feet by another good bite later that we KNEW was a sturgeon the minute it started poking at his rod.


Another good healthy legal-sized fish.


Again, popped the hook out and let it swim on back to scavenge on something dead.
We made sure to keep the prawn rig up further off the bottom but with their good sniffers, they still seemed to find it.
One random thing I thought was kinda ironic is that the sturgeon both came on the inside rod, and on the bait that was higher up in the water column.. and the steelhead came on the outside rod, deeper water.


Turned out to be a great day on the water.. We ended up keeping one steelhead, and letting two 'incidental bi-catch' (trying my gillnet terminology) sturgeon back to grow larger and maybe keep, another day.

Hope to get up there again.. Just watching the osprey dive for fish, the herons fight for fishing grounds, even the other fishermen attempting to anchor, made for some great entertainment!

Happy Bloody 4th of July!!

First of all,
Happy Bloody 4th of July to all!



Got the call to leave first thing in the morning. Dylan and I made our way to across the hill to Little Italy to meet up with Bud for a tuna run.
4:30 came early, especially after a few drinks, Friday night!~
But knowing we were on a quest to find warm blue water and longfins, we seemed to wake up pretty quickly. CD joined us for the hunt.
We headed out past the jaws into a weak fog bank. It wasn't 'pea-soup' thick, but enough to keep you on Extra alert for crab pots. With a little slop out there, we made our way WSW at 20-23kts. The clouds began to part radiating sun against a clear blue/green propwash.
With some information passed on by Secret Island (thanks Tron), we put in lines around the 125.13 line and within 20 mins the first rod went off. The first 2009 Garibaldi sport-caught tuna was now landed!


We had a few doubles and a triple for a moment, until one came unbuttoned. All were caught on zuchini clones. A couple came behind birds. Water temps were up to 61.9 by the afternoon. Some of that was probably the sun warming the surface.
We had a little down time between the action ...and of course, when we bring out the camera for a quick pic....ZZZZZZ! the rod behind me starts going off (as you can see in the background)!


Made for a good photo opp... but back in the bag went the camera, and the fun began again! We kept putting fish in the box, but just not in great numbers yet.


We stopped fishing once we ended up with more fish than ice. The fish we caught ranged from about 15-25 lbs. We noticed Dick came in with nice-sized fish. Could've run 35'ish? The fish are there, but just not in the numbers yet. Hopefully they'll keep moving in closer!


Once we were back in, and cleaning the fish box, we saw a bait that one of the fish coughed up. This thing was about 10 inches long, hard-pointed nose, somewhat mackerel-looking. Anyway, found it interesting. Must've eaten it that morning, by the way it looked.


The ocean laid down as the day went on which made for a comfortable ride in around 30kts..Ended up with great weather, good fishing, and even better friends to kick off the 2009 Albacore Season!


Let the bodies hit the floor...
Let the bodies hit the floor...
LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR!!

Killer Whales off Rockaway

While attempting some inshore drifts for halibut, we came across a female orca and her calf off our port. This is the only good picture I got of the mother. They were already past us by the time I could snap any pictures of the smaller calf. Was AMAZING to see those magnificent creatures so close and in the wild!

Springers, Solitude, and Suckers!

Been fishing the CR most of the season, but decided on Thurs that we'd try a little closer to home and fish the Willy. We fished a very secluded, zipper-lipped hole just around the head of the MC.



Right when we got out there, we were seeing sporadic fish being caught here and there. Mostly a morning bite.

I noticed this gentleman with a fish on. Definitely doin it the 'Barta Way'...the Hard Way! Very impressive with the amount of freeboard on that boat!


No, but honestly, this guy obviously does this alot.. landed that fish in the net as smooth as ice. Great one-handed fisherman! If you are out there and see this, Awesome job, man!


Noticed Mr. Kitchen Pass with a fish on and decide to make him famous for a couple seconds..


Later in the morning, I couldn't help but notice Rod-Action (Ken Bolstad) so I gave him a shout. Sounded like they had a great day too!


(the boat name and contact info has been photoshoped to protect the freedom to keep this picture up on this site. God forbid should I let THAT slip out!)

The eagles and the osprey were hangin around, watching everyone else catch fish.


Then, this guy decided he wanted in on the action as well. Dive down, Kur-Plunge! flappin those wings outta the water with a giant sucker fish.


He sat up on a perch with it for a few minutes as I took some photos, then decided to give me a fly-by, showing off it's catch.

Blessed me with some great images!




Oh, and we caught fish too!

But these images are more entertaining!

__________________

Shotgunning Sandshrimp! (Bored Fishermen)

We did a little steelheading on the coast but the rivers were barren of fish. SOooo, with an excess of sandshrimp, we went up an old logging road and found a great source of entertainment...Shotgunning Sandshrimp.

...didn't even see it comin~!

Humbolt Squid Caught While Rockfishing

Just like Forrest Gump once said, "Life is like a box of chocolates...You never know what you're gonna get". Lake Pacific has provided me, once again, with this fascination. Saturday was no exception. . .

I had the invite from Brad (GreenButtSkunk), to go fish for some rockfish and maybe in-shore halibut. I jumped at the opportunity! My friend Dylan (ZodiakFisherman), and I cruised over to Little Italy early Saturday morning to join Brad and Dan (74 CJ5). It was so cold Saturday morning, that the walk ramp going down to Big Tuna Marine was iced over. Sliding down with rods, bags, food, etc, we clumsily made our way to the boat, like deer on ice. Once it began to get light, we made our way out of the marina.



We found our depth, shut down the boat and dropped the baits. We were in search of in-shore halibut.
Not more than 5 minutes later, a loud PFFFFSSHHHHHHHH sound came up RIGHT where I was staring! A baby humpback whale peeked its head up, took a breath, and I swear it was staring right at us, curious as we were. Brad looks and says, "I wonder where Mama is..." A few seconds later, here comes Big Mama, swimming behind her calf. Such a massive and beautiful creature! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera at the time...only a rod and reel...
Once we found our halibut spot, we made a few drifts at different depths. Unfortunately, they didn't produce. What we did notice, is TONS of jellyfish floating below us. You could see them at all depths.


We decided to run up to a reef he knew of and tried a few drifts there. A few drifts brought numorous rockfish, quillbacks, and lingcod. Here's Dylan with one of the smaller Lings.


Dan also got into a nice ling on the same drift.


We picked up lines and ran back up for another drift and Dylan hooks into a pretty large fish... or so we thought. He said he couldn't feel any real headshakes...just long pulls. but fought him good. Line would peel off the reel at times. He finally got it up to color and we noticed it was a HUMBOLDT SQUID!




We honestly didn't know what we should do with it. I grabbed the underwater video camera and started filming. It was amazing the way this thing would shoot down 20ft, but get pulled right back up. What looks like its mouth, is really a vent...for the mouth is really the beak in the middle~



I actually got some pretty good video! Had great clarity in the water!
We decided not to keep the squid, and it eventually popped off the line so we didn't have to deal with it!

That reef produced all kinds of 'creatures from the deep'.
Another fish pulled up this weekend was this Ratfish we caught, while fishing for some inshore halibut.






This was another first for me, aside from the Squid and the Humpbacks.

We didn't have a lot of time to fish, and we wanted to be back inside before the bar started standing up. Although we didn't get our halibut, we still had a great time, a few firsts, and a few Lings for the dinner table.

Hope its not the last run of 2008!
Had to end the day with an Ice cold Fat Tire.

Thanks again, Brad!

Crabs vs. the Bloods...Gang Signs!

While crabbing one fine day, we came across this little girl. She looked like she must have wandered up the Willamette, then back out to the ocean, then up this estuary. She definitely was interesting to look at. and still had a way to grab that chicken~! It was throwing up gang signs when I picked it up. I was worried it was gonna have its other crab buddies do a drive-by on my boat or something?!